Black Sheep - ArizaLuca - Cult of the Lamb (Video Game) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: Narinder

Chapter Text

The Lamb was a fool.

At least, that was how The One Who Waits felt about his newest vessel.

It wasn’t stupid, necessarily– it certainly was a competent cult leader. It offered a multitude of things in return for gold on a regular basis. The cult grounds were kept sanitary and their followers well fed. There were few dissenters, and the few that did dissent were usually conveniently offered up to him as sacrifice.

Though, the way the cult was formatted was horrendous. The pillory was shoved into a corner and blocked off, eventually, by a humongous skull with dozens of candles shoved into the eye sockets, various pillars of skulls and spiderwebs, with its own little cobwebs forming from disuse. The outhouses were next to the main bulk of houses, forcing all of the followers to make a trek across the entire grounds if they wished to attend the sermon, with the confessional and a lone hut awkwardly situated in the middle of that path; and the kitchens and farms were a hop, skip, and a jump away from the crypt.

Even Heket’s temple, messy and choked with thousands of little red mushrooms, was more nicely laid out than the cult– but, after all, he never actually gave the vessel any instructions on how to decorate and lay out the cult, and perhaps it was just a matter of strange taste.

Ratau certainly liked that strange game Knucklebones a great deal.

What really led The One Who Waits to believe his vessel was a fool was their insistence on ruling in such a cowardly way.

Sacrifices were saved for the dissenters who were too loud, or the pleas of followers, or, occasionally, an elder whose final days were causing them incredible agony.

There are no murders– which The One Who Waits does not care about– but when the Lamb is announcing a new doctrine and can visualize the options he presents them, he swears he sees its face pinch in distaste before smoothly announcing the other option; he doesn’t even remember what it is.

It never jailed. Not even dissenters. The Lamb would try to talk to the dissenter over any sort of punishment; even sacrifice was mostly to replenish any faith that seemed to be dimming in it.

It took the time to fish, and avoid combat to harvest berries and cauliflower and beetroot, and carefully selecting their best-rested followers to go out for meat to maximize their chances of survival, to craft as many pleasant meals as possible.

Even when it was no longer the vessel’s responsibility to cook, with the construction of a nice kitchen, nicer than the campfire with a stove that it had to stoke periodically, it would.

In fact, it always took the time to do chores. It restocked the fertilizer. It restocked chests and the composter. It went and walked around the graves, strolling through flowers interrupted by a mix of tombstones and wooden crosses. It took the time to clean the outhouses with a pair of thoroughly washed yellow gloves, the Crown sitting on their head.

He did once, when they inevitably died from something idiotic as usual, like rolling onto a trap or forgetting to watch the shadow of the Dropper until it crushed them into black ichor, ask why they didn’t just use the Crown’s shapeshifting abilities to be gloves.

The Lamb had looked up at him, craning its neck, and shrugged with a bright smile. “I figured it was a little mean to make the Crown clean up poop.”

The One Who Waits mentally conceded that point.

He watched the Lamb. There was not much else to do.

He watched them dart through enemies in Anchordeep, the deep blue shimmer of water over their head casting an eerily beautiful glow over the place, even though Kallamar had clearly let it fall into disarray.

He watched the Lamb fish at two in the morning, catching various fish and setting them aside, only to dump most of their catches (barring the tuna or salmon, which they saved for follower meals) into the offering chest the moment they returned.

He watched the Lamb play Knucklebones with Ratau, and Flinky, and Klunko and Bop, and eventually Shrumy; losing yet another round and deciding to give it one last try for the night, on their fifth last try of the night.

(He wonders if he should stop taking their offerings, in a refusal to continue funding their gambling habit.)

(He doesn’t actually stop taking their offerings, of course, but he does consider it.)

In between every crusade, they wander the tombstones, they clean the outhouses, they send off more missionaries and stock the seed stores and cook the meals. They play Knucklebones until the morning, they send him all of the swordfish they catch, they chat with the followers and dance with them and conduct funerals.

One by one, each Bishop falls.

(The lamb does not bow.)

(Not once.)

(A small part of him is proud about that.)

It takes what feels like an age.

(It kind of does. The Lamb, though more and more skilled with each crusade, is obviously not a fighter; or at the very least, not a good one.)

The Lamb is very quiet when he brings it to his realm, most of the time; though even their silence doesn’t wipe the silly smile off its face.

(And he truly brings it there a lot. They die an excessive amount, either by rolling straight into attacks or a lack of fervor catching them off guard or getting knocked over by an enemy with a shield, which they seem abysmal at dealing with.)

(Fool.)

Whenever it does speak, it is always in the form of a question.

They’ll ask him if he likes the fish, and if he would prefer octopus or crab this time.

(He asks for salmon, once, and is barraged with so many of them the following day that he ends up giving the extras to Baal and Aym.)

One visit is to ask what Aym’s name is, and the next they ask for Baal’s.

The third visit is asking them if they are identical or fraternal twins, though they don’t get a straight answer on that occasion, for none of the three know the answer.

They offer three fat swordfish the following day, with three notes attached— one for Aym, one for Baal, and one for The One Who Waits.

They ask about one of his siblings, and with his luck it is about Shamura.

He was the fifth. The fifth Bishop of the Old Faith. Our brother, The One Who Waits. Back then he was known by the name Narinder.

Shamura’s words resound in his mind—

— in my imprudence, I loved him—

(even the ones he wishes not to hear)

“Shamura called you Narinder,” the lamb says, and though it isn’t an inquiry, the question is embedded in their voice.

He dismisses them without replying.

The next time they return, it is another question about Shamura, though when they speak the name and he tenses they put up one small hand, in a placating gesture.

“Is Shamura non-binary?”

… he doesn’t expect this question, so he honestly replies “yes.”

The lamb nods, and Shamura is never again brought up.

They offer him spider silk the next day.

He looks at it for a while.

Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one–

The One Who Waits willfully ignores the last two words–

becomes nothing

The time is drawing near.

He watches them, one final time, walk among the graves and check on the crypts and fill up the seed stocks and the fertilizer bins and the compost, even though it will no longer matter.

They make the meals and chat with the followers, and dance together, and preach their sermons.

They fish, and make him offerings of everything, even the tuna.

They play Knucklebones, and lose, and gamble away at least two hundred coins before they give up for the day, joking that Shrumy rigged the dice and watching Shrumy practically swell in offense at the accusation.

They make sure all of the fields are full of growing crops, and that the harvest totems are finished and not half-built structures jutting from the fields.

They build a new decoration, a glittering lamp to stand out like a sore thumb among all of their wood and candles.

They hold another funeral.

It does not matter anymore.

The Lamb approaches him, for the final time.

They do not smile this time. Their expression is strange. Peace and sorrow.

“Vessel, I relinquish you from your service to the Red Crown,” he tells them. “Return it to me, and embrace the end that awaits. With this last sacrifice of my most devoted Follower, I will be freed.”

The Lamb looks at him, cradling the Crown in their hands.

He waits.

He has waited for so long.

The Lamb puts the crown back on, with no pomp or flair. It is almost ridiculously plain, the way it replaces the Crown on its head.

It summons an axe– its weapon of choice, from previous crusades.

They look up at him in the eerie silence that follows their actions.

They bow.

It is the only time he has seen them do so.

The lamb’s voice is soft; no inquiring tone or lighthearted joke. Not on this occasion.

“I’m sorry.”

They learn.

Of course they do.

With every death, every bloody chain piercing their brain, every scorched corpse–

They are not a fighter–

it falls once

– at the very least–

twice

– not a good one.

a hundred times

But they learn.

he has lost count

Even when tentacles emerge and he gives a horrendous screech, the Lamb learns.

He has watched them learn this whole time.

He is pathetic on the ground. The third eye forever closed, reduced to a scar marring his fur. He spews insults, hatred. He was a god.

He recognizes the gesture the Lamb makes.

The little wave the Lamb does, to bring a new follower to the cult.

Before he can say anything, he is gone.

The One Who Waits emerges from the follower stone literally hissing.

(He would roar, but though his voice is deep with an intimidating timbre, The One Who Waits no longer has the vocal folds to form the sound, so it comes out, instead, as a raging hiss.)

The lamb (the traitor) shouts something, and the followers, crowded around, eagerly awaiting their leader’s return, fall back just in time to avoid being slashed by still-dangerous claws–

A few children burst into tears. He zeroes in on one, a capybara with a snotty nose, and lunges–

Something darts in front and blocks, knocking his hands away before any damage can be done. His eyes focus, through his blind fury–

It’s the Crown. His Crown. Staring at him, blinking silently, simply shifting in the air to block his movements.

He rages, he screams—

A hand grabs the god (former, he is no longer a god, former god) by the wrist, dodging the claws, and he is suddenly being towed along remarkably forcefully.

His one-handed, attempted attacks are futile, for the Crown (the betraying Crown) simply blocks his hits, darting from the Lamb's head to block the fatal blows of his claws- for they would be fatal, as he still towered over the lamb by a good head or two, and their neck is a more-than-tempting target.

He can hear the lamb over his yowling fury, the traitor, backstabber, heretic, former vessel— they are reassuring the flock with their typical vapid platitudes, and he swears he hears the lamb cheerfully say "don't worry, he's just nervous, he'll get used to it here", as if he's just another follower, just like all the other fools here, and he wants to rip the lamb limb from limb—

Then they are out of the burning sun, hot on his dark fur (and of course, he could feel heat now), and the hut door shuts.

(Distantly, a part of him recognizes it. This was the hut that was awkwardly out of the way of the rest of the houses and in the way of what would otherwise be a straight path to the Temple, at the crest of a small hill with the confessional booth at the bottom.)

The (former) god wheels around from where he was unceremoniously shoved into the little hut- one of the so-called "grand shelters" that, in reality, amounted to barely more than a shack compared to the grand temple he'd once had, ready to tear the foolish lamb apart–

The lamb stands there, expressionless.

Even when curious, he was used to a vapid little smile on their face, in their eyes. Even at night, when nobody looked, the lamb seemed to perpetually smile, like an irritating sunbeam that you couldn’t duck no matter how much you squirmed. Even when cleaning the outhouses, or walking among the tombstones, or preparing bodies for burial, or restocking the fertilizer bins.

But the lamb was not smiling.

Its expression wasn’t angry, or hateful, or smug, or any number of emotions he had expected from them. They were just… blank. Unreadable.

“Shamura called you Narinder,” the lamb said.

Chapter 2: Blank Slate

Chapter Text

His mind short-circuited for a moment, caught off guard by their expression and the name and the reminder (five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing), before rage snapped back to the forefront.

“You–” He choked on his anger, welling up in his throat and spilling forth as a vicious snarl, “you do not get to call me by that name!”

The Lamb shrugged, entirely unperturbed. “I need to call you something. So, Narinder it is.”

Even the Lamb’s voice was different. It sounded like a soft, piping bleat usually, like music to one’s ears. This tone sounded more like a flat trumpet tone, blunt and short and a little out-of-tune.

Narinder snarled at them, ears pinned back against his skull, but the Lamb did not quail back in fright.

(Of course they wouldn’t. They were a god now, and he was supposed to be a meek little follower.)

He lunged at them–

The Crown (he would rend the thing to shreds for the betrayal) shot out and hit him in the chest, simultaneously knocking breath out of him (he didn’t need to breathe) and keeping him at arms length from the Lamb, though that did not stop him from flailing his claws at it in an attempt to slash the Lamb across the face.

He was not succeeding.

He probably looked rather ridiculous in his lack of success.

“This will be your house,” the Lamb said nonchalantly, as if Narinder wasn’t currently trying to give them the world’s roughest and most violent tattoo, gesturing around them.

There was no kitchen (though, now that the former god gave it actual thought, none of the houses had kitchens), no bathroom (none of the houses had bathrooms either). There was enough room in the… room, for a dining table and its accompanying stool, a bed, and a small bookshelf. The floors were reinforced with wood, and the walls were painted a dull red.

(Narinder dully noticed that there were some black curtains, as opposed to the white ones most of the other shelters had.)

“It’s a little further away from everyone. Private. I figured you wouldn’t want to live right there among everybody. We have a few snorers,” the Lamb finished, like the world’s worst real estate agent.

At least real-estate agents usually gave you options.

And didn’t fight you endlessly, on repeat, in a fight to the death.

“Lamb–”

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” the lamb replied, though a tiny bit of humor crept into its voice, and even that was snarkier than he remembered.

He growled at it, and the Lamb put a hand up to stop him.

– a hand up, to placate him about their question about–

“We’re both really tired from that big tiff we had–”

Narinder tried not to swell in rage at the oversimplification of the long, bloody, death-filled battle between him and the traitor referred to as a big tiff.

“… so just– get some rest.”

The large cat– for he was still remarkably tall, at least twice as tall as they– stalked towards them, lips peeling back to reveal razor-sharp teeth.

He might have no longer been a god; but a slinking, black shadow of a cat, ears pinned back, snarling and towering over the Lamb was still slightly intimidating, at the very least.

“And, pray tell, what stops me from slaughtering every single member of your flock in their sleep?” Narinder snarled at them, his voice verging on the deeper sounds his voice had once been able to produce.

The Lamb scratched their face, wholly un-intimidated.

“I can lock the door from the outside,” they responded simply, seemingly not all that put out at the idea. “And not with a key. I can literally just keep the door shut with magic. I will if I have to.”

He glowered at them, but decided not pursue that threat further.

As much as it was tempting to make them keep his door locked with magic and exhaust the traitor, he was tired; and he did suspect that flailing wildly at the Lamb wasn’t actually making himself very frightening, but more just making him look like a fool.

The Lamb looked at him for a moment, then nodded curtly.

Their expression, devoid of any sort of humor or even anger, was a little off-putting, despite Narinder’s best attempt to remain indifferent.

“Okay. I’m going to go assure the cult that you’re not going to murder them in their sleep–”

“I would–”

“– that you physically can’t murder them in their sleep,” the lamb corrected, “and you… I don’t know. Sleep. Go to the bathroom. Whatever you want that doesn’t involve the bloody violent death of the people.”

“I don’t sleep,” Narinder snarled back, his eyes narrowed into little slits.

And I don’t take orders from you, he also thought, but he didn’t voice it. The Lamb was a god now, and Gods had a tendency of magically forcing its followers into compliance.

They shrugged, their little cape fluttering with the motion. “Then don’t sleep. It’s up to you.”

The Lamb began to leave the hut, then paused. “Oh. One last thing.”

“What?”

If the Lamb was annoyed at Narinder’s less-than-pleasant growl, they didn’t show it as they gestured at the floor.

“The floorboard to the left of the door as you exit squeaks.”

As if to demonstrate, the Lamb pressed its foot to the floorboard, indeed producing a very loud creak. “If you want, I can ask a carpenter to fix it for you.”

A moment of thought, as if the lamb actually thought through their remark.

“Actually, never mind that. You’d probably throw poor Fikomar out the window.”

“Don’t return, Lamb.”

“See you later, Narinder.”

The Lamb departed, the red fleece fluttering a little in the spring breeze. The Crown almost jauntily floated off of the Lamb’s head and pulled the door shut behind it neatly.

Narinder glowered at the door. A (how long had it been?) while ago, just that look would’ve sent the door bursting into flames, but now it merely sat there, as if mocking him.

He pulled the curtains shut, miring himself in darkness.

The sunlight was wholly insulting, and the smell of flowers even more so. The chirping of birds was practically mocking him. It felt like the whole world was laughing at his defeat, at the hands of a small, traitorous lamb, originally intended for slaughter to prevent this very fate.

Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing.

There were voices outside, followers clamoring (if Narinder really focused, and he didn’t, because he didn’t give a damn; he could hear them asking if their leader was alright), and the lamb’s typical, cheerful bleat came back in reply.

Shamura called you Narinder.

Narinder growled and flung himself onto the bed.

It wasn’t quite long enough for him (probably meant for much shorter followers, as the majority he saw were around the lamb’s height if not shorter), so he drew his legs up against his chest and ferociously burrowed under the blankets, yanking the pillow over his head and jamming it against his ears. He didn’t want to hear birds chirping or the grass in the wind, and he certainly didn’t want to hear the lamb’s bleats.

He dreams–

gods don’t sleep–

– of dappled sunlight through trees, and camellias weaved into a crown–

Five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes nothing.

– of a happily croaking toad, and thousands of mushrooms–

He was the fifth.

– of fish, swimming with beautiful blue light filtering over them, crystals shining–

He waits by the rocks of the darkened sea.

– of softness, of spiders, of silk–

I loved him.

– of a lamb, with glowing red eyes.

A Crown cannot sit upon two brows.

Gods don’t sleep.

So when Narinder’s three (two, it was only two eyes now) eyes shot open, and he’d gotten tangled in the sheets, and he was definitely not sitting there in a cold sweat; and the light filtering through the window was definitively not bright gold, but rather silvery and dim, he had not been sleeping.

Just… resting his eyes.

For eight hours.

Totally not sleeping.

He sat up, tossing the blankets off of him into a heap on the floor.

It didn’t really matter; if this was his house, he could do what he wanted.

His limbs and spine creaked irritatingly as he stood up, until he gave a reluctant arch of the back and felt several joints pop.

Being mortal was disgusting. At least as a god, you didn’t need to stretch.

He flung the curtains open. The sound was harsh in the nighttime, the little rings keeping the curtain on the rod making a chaotic series of clicks and clacks. He nearly tore the curtains off the hooks, except then there would be nothing blocking out the light and the noises.

It was very quiet out, free of the sounds of cooking and footsteps and anything except the occasional frog croak.

There were plenty of lights, but also plenty of dark spots in the cult. The lamb’s disorganization to the buildings carried over to most of the decorations. The lanterns that lit up the vast majority of the houses were cluttered and mistmatching, casting the whole place in a faint but warm glow. A few were made of wood, a few of gold with crystals from Anchordeep decorating them.

There were lanterns near the toilets (which made sense; nobody wanted to trip and fall in poop when stumbling sleepily to the bathroom), and in the distance, if Narinder squinted, he could see lanterns by the crypts.

He was scanning the grounds when his eyes landed on a shadowy figure, standing in the middle of the empty field near his house.

(Wasted space. They could have at least erected some kind of statue there.)

After a moment of his fur standing on end (he wasn’t afraid, that was stupid, gods weren’t afraid, he wasn’t a god anymore), he realized it was the Lamb.

For once, the lamb was not puttering about doing chores, or playing Knucklebones, or… doing anything, really.

It just… was standing there.

Its back faced Narinder’s window, so he couldn’t make out its expression, but the Crown seemed bored (could the Crown feel things??) as it shuffled about on the lamb’s head periodically.

“What are you doing?” he found himself demanding flatly.

The lamb jumped– literally, nearly a whole foot off the ground, turning to face Narinder, and he was too far away to see, but for a moment their eyes were dead and empty and red–

Then they were hurrying over, up the small hill, and the whites of their eyes were… well, white.

“Good morning, Narinder. Well, actually, not yet. We have about an hour before the sun rises.”

There it was again; the flat tone, the blank expression. They would’ve looked bored, except their eyes were just a tad too wide for that.

“What were you doing?” he demanded.

“Nothing.”

This didn’t actually seem like an evasive or coy comment, or one intended to tease him. From what Narinder had saw, the lamb had literally been doing nothing.

On instinct, he tried to read its mind (though this, in itself, had never worked on the vessels, and it certainly didn’t work now), and his ears pinned back in displeasure when he couldn’t.

“You should eat,” the lamb said, almost matter-of-factly. “Did you not see the meal I left outside?”

“What?” Narinder asked, because there wasn’t something else better to ask.

The lamb disappeared from his sight for a moment, circling around to the part of the house that he couldn’t see from the window, and reappeared holding a bowl practically filled to the brim with fish.

“I went fishing earlier and I caught a blowfish– been ages since I caught one of those– and it turned out I had enough of the other ingredients, so I made you… basically a big bowl of fish. You always tolerated me giving you, like, seven thousand fish in the offering chest,” the lamb said, holding the bowl up.

Narinder smacked the bowl as hard as he could, backhanding it so hard that the back of his paw stung viciously, even several minutes afterwards.

The Crown darted off of the Lamb’s head and caught the bowl, and then caught the fish that had been in the bowl.

Damn thing.

“Guess you’re not really hungry,” the Lamb responded, looking wholly unbothered about the fact that Narinder had backhanded something they’d personally cooked in an attempt to throw it all over the floor. The Crown carried the bowl inside and set it on his table. “I’ll leave it inside, at least.”

He glowered at the traitorous Lamb, and the equally traitorous Crown, which was now tugging his discarded blanket off the floor and back onto the bed.

“Are you going to sleep?” The Lamb didn’t seem perturbed by all of the glaring he was doing.

“I don’t sleep.”

Narinder willfully ignored the way the Crown was making the bed for him.

The lamb shrugged at that, not willing to push much further. “Okay.”

… well. That was odd. He knew the lamb had the ability to order him to sleep, if it so wished, but it was just evenly gazing up at him.

“What would you like to do?”

“What?” Narinder replied, yet again. The damn Lamb had a habit of catching him off guard.

It always had.

The lamb gestured at the cult grounds with an expansive kind of wave. “Is there something you’d like to do?” they repeated.

Narinder stared.

“A job,” the Lamb finally cleared up what the hell they meant. “I appointed Meran to be a priest today; she’s always been the best with keeping faith up amongst the others. Anyay could use an extra hand on one of the farming stations, their knees are getting bad. They’re getting kind of old, but they insist they’re still kicking. Fikomar is a carpenter; he helps out with all the buildings’ maintenance around here and with extra building– the refined wood never rots, but sometimes the logs do. Tyan–”

He gave a half-derisive, half bewildered laugh. “You are a fool if you think I’ll do chores for your pathetic cult, whelp.”

The Lamb whistled; a long, slow wolf-whistle. “Ohh, that’s a new one for the insult book. Just short of swearing at me.”

Narinder snarled at them. True to form (well, this more deadpan form, at least. He still wasn’t that used to it), the lamb did not flinch or even look upset at his reply.

“That’s fine. About the chores, I mean. Get some sleep.”

“I don’t sleep,” and Narinder could have pointed out this must have been the fifth time he was saying that today, but he didn’t.

The Lamb folded its hands politely behind its back. “Yarlennor passed by earlier today, and she said you were making very adorable snoring sounds through the door.”

The Crown bounced on the Lamb’s head for a moment. It looked a little like it was laughing at him.

Narinder glared at them both. (Since when could the Crown laugh?) “I’ll rip her to shreds limb from limb for that blasphemy.”

“She’s three.”

“… put her in the pillory, then. She lies.”

The Lamb grinned at that.

The expression was familiar, much more so than the nonchalant blank stare the Lamb had been fixing him with for the whole conversation. Narinder almost found himself relaxing–

Wait. No. Traitor. He wasn’t about to let his guard down.

He jerked his curtains shut again, blocking his vision of the moon illuminating their wool in silvery light. “You are disturbing my rest. Leave.”

“Sure. Good night, Narinder.”

“Don’t ever speak that name again.”

“Okay, Narinder.”

… he was pretty sure the Lamb had said that last one just to get on his nerves.

He debated knocking down the door of his house and attacking them again, but the former god was fairly certain the Crown would just prevent his assault. He’d already made enough of a fool of himself today.

Two weeks passed.

It was… kind of fine.

Okay, maybe not fine. None of this was exactly fine. But Narinder had literally gained the name ‘The One Who Waits’. He had waited hundreds of years.

He wondered if mortality had disrupted his sense of time, because he could have sworn these two weeks somehow felt longer than hundreds of years, despite that literally not being possible.

He’d sleep, most of the time. The bed was remarkably comfortable, so it was easy to drift off in the evenings.

Shamura, bundling them all in silk for bedtime.

However, despite his best efforts, he was often woken up in the mornings by the sound of singing birds.

It didn’t help that he’d accidentally clawed holes in the pillow so that all the stuffing fell out and didn’t really block out the sound anymore.

The Lamb (or some poor follower, when the Lamb was out playing Knucklebones or fishing) left meals at his door.

If it was the lamb, it was always two firm knocks and a jingle and a muffled “food” through the door, and they would never be there when he opened the door; and if it was the followers it was a frantic hammering on his door and then rapid footsteps as the followers ran at full speed away from the hut.

Occasionally, it was followed by the sound of someone tripping and basically rolling down the whole hill.

It was good to know he still inspired some fear.

Most of the time, the meals were fish or meat. There was the occasional beet or cauliflower mixed in, upon which a note would be attached: Sorry, it was the beet (or various other vegetable that was in the meal) or a meal that might make you throw up.

Narinder always took the time to shred the entire note into teeny little shreds that he’d throw out the window, though once or twice the wind would just blow all of the bits back inside.

As a god, and especially as the god of Death, any food Narinder had touched had always rotted the moment he touched it. It was, oddly, different with offerings from the vessels, they lasted long enough that he could accept them and ‘consume’ them; but when he’d been in the mortal realm, he never received food offerings. He bore little ill will about that; as much as it could hurt to see his siblings shrines piled with food, it hurt more to be unable to eat anything offered to him.

It was, therefore, a unique experience to be able to eat now.

(Fish tasted as good as it smelled, as reluctant as he was to admit that.)

At least the food was decent. Eating and sleeping weren’t exactly riveting ways to pass time, though.

He’d occasionally knock the bowls he ate out of from the table onto the floor, but that got incredibly boring incredibly quickly, and you could only do that so many times before the wood cracked.

Still, it was something to do.

‘Something to do’ got so boring so quickly and gah.

How had he tolerated being chained for so long? He had to be better at coping with hundreds of years of patiently waiting. What had he used to do?

Well… he’d been angry. Very angry.

Yes, that certainly helped. He was angry still, at the Lamb, for its betrayal.

(Angry at the Crown, too.)

But, somehow, that didn’t really feel like enough. He had been angry then, certainly, and he was still angry now, but it didn’t change all that much about feeling bored and knocking bowls onto the floor.

He was still trapped.

What made it different now, then?

… he’d been plotting, he supposed. Plotting and scheming on how to free himself for so long.

And he’d had the vessels to watch, though none captured his interest like the foolish lamb. He’d only spared Ratau because it was annoying to retrain his vessel every time it died. He hadn’t expected the lamb to be so entertaining–

No. It was a traitor. And besides, its routine was dreadfully boring.

It always went counterclockwise, from the stairs that led to the Bishops’ old Temples, and the circle the lamb used to travel elsewhere.

They’d clean the outhouses, across the way from the lone hut on the hill (because of course the outhouses were just across the way from his hut. At least it made it easy to sneak there without anyone noticing him), then walk through the graveyard.

It grew ever-larger, and a whole area had been marked out already, with some pre-dug holes– some elders were probably near death. The Lamb always prepared the graves ahead of time. The entire field had sprouted flowers, creating a soft, airy environment that softened any grief that the followers may have felt, at least a bit.

The graveyard was lit at night too, with the finest crystal lamps, casting beautiful colored light over everything. And during the day, the sun would reflect through the crystals. The lamb spent at least half an hour there every day, simply standing in the field, watching rainbows dance on the headstones.

Then the lamb would check on the crypts, before moving onto the farms. From here, they’d replenish the seed and fertilizer bins, refill the composter, and gather up all the vegetables and mushrooms and berries, before circling back to the kitchen and dumping the supplies there for meals, though more and more often, the followers were doing it themselves–

He abruptly realized that the entire routine was practically permanently etched into his brain. Well. sh*t.

He flopped onto the bed again, pulling the shredded pillowcase over his ears and resolving to purge it from his memory somehow.

The One Who Waits watched his vessel gamble.

The Lamb gave a playful groan when they lost to Shrumy again, though clearly, they didn’t really mind. They always gambled fifty coins, and inevitably would lose all of them by making the worst moves. It was obvious they had trouble judging what the best move was, sometimes.

Shrumy gave a little huff, obviously pleased with the outcome. “Hmpf. Again?”

The Lamb eagerly started the new round, the Crown watching the Lamb make its moves.

This round did last a lot longer, with the Lamb actually playing slightly better than before, but of course, it inevitably lost again, and there went another fifty coins.

The One Who Waits watched, and debated cutting the lamb off from gold coins until it could understand when to quit gambling.

… but then it would stop donating fish.

“How are the crusades going?” Flinky asked, leaning forward a little bit.

The Lamb beamed, as if about to divulge a particularly good secret. “I got through Anura for the first time today.”

Ah, so this was earlier on, when the lamb (for some idiotic reason) refused to use fervor or heavy attacks.

Wait.

Earlier on?

He remembered watching in total befuddlement as they’d struggle to get all of the enemies around them with the sword’s limited slashes. Did they not realize how far the tentacles could erupt? You could obliterate a further enemy without even moving.

(Thankfully, they picked it up.)

He remembered? Something about this felt odd.

Had Shrumy been there, when the Lamb had been in Anura?

Had Klunko and Bop?

Ratau watched as the Lamb resumed yet another new round. “That’s it. You’re a natural at this game.”

They were? They’d lost hundreds of times, and increasingly large amounts of money.

Hadn’t they?

… the room was empty. Hadn’t there been more people in there before?

The Lamb tossed the dice.

They clattered on the table.

Nothing.

The cozy fire that filled Ratau’s shack had gone out, leaving the space feeling icy and barren. The room was empty, devoid of life, except for the Lamb, staring blankly into space. Even that familiar little smile was gone.

… no. This was wrong.

The Lamb turned to look at him, even though there was no way it could know he was watching.

Red.

Narinder totally didn’t shoot out of bed so fast that he slammed his head into the ceiling.

What a ridiculous suggestion. That would imply he’d been asleep first.

Rubbing his head, he glanced at the window; the light was silvery again. Though, whatever time of night it was, he had no idea…

Nightmares. Many of his vessels had nightmares; he was familiar with them.

– prophecies did not simply come to the mind, Shamura scolded a careless statement, dreams and nightmares and prophecies all intertwined–

Though, more often than not, he’d hear his vessels babbling tearfully to a loved one about being chased or killed or falling endlessly from the sky.

If anything, nothing of note had even happened in this dream. So, it couldn’t be a nightmare.

He growled and threw the blankets off, almost tripping in them as he stalked to the door and flung it open.

The night air was remarkably cool on his fur, almost refreshing. It smelled crisp, sharp, better than the air that had gotten quite stuffy in the hut, especially since he refused to keep the windows open.

His shoulders relaxed, surprisingly quickly.

He’d missed the nighttime, more than he really expected to. After all, he could always just see the stars and the moon through his vessels. But nighttime really was meant to be accompanied by cool air that smelled crisp, new, like the entire world was resetting.

Narinder growled at himself. He was getting soft.

He was about to go back inside when he saw the Lamb.

Again, they stood, back to him (and… really any other of the other followers, that may have been able to spot them if they groggily made their way to the bathrooms), perfectly still. The Crown was the only thing moving on their head.

He approached them, paws making barely a whisper in the grass. In fact, in the gentle breeze, there was… pretty much no sound. At all.

He may have gotten close enough to look at their face if the Crown hadn’t turned to look elsewhere and happened to catch sight of Narinder in its peripheral.

It promptly bounced off of the Lamb’s head in surprise, and the Lamb startled around, expression shifting slightly– Narinder couldn’t catch it.

Damn it. He would have to be more creative next time.

“Fine,” he said, roughly, cutting back into a conversation that was two weeks old.

The Lamb blinked up at him, the surprise in their face settling into blankness. It was strange, how much that little doofy smile not being present made the Lamb simply feel like a stranger. It was also strange, how they would almost cease emoting.

“Fine what?”

“The job. The chore. Whatever you want to call it,” Narinder growled. “Give me one.”

“Were you that bored? I thought cats liked to sleep,” the Lamb replied, a ghost of the familiarity tugging at their lips.

Narinder snarled, hackles raising.

The Lamb let the amusem*nt dissipate from its expression, leaving them looking blank again. “Alright. What do you like to do?”

Narinder stared at the lamb.

The lamb stared back.

“This isn’t very helpful,” they said at length.

“I was chained for hundreds of years in what amounted to a white void. I don’t have hobbies, charlatan.”

“Fancy one, this time. Three-syllable insult.”

The lamb looked around the cult grounds, as if requiring a refresher on everything. “Hmm. Somehow, I can’t really see you farming.”

The large cat’s face scrunched. Picking and planting and fertilizing crops while baking under the hot sun? “No.”

“Thought not. Hmmmm. Well, I could put you at the refinery, but seems Janor has taken a knack to it, even though it takes forever… and she’s really annoying about it, too. She always accuses anyone else who approaches that they’re stealing her job. What about masonry? We can always use extra stone.”

“I’m not a mole,” the former god muttered.

He was acutely aware that despite his former Godhood, the Lamb now possessed all of that power.

For some reason, they hadn’t punished him at all for his attitude, even when he’d once returned one of the food bowls covered in deep gouges by hurling it full-force down the hill into a small group of followers that had shrieked and scattered.

Fool.

“Yeah. I can’t really see you hammering away with a pickaxe either. Doesn’t suit you.” The Lamb stepped slightly back, not in fear, but to get a better look at him, overall.

“Carpentry?”

“No.”

“Priest?”

“No.”

“Janitor?”

“Absolutely not.”

The Lamb scrunched its face slightly, but a small smile tugged at its lips. “You know, this isn’t going to go anywhere if you say no to everything I suggest.”

He just scowled back at them.

Narinder was not going to admit that the tiny smile was a comforting expression. Why would he? The lamb was a heretic.

“How about cooking? We always need more food.”

“… I am not an adequate chef.”

Obviously, the issue of the food all rotting the second he touched it was a big part of that, but as a god, he’d never actually had the need to make his own meals– he didn’t know a thing about cooking.

“That’s alright, we have all the recipes written down,” the Lamb replied, face already back to a blank slate. “Besides, you don’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting or moving.”

“I’m not a weakling, Lamb,” Narinder growled.

“Yeah, but still, I can’t really see you farming or anything like that. Besides, the kitchen has a little roof over it, so you’ll be able to stay out of the sun.” The Lamb mimed a little roof with its hands.

The Crown, apparently in the habit of mocking its former master, rose and made a little cover over the lamb.

Narinder had to breathe very hard through his nose to resist the urge to slap the Crown out of the air.

“Fine. That’s fine.”

“Oh, good! I have a spare chef-hat somewhere.”

The Lamb gently plucked the Crown out of the air, practically cradling it like a baby, and reached into its immense storage space, rummaging around.

“I don’t need a hat,” the large cat growled as the Crown closed its eye, apparently quite pleased with the feeling of being rummaged around in.

“Sure you do.”

“Lamb–”

The Lamb released the Crown with the hand they were holding it with and held up their palm in their placating gesture– the one they’d used when asking about Shamura, a sort of I know, just wait a second.

He hated that he swallowed the rest of his raging words and merely glowered at the lamb.

“It’s not to embarrass you. I’ve been trying to, like, make you not sound like you’ll explode and kill everyone, but I think the followers still would assume you’re just trying to poison everybody.”

The Lamb did look slightly apologetic. “I don’t think the fact that you tried to attack a child helped all that much. But, back on topic, the hat is usually just to indicate that it’s your job, so this means I’ve approved you to do it, and that… will hopefully get people not to harass you. Or assault you.”

Narinder glared at them, eyes narrowed into slits. His tail twitched. “I don’t want to wear that.”

“Sorry. Please put up with it,” the Lamb replied, totally unperturbed with his anger and pulling out a nice chef’s hat.

They hopped up, floating into the air, and placed the hat delicately on his head while hovering in the air.

He growled softly, hoping to intimidate them, but he may as well have just growled at a wall.

The wall probably would’ve been more intimidated, actually.

The Crown did a little jaunty motion in the air, like it was dancing, when the hat didn’t immediately fall off of Narinder’s head.

The hat did fit perfectly, at least. It would’ve been far more humiliating to have the thing flop over onto his face.

“That’s not bad, actually. It does seem like it sits on your head perfectly, so that’s good. Some of our followers have slightly weird-shaped heads. Which is great! I don’t think any of them look bad or anything,” the lamb commented, stepping back to admire their handiwork, “but it does mean I do have to hand-stitch some hats for them. Your head’s not weird, but I don’t exactly have a way of getting measurements for you, so I was kind of hoping this would work.”

“… I thought you said this was a spare.”

The Lamb looked at their palm. The Crown helpfully formed a little hourglass for them, conveniently out of sand. “Oh, look at the time. Get some rest, Narinder.”

“Wretched beast–”

“I kind of preferred whelp. It was funnier.” The lamb turned away and began to take a brisk walk away from Narinder. “Good night, Narinder.”

The cat glowered after them.

He was not looking forward to tomorrow.

Chapter 3: Curiosity

Chapter Text

Narinder hated this already, and he hadn’t even started.

The sun was barely over the horizon, washing the world in a slowly brightening orange-y glow. It didn’t make the kitchen, made of brick and stone and what felt like a giant glaring beacon of Narinder’s inability to prepare food, any less daunting.

Nor did the rising sun improve Narinder’s mood, as he found himself squinting more and more as it got steadily brighter.

Tyan, the chef that the Lamb had told him would be his ‘boss’, was an amiable monkey with bright blue fur.

He could see why they’d added a roof to the kitchen as soon as he grumpily showed up with his hat in hands and she’d come swinging– literally– in front of him, her tail keeping her tiny body suspended in the air.

(He’d flinched back despite himself as she’d caught herself on the last ceiling support, expecting her to crash into him; but she expertly swung just in front of his face.)

(Any closer, and Narinder would probably have had an impromptu kiss with a blue monkey, which would just added to the humiliation of the dumb hat.)

Speaking of hats, Tyan’s chef’s hat barely stayed on her head as she swung, but she caught it as it tipped with the abrupt halting of her momentum and swept it in a dramatic flourish, like this happened every day.

It probably did.

“Hey, it’s the Hermit! Hi Hermit! Nice to meetcha.” She grabbed his paw in an exuberant shake.

Narinder hissed, ears pinning back; despite how small she was, her grip was remarkably firm, and it took him a good yank to pull his paw back to himself.

Tyan’s smile flickered for a half-second, before she brightened even more, somehow. “I see Leader put you on kitchen duty! Well, that’s great. I can always use an extra hand. Lots of mouths to feed, after all. Let’s see what Leader put on the list today…”

Tyan swung over to a clipboard and peeked through it. “Mm, lots of vegetable feasts again. Ooh, but five modest mixed meals– suppose we ran out of tuna again, no wonder they’re out and about already. I definitely know we don’t have enough meat for the other ones they could make– annnnnd one fish feast, for Mr. Hermit here.”

Narinder looked at the clipboard.

Yep. One singular fish dish, simply labeled “set aside”.

He growled. The Lamb insisted on mocking him at every opportunity, especially to their followers, it seemed. He didn’t need special treatment.

(Though, secretly, he was begrudgingly relieved to have the fish. Meat was fine but just didn’t have the same flavor. And beetroot and cauliflower outright did nothing for him.)

Tyan put her hands up in a joking motion. “Whoa! Grumpy Hermit! I guess that makes sense why you’re a hermit though, now that I think about it. Don’t hit your head comin’ in.”

She swung back over to the oven, giving Narinder space to slip through the doorway of the kitchen.

He did, careful to lower his head slightly. As much as he was slightly tempted to hit his head on the roof out of spite, he suspected the spot would bruise, and that was far more inconvenient than anything else.

“Hmmm.” Tyan was swinging around him now, taking a good look.

He followed her with his eyes; she was moving about the space far too rapidly for him to try to physically turn to keep up with. There was an ease and familiarity in her movements, as if the kitchen space was like a second home and she was the master– which, in a sense, Narinder was pretty sure was true.

“Big scar on your forehead. Shows through your fur.”

If only you knew what that was, Narinder thought bitterly.

“Alright, Mr. Grump! I’m putting you onnnn serving duty today,” the monkey said, puffing her chest up.

“What,” he growled.

“Actually, that’s not my idea,” Tyan said, though she did wince a little at the guttural, harsh tone of his voice. “Leader mentioned it to me while I was getting set up earlier. Said you didn’t really know how to cook, so I’ll train ya on everything else after the food for today’s done.”

Narinder scowled; again with the humiliation. He didn’t need to be babied. He’d been a God.

Granted, a God that had no idea how to cook.

(Heket probably would’ve known. She may have been the god of famine, and younger than Narinder besides that, but she knew how to hold a good feast– probably what came with the territory of famine.)

Temperamental Heket, with her throat cut neat.

(He pushed that thought aside.)

“I can handle it.” He was sure it couldn’t be that bad…

“No sirree, no can do! We got a tight schedule since we gotta get these done before lunch, else the infants start to squeal. No time for blunders!” Tyan was now dangling upside down, carefully washing her hands in a sink to his left.

She seemed totally unconcerned about the fact that she had to use her feet to keep her hat on her head. The monkey was quite flexible.

“… infants?”

That’s right. He’d seen children around. He hadn’t really thought about it.

“Only two. The rest are toddlers now, but Julkay just had twins. She’s on maternity leave,” Tyan nodded.

“… when did babies start being born here?”

It was a question he’d neglected to consider, until the question of children was suddenly brought up. Usually, all of the followers he’d seen with his third eye were adults, fully grown and capable of working. Tyan had been one of these (and one he’d dismissed initially).

But there were children now. He remembered trying to attack one, when he’d been first brought here.

One of the very few times he stopped watching the Lamb briefly, and apparently a major development in the cult that he was somehow unaware of transpired.

“Good question! It would be around half a year ago, probably. Some lovebirds were caught behind the Temple, uh, birds-and-the-bees-ing–”

Okay, Narinder really did not need to have that mental image in his head. Maybe it was better that he hadn’t been watching, that time.

“– and instead of punishing ‘em, Leader held a sermon. Actually, it was more of a lecture, I think, about how it’s better to be safe with that kind of stuff, and how they’d elevate some people into healers, for anyone who wanted kids, and lo and behold, the kids start poppin’ up like daisies.”

“I didn’t need to know all of that. Or want to.”

“Ya asked, Hermit.” Tyan looked around at him, already drying her nimble hands on a towel. “Wash your hands, we gotta get started soon. People are gonna start getting in line.”

Narinder debated simply not washing his hands out of protest, but Tyan’s gaze was surprisingly sharp, and she also was currently conveniently placed next to an entire rack of knives, and he was no longer a god that could tolerate being poked with the sharp end of a knife.

So he reluctantly began to wash his hands in the sink as Tyan hurried to begin prepping meals.

“Say, you got a name, Hermit?”

“No.”

Not one that he would permit other mortals to use, at least. He had no choice with the Lamb, they did as they pleased now that they were a God; but he could at least keep the name out of the other follower’s mouths.

They called him Narinder.

“Spooky. Real mysterious.” She wiggled her fingers cheerfully at him from where she was already chopping vegetables.

It was remarkable how none of them went flying, considering she wasn’t using her free hand to keep them steady.

“I’m just gonna keep calling you Hermit then. Most of the people will for now, Leader won’t tell us your name.”

He paused at that, water and soap streaming through his suddenly-stopped fingers.

The Lamb hadn’t told the followers his name?

But they always did so. Right after indoctrination, they’d turn to the cult and announce the new follower’s name, loud enough that any waiting crowd would be able to hear, before heading off to their next task briskly.

He hadn’t had the same treatment, due to immediately being hauled off for nearly slashing people’s flesh open, but he would’ve expected, once they decided to use his name, that the Lamb would tell the followers about it.

“… what?”

“I mean, not for lack of tryin’, or anything. Lenny pestered Leader about it for ages. But all they said was that you asked to keep it private. Figured I’d ask ya anyhoo.”

Narinder didn’t really know how to process that, so he just finished washing his hands and dried it on the towel.

Two minutes later, there was a line of followers, ready for food.

The flock had grown, from one measly follower back when the Lamb had begun and relied on Ratau’s guidance, to at least fifty.

“Why not an even larger fold?” he’d asked the Lamb, once, curious when they had to gather more followers simply to enter Silk Cradle– they just didn’t have enough.

The Lamb’s lip had twisted slightly, before they responded in the form of a brief shrug.

They had, however, had more followers the next time they died.

That had certainly backfired on the former God, now that he was wearing a ridiculous hat and serving food to dozens of them in a row.

Narinder vowed to never make suggestions to the Lamb again.

“Vegetable feast,” Tyan called, passing it down the counter to him.

She actually kind of slung it along the counter at a decent speed, which meant Narinder actually had to catch the meals and avoid them sliding off the long counter.

(He’d missed the first one, letting it fall into the grass and gotten a brief scolding, though the follower had been so cowed by the resulting glare he gave that they’d just scooped it up back into the bowl and ran away with it.)

(He did notice, two or three people later, that the follower was sprinting to the outhouses. Mud was not a good garnish.)

Narinder shoved the bowl at the gawping follower, glowering as they openly stared at him.

They took it hastily, almost fumbling the bowl, and hurried away, glancing at Narinder over their shoulder.

Good. He could still inspire a little fear.

The Lamb, then, was an exception.

You don’t scare Gods, after all.

Narinder ignored the little voice in his head that pointed out the Lamb had never really seemed afraid of him, not even when their face was covered in blood and their skull had been split with an axe and they were meekly approaching him.

While the adult followers quickly learned not to gape at him, just from watching those in line ahead of them, the children were not so quick to pick up on the social cue. Most would gape at him, eyes as round as the bowls they were being handed, and have to be hurriedly ushered away as he glowered down upon the children; many of them would still twist to watch him until they rounded a corner and he was presumably out of their sight.

After all, the last any of them had seen of him was a tall, raging cat, attacking wildly and indiscriminately, and then being bundled off into a house at the edge of the cult; where he then proceeded to not emerge for several weeks.

He supposed, if he were mortal (he was) he could see the novelty, but still.

He wondered if the Crown would allow him to get in one attack on the Lamb, for this humiliating role.

Probably not.

One little capybara, with pale green fur and a funny little mustache, stared up at him solemnly, even as he held the bowl of vegetables out to them.

A little capybara, with a snotty nose, crying in fear as he lunged.

“You got a big thing on your head,” the child said plaintively.

“It’s a scar, Yarlennor dear,” the child’s mother hushed them, eyes darting between the glowering large cat wearing a chef’s hat and her child, “now take the bowl–”

Yarlennor. That name was familiar.

“Yarlennor passed by earlier today, and she said you were making very adorable snoring noises through the door.”

Ah. The three-year-old.

… wait. There was no way ‘adorable’ was part of a three-year-old’s vocabulary. He’d overlooked that comment from the Lamb.

He decided to continue overlooking it, as thinking more deeply on it would likely just bring up feelings that Narinder was not in the mood for.

“But why’s he got a scar,” Yarlennor insisted.

“It used to be an eye,” Narinder grunted out, despite himself– he didn’t even realize he was speaking until several nearby followers, eating their meals, all turned to gawp at him.

This was the first he’d spoken properly since any of them had seen him– previously, all he’d done was scream, and he’d been sullenly silent while serving meals, glowering at everyone in his presence.

Yarlennor looked up at him, pouting stubbornly and ignoring her mother. “No it wasn’t. That’d make you The One Who Waits, and he’s dead. Leader killed him.”

The sheer amount of irony did not escape Narinder at this.

His grip tightened slightly, but he forced himself not to shout. The last thing he wanted was the Lamb to scold him for making a child cry.

(He’d also prefer to just not hear the child cry in general; their bawls were often rather piercing.)

“It was an eye,” he gritted out. “Now take the food.”

Yarlennor stubbornly crossed her arms and pouted up at him. Her little mustache scrunched up. “Was not.”

“It was.”

“Was not.”

“It was.”

“Was not.”

Narinder, the former God of Death, the One Who Waits, realized that he was having an argument with a three-year-old capybara whose nose was starting to drip a bit.

His claws scraped the wooden bowl slightly, his grip tightening even further.

As if breaking from a trance, Yarlennor’s mother practically snatched the bowl from his grip (leaving harsh gouges from where his claws dug into the sides) and shoved it into her child’s hands, shooing them away and giving Narinder a wary look. “Yes, yes, Lenny, say thank you, let’s go.”

“But it’s not!”

“Thank you, Hermit,” the older capybara gritted out, and the two practically vanished into the crowd.

“Modest mixed meal, but check if they want it, or wanna wait for the next vegetable meal!” Tyan hollered from where she was still working.

Narinder glowered at the next follower in line, who took a little step back, as if to escape his ire.

He sincerely hoped the Crown would let him smack someone.

... probably not.

After what felt like hours of serving food, and Tyan giving him a rundown on how to prepare most of the dishes (it was thankfully fairly easy, just a lot of slicing and dicing things), he was leaving the kitchen.

He immediately winced; the sun was very bright. He’d noticed how bright it was from the windows he served the food through, watching the sunlight go from a dim orange to a searing, bright gold; but the roof on the kitchen had allowed him to feel more comfortable.

As it was, the second he stepped back outside, it felt like he went half-blind.

“Narinder!”

There it was– the Lamb’s usual, cheerful voice. They sounded strangely peppy.

Strangely? This was their usual voice.

Perhaps he’d gotten used to the deadpan stare he’d been fixed with, the two times he’d encountered them since his dethronement from godhood.

He glared at them, through a mostly-screwed-up face. “If I wasn’t being blinded by the sun right now,” he gritted out, “I’d be rending the flesh from your bones for daring to make me suffer through such humiliation.”

There was no way the Crown would permit that, but still.

“Aww, it can’t have been that bad,” the Lamb said easily, eyes bright and twinkling.

He glowered at them, trying to express that yes, it had been that bad.

If they got the hint, they didn’t verbalize so. In fact, their grin seemed to widen slightly.

“Oh!” The Lamb clasped its hands together, looking up at him in a pleading motion. Their tail even wagged. “I wanted to ask. We’re going to hold a ritual in a bit. Will you come?”

“No.”

The Lamb pouted at his immediate rebuttal, their ears flopping a bit. “C’mooon,” they said, voice turning into a little whine.

“No, Lamb,” he growled.

A few followers nearby straightened up and stared, almost affronted. Probably because he hadn’t simply called them ‘Leader’. And was currently rebuffing whatever weird offer they were making.

“Pleaaaase.” He could see a slightly impish glint in the Lamb’s eyes. It knew it was teasing him right now.

He was seriously debating attacking them. The only reason he didn’t was because he met eyes (eye? Singular?) with the Crown on their head, and it gave him a very serious squint that might as well have said you’d better f*ckin’ not mister.

“No.”

“It’s a funeral.”

That made Narinder pause.

The Lamb was looking up at him, face more serious than the pleading doe-eyes it had fixed him with only moments before. “My… spouse’s. The priests are holding this one, just to see if they can in my absence. I could use the company.”

You have a whole cult for company.

He didn’t say that.

“You’re… married,” was what he actually said.

How often did he miss things, when he took brief breaks from watching the Lamb? How brief were the breaks? When had they gotten married?? How had they gotten married? They were insufferable. Who would want to marry them?

“Was,” the lamb said, almost nonchalantly. “We’re holding a funeral for her. The vows are ‘until death do us part’, not ‘we will be married forever and ever even after you die and I don’t’, after all.”

They’d started walking together at some point.

The Lamb’s hand was holding his paw, without him realizing that they’d somehow latched on, and being steered to the empty field behind the confessional and the Temple. He nearly pulled away, but the Lamb’s grip tightened just enough that it was actually difficult to pull his arm out of their hand– when had their grip become so strong?

(Especially considering he had once watched the foolish thing trip, stumble over thin air, and impale themself on a spike.)

The field was always empty; very few followers ever actually went there. The chance that the two would be disturbed in this very unwilling talk Narinder was about to be subjected to was slim to none.

“… do you get married often?”

Why was this a question he was even asking?

The moment they were out of sight, the Lamb’s cheery facial expression dropped. It was a little remarkable, how they could flip from a cheerful little thing to totally blank. Their much flatter voice answered.

“No. Feyen was the first one in a long time. She died on a mission for extra meat.”

That must be the spouse’s name.

“… you didn’t seem to spend much time with… Feyen.” He certainly couldn’t recall seeing them spending much time with their supposed spouse.

Heck, he didn’t even think the Lamb had a spouse until now; that was how little they’d interacted with this Feyen.

The Lamb shrugged. “No. I didn’t.”

“… aren’t married couples supposed to spend time together?”

He was pretty sure, at least. Gods did not wed, usually, and very few in his realm had ever really ‘tied the knot’, so to speak. All he knew of marriage was the occasional remark from his siblings, who had to facilitate ceremonies like that. Despite being the God of Pestilence, Kallamar’s beautiful Temple had made it a popular choice for marriage ceremonies. Heket could stave off famine, long enough for her own marriage ceremonies.

Darkwood and Silk Cradle were less popular, but Shamura’s wisdom was welcome at ceremonies with jittery newlyweds. Leshy, at least, had some followers who insisted on being wed by their own God.

Nobody wanted Death to be the one to wed them.

Narinder never attended any of the ceremonies that his siblings hosted; he got the overwhelming feeling that he was not welcome at these events, made to celebrate union and life and joy; not when he embodied separation and sorrow and death.

“I warned Feyen before we got married,” the Lamb replied. It was like a switch had flipped in the Lamb, from joyful and bouncing and teasing to standing with their hands at their sides, looking up at him.

It was uncanny.

“… warned?” Interesting choice of words.

“I wouldn’t have time to be home and give her the time that other married couples give each other. I go on crusades, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. I never really get to know any of the followers, not well. I probably wouldn’t get to know her well either. I would outlive her by hundreds of years.”

Narinder suddenly realized the Lamb was still holding his hand.

He yanked it away hastily, glaring at the Lamb. He debated storming away, too, but he was too begrudgingly curious now to abandon the conversation outright.

Curiosity killed the cat.

How much did he really know this creature?

“… I suspect she gave a response along the lines of not caring about all of that,” and Narinder gave a vague flail of the paw to encompass everything the Lamb just said, “if you still ended up getting married after that.”

“Yes, a very passionate speech.” The Lamb seemed unperturbed by him jerking his hand away, simply shaking out their fingers from the force of him yanking away.

“So passionate that you ended up marrying her?”

“Yeah.” Despite that, the Lamb did not seem particularly moved.

Perhaps that was just their facial expression.

However, the way the Crown also looked particularly unmoved (the Crown could be moved? Emotionally?) seemed to indicate otherwise.

“… did you like her?” Narinder didn’t know why he was pursuing this route, other than pure curiosity.

“She liked me more than anything,” the Lamb responded, staring back at him. The unwavering eye contact was slightly off-putting, and Narinder found himself tilting his head to the side and half-avoiding their gaze.

Which annoyed him, because he wasn’t afraid of the Lamb… but he couldn’t deny that it was uncomfortable, to have their gaze meeting his so unwaveringly.

“… but she was nice,” the Lamb said, after a moment of consideration. “She had a good smile. And she was very nice to talk to, when I had the time to talk to her.”

The Lamb was quiet for a moment, brow furrowed, and for a moment Narinder thought they were finished speaking, until they followed up the comment, even softer than before.

“I felt bad that I couldn’t love her the way she wanted me to.”

The former god didn’t say anything for a moment, gazing down at the Lamb.

Thankfully, the Temple provided a little bit of shade, so he could at least see in front of him with this near-blinding sunlight, rather than having to blindly hope he was looking in the correct direction.

Despite the Lamb’s mostly blank expression, they did seem a little sorrowful at her death.

“So why marry her?”

The Lamb looked back at Narinder, shaken out of their reverie. “… she wanted it more than anything. I offered her everything else I could think to offer, but she insisted she wanted to marry me. Eventually, it just became too much of a hassle to say no.”

Narinder frowned at that. He wasn’t sure why.

The Crown shuffled a bit on the lamb’s woolly head.

“You don’t actually have to attend the funeral,” they said to him after a moment, the fields filled with the very distant sounds of axes hitting trees, and pickaxes clinking on stone, and farmers tilling the earth. “I’m holding a sermon first, so you may get bored. It’s alright if you would like to go home, I won’t force you to stay.”

Narinder resisted the urge to glance up to check the position of the sun in the sky.

He was pretty sure he would actually go blind. Had he always been so sensitive to light?

“Isn’t it past noon? Why are you holding a sermon past noon?”

“I forgot.”

He blinked at the blunt and extremely quick reply he received. “You… forgot?”

“I forgot,” the Lamb confirmed that he hadn’t misheard them. “I needed to go fishing for more tuna– you should know about this, Tyan must’ve mentioned it while going over the menu for today, but then I decided to go before the sun rose, so I missed the morning sermon time.”

What a moron.

“Good insult. I still think charlatan was funnier.”

“… did you read my mind?” He glared at the Lamb, slightly uncomfortable at the notion that the Lamb could so easily reach into his own mind, when he’d never been able to read theirs.

The Lamb shook their head simply. “No. I haven’t been able to read your mind this whole time. You just muttered it out loud.”

… that may have been more embarrassing, if the former God had felt any shame.

(Narinder ignored the way he could actually feel his cheeks burning, and simultaneously thanked whatever god was still out there (he was not acknowledging the Lamb as a God, nor his siblings) that it probably didn’t show through his fur. At the very least, he would fervently deny it if it did.)

(He also ignored the small rush of relief he felt, that the Lamb couldn’t just read his mind.)

“Oh.”

The Lamb wordlessly turned around, apparently ending the conversation. “I’ll hold the sermon. The ritual will be right after.”

Their bell made a little jingling sound as they departed.

They had the grace (or, perhaps, the will to listen and blackmail him later with the information) to not say anything when his footsteps rustled in the grass behind them, following them to the Temple.

It was a short funeral.

The Lamb had said that it was a test run for the priests, in order to keep those rituals going when the Lamb went on crusades for longer periods of time. Perhaps that was why the ceremony felt particularly brief.

Though he had noticed, when watching his vessel, the Lamb did not enjoy particularly long affairs, and even their sermon before the funeral was to the point and was over after approximately two minutes.

Meran, a butterfly who was remarkably tall (still not nearly as tall as Narinder), with gray wings that glittered translucent in the light filtering through the red stained glass window, said some kind words about Feyen (kind, hard-working, warm-hearted, platitudes that meant nothing to Narinder) before allowing people to lay flowers at her feet.

Feyen was a fennec fox (go figure), with tattoos on her face and soft auburn fur. Her face was almost happy in death, as if she was pleased to have died serving her leader, her god, her spouse.

A ridiculous notion.

He looked at the Lamb. They watched the proceedings silently, fiddling with the hem of their cloak absently. They were one of the few to lay a flower, though rather than laying them at her feet, they had gently lifted one of her hands and slipped a small, yellow flower into her hand. Their face, in the presence of their followers, was filled with sorrow.

He didn’t think they were secretly happy about Feyen’s death, or didn’t care about it, but he knew that the look would only be a faint shadow in their eyes later, when he inevitably found himself alone with the Lamb again.

They got him alone a fair deal. He would’ve worried that they were planning to murder him, if not for the fact that they’d already had around 200 chances and hadn’t taken any of them.

Then the cult was filtering outside, and he followed the Lamb (who gently accepted words of comfort and said “thank you” when condolences were given) back out to the field.

Nobody bothered to follow– why would they? There was nothing out there.

(He wasn’t sure why he was following them, either.)

He expected the Lamb to ask him what he thought of the ceremony, but instead they knelt and began to pick a tiny bouquet.

When Narinder looked a little closer, it was to see they were picking buttercups from the grass. They hadn’t laid a single one on her headstone.

“They were her favorite,” the Lamb said, plucking a tiny yellow blossom from the forest floor.

Narinder said nothing.

“I made her a crown of them once. She was ecstatic,” the Lamb said.

They did not cry– he had not expected them to– but their brow was furrowed, in thought.

“She thanked me for it dozens of times. She even wore it when it started rotting. I tried to convince her to take it off, but she wouldn’t. I ended up making her another one.”

They sat down, in warm grass, and began to weave the flower stems together.

Narinder said nothing. He made no gesture to join them, or to leave. He stood over them, watching the Lamb carefully thread the flowers together.

– camellias, weaved together into a little red crown, and gently placed on Narinder’s head by a furry, burrowing worm.

“You look delightful, Brother. Very handsome,” the worm teased, and Narinder had to try not to bonk his youngest sibling on the head with a fist, as his initial instinct demanded–

“I’ll put this on her headstone later tonight,” the Lamb said softly. “I think she’ll appreciate it.”

“You observe your followers’ passing from this world to the next as a ship to sea,” Narinder finally replied, willfully ignoring their remarks about Feyen and her preferences, and his own thoughts.

The Lamb nodded; their fingers weren’t nimble, but they still were cautiously threading the flowers together.

Not nimble, but careful. That… summed up a lot about the Lamb, honestly.

“I do.”

“Why not resurrect her?” he asked. He certainly had brought a follower or two of his back to life, once or twice.

It was why his siblings had imprisoned him, after all.

The Lamb made a soft snorting sound, though it was not derisive nor dismissive, but more a sound of thought. “I could, couldn’t I?”

– to invite the novel and the new, break ancient vow and primordial bond alike–

The Lamb shook their woolly head, the Crown briefly lifting off so it wouldn’t get shaken about, before settling down, red eye fixed on the Lamb’s slightly clumsy movements. “It feels wrong.”

“Because Death is inevitable,” Narinder responded, a bit heavier and harsher than he meant to speak the words.

“Because Death is inevitable,” Shamura scolded–

“Because death is beautiful.”

Narinder gave the Lamb a sidelong look at that. The Lamb, for once, did not blankly stare at him, their focus fully fixed upon the crown of buttercups in their hands.

“She’d just be trapped in a marriage where I can’t love her the way she wants,” the Lamb elaborated further a moment later, “if I brought her back. That would be very unfair of me, to disrupt that to soothe whatever guilt I feel.”

He stared at the Lamb for a moment.

“You are incredibly strange.”

“Thanks.” The Lamb, apparently not taking this as an insult, finished the crown and gently held it up to the actual Crown.

In the blink of a red eye, it disappeared into whatever infinite storage space the Crown possessed.

The Lamb, satisfied, turned and started walking towards the graveyard, presumably to Feyen’s grave.

After a moment, Narinder, not having anything better to do, once again turned and followed the lamb. The jingling of their bell, and the rustle and crunch of grass under the Lamb’s feet, eclipsed the soft steps the former god took.

Chapter 4: Listening

Chapter Text

Despite Narinder’s decision to follow the Lamb to the graveyard, rather than booking it back into his house the moment he could; it took either of them a very long time to speak again, let alone to each other.

The actions were far from awkward (well, they were very awkward for Narinder, but the Lamb was an oddball and never seemed uncomfortable, even when totally blank-faced.)

They laid the little ring of buttercups on the headstone; and gave the headstone a good pat, like one might pat the hand of a spouse.

In a way, that was what they were doing.

“Bye, Feyen,” the Lamb said quietly.

Their voice wasn’t tender, not exactly, but it was definitely a very intimate moment, the kind that someone else might glare at Narinder and hint that he should maybe leave.

Despite the anger and hatred in his heart for the damn Lamb, he couldn’t help but feel awkward, as if he was intruding on a deeply personal moment.

What a foolish creature.

The Lamb didn’t leave immediately after that.

Instead, they stood in a shady spot in the field, watching the steadily lengthening light shine through the crystal lamps and cast little rainbows over the headstones.

(It later occurred to Narinder that he could have left them there at any point.)

(The Crown, for once, made no gesture to stop him or glare, even when he shuffled and ended up accidentally stepping on and loudly breaking a twig.)

(He did not, and the Lamb did not question him.)

“I thought you… enjoy life,” Narinder spoke, finally, when the light was long and amber and the headstones made strange shapes across the ground.

The lamps had turned on, further warping the shadows. The flowers caught the light, just enough that they made strange little shapes and shadows in the grass.

(Narinder found himself looking at them, when the Lamb’s direct gaze became too uncomfortable for him.)

“I do,” the Lamb replied, finally turning to look at him.

Their lips twitched a moment later, a shadow of their usual grin crossing their face. “Well, assuming that this is meant to be a covert way of suggesting that you wish to kill me.”

Well, Narinder did; but killing what amounted to be a minor God, at the moment, was very difficult.

For one, Gods were almost totally immortal; even killing one had simply sent them to Purgatory, where Narinder could torment his siblings to his heart’s content.

(… actually, now he had to wonder, what had happened to them after he’d been defeated?)

One had to wonder how the Lamb had managed to kill all of the Bishops of the Old Faith. Himself technically included.

“Yet you seem… reverent, of death,” Narinder continued, ignoring their joke.

They had bowed to him.

The Crown seemed to stare at him at that.

Narinder tried not to make eye contact with it again. It was very awkward whenever it glared at him.

He didn’t think he was up for that particular bit of strangeness at the moment.

The Lamb scratched their head, the Crown shuffling sideways to permit the Lamb to do so and actually reach the spot they were scratching.

“I think that topic veers into ‘too philosophical for me to discuss while I’m tired’ territory,” they said simply, bringing that branch of conversation to a screeching halt before it could even properly begin.

It was the first time they’d outright ‘tabooed’ a conversation topic, temporarily or not (they’d said while they were tired, did that mean they’d entertain the subject if they weren’t?)– even the former god’s insults seemed to be something the Lamb found mildly amusing.

Narinder grasped for a different topic. It was getting awkward just standing and looking at each other.

(He could have left, then, when the silence stretched a little too long and he started to feel silly, with the Lamb gazing patiently up at him.)

(He did not.)

“… how do you enjoy godhood?”

Oh, Gods above (or below), he was turning into Kallamar.

Shamura, at least, would talk about things of consequence; and Heket and Leshy had their own preoccupations with whatever nonsense thing they were interested in.

It was easy to let them talk, and nod along, and make the occasional comment or noncommittal ‘hm’ sound in response.

Kallamar, when forced to have conversations with his younger siblings, would engage in small-talk tactics. Relentlessly.

“So how is the weather, Brother?”

“It’s… the afterlife.”

“The question stands.”

(But he would listen, too; whenever Leshy was complaining about losing another spar wth Heket, or Heket was griping about being hungry, even though she was constantly hungry, when Shamura would make an offhanded remark about being tired or Narinder making a single remark about feeling uncomfortable, unwanted; Kallamar listened.)

(– ichor pouring from Kallamar’s ears, the flesh torn raggedly from his head, a scream of agony drowning out the ringing in Narinder’s ears–)

Hear no evil.

A tiny frown creased at the Lamb’s mouth. The Crown’s red eye glanced down at them as they tugged at a loose tuft of wool on their face.

“… it’s… something,” they said.

Even with their mostly-blank facial expression, he could tell that something wasn’t exactly a positive something.

“… something.” Narinder’s eyes flicked to the Lamb, who turned to fully face him after a moment.

It was a quirk of theirs; even when they were beaming and practically bouncing along among their followers, they would fully turn to address the person they were speaking to.

“You killed five Gods– myself included– to get the power you now possess. I would have hoped that your betrayal would amount to more than something.”

They had a habit of oversimplifying (turning a bloody, repetitive fight to the death with an eldritch god who detached his eyes into a big tiff, for example), but this irked him more than he was willing to outright say at the moment.

There had been false idols and heretic gods in the past; none had found the success of the Lamb in uprooting the Old Faith. In fact, in the past, it had been laughably easy, if tedious, to destroy any threat to the faith.

Yet here they were, a god-slayer (and a God themself, now), with an entire faith disrupted and crumbled to pieces, and they seemed displeased that they were a God with dozens of faithful followers.

“I mean, that wasn’t really the whole goal,” the Lamb mumbled.

“Then why,” Narinder’s voice came out much sharper this time, verging on a growl, “did you betray me? If not for power, or immortality, or worship, then why?”

The loose tuft came loose from the Lamb’s cheek, dropping into their hand.

They rolled it around in their hand a bit to form a small ball, and for the first time, the Lamb did not make eye contact with him, their large eyes dropping to the floor.

Their voice was suddenly light, and it made something in Narinder flicker, like lighting a match, knowing that the Lamb was trying to steer the conversation away, was pretending. “I think that falls into ‘too philosophical to–”

“Bullsh*t!” Narinder’s voice was definitely a growl now. And louder. Much louder.

The Crown turned to glower at him (possibly for the swear), but he didn’t care.

“I saved your pathetic life when the Bishops attempted to sever your head from your body. I gave you power– my power– and you stole it and you betrayed me.”

Narinder took an aggressive step forward towards the lamb, the grass crunching beneath his paws, and he didn’t care how loud his voice was getting.

The wind seemed to have stopped entirely. Like the whole world was holding its breath.

Another step forward.

The Lamb craned their head back now to meet his eyes, but did not back away.

That just further infuriated Narinder.

He bared his fangs, seething, and took another step forward with every sentence, practically spitting them out with the amount of rage building in his chest. “You took my power. You took my title. You took my Crown.”

The Crown seemed to roll its singular eye, which made something deep inside Narinder practically boil.

Stupid, unfaithful thing.

“Yet you’re dissatisfied with godhood? How dare you,” he seethed, because how could this stupid vessel be dissatisfied with that, be so greedy. “How dare you be so– so foolish! So ungrateful!”

He hated that he couldn’t think of another worse adjective, a worse epithet, anything to disrupt the blank look on their face.

“Narinder,” the Lamb said quietly.

The name just made him even angrier.

Another step forward.

“Why then? Why take everything from me?!” The large cat’s voice dropped into a snarl, and usually he was careful, even in his defiance, careful because he was facing a God.

And yet now, he was looming over them, pupils narrowed to slits and his paws balled into fists.

“Narinder,” the Lamb repeated.

“Do not call me that–”

“Narinder, not right now–”

A derisive laugh bubbled out of Narinder. There was no mirth in the sound, it was cold and angry and mean, intended to mock the Lamb. “Not right now? Not right now? You betray me after I brought you back from the dead, bestow a God’s power upon you, and in thanks you, you dethrone me, turn me into this–”

He gestured at himself, summing himself up in a sharp sweep of the arm and another step forward, towards the Lamb.

“– and now you say you didn’t want that? That you didn’t want immortality, power, godhood? Then tell me, Lamb, what in the hells did you want?”

Another step forward. The Crown almost seemed to tense, like it was preparing to leap between them if it had to, to protect its master.

A bitter taste filled Narinder’s mouth at the reminder that it was no longer him.

“I’m not saying that I’m not grateful,” the Lamb responded, brow creasing.

Good. They were frustrated. Or upset. Or something. He got something out of them, out of that stupid blank face and unchanging expression.

They were craning their neck more severely back now, still trying to meet his eyes. They weren’t afraid of him, but he still towered over them. “I just meant–”

Another laugh; wilder this time, almost hysterical. If Narinder had any actual amusem*nt about this situation, he would’ve laughed until he was sick.

He felt sick. And angry.

“What, Lamb? What did you just mean? What was so important to you that you took my kindness and spit it back in my face? What foolish, ephemeral mortal whim seized you? What moronic thought crossed your mind to make you decide, ‘oh, gosh, I guess I’ll just betray the God that f*cking saved my life!’”

No jokes this time; the Lamb raised a placating hand. “Narinder, let’s just take a second–”

“Are you trying to frame me as irrational, now?” Narinder shouted, a little irrationally. “You take everything from me, and when I demand an explanation and you play the f*cking idiot, you act as though I’m the one being irrational?”

“You are not in the mood to listen to what I’m saying–”

“I wonder why!”

“We can talk about this when you’re calmed down–”

“Not a chance! At the very least, you, you–” Narinder took another step forward. His voice practically oozed venom, dripped with it. If he’d still bled black ichor (if he was still a God), his voice would’ve rivalled the toxicity that his blood possessed. “– owe me some kind of explanation!”

“Look,” the Lamb spoke up, their voice raising just a hair, not nearly matching Narinder’s volume or the amount of vitriol in his voice, “would you please just drop it for now?”

“Fine!” Narinder roared back at them.

Literally. His voice abruptly dropped, growing both louder and richer in tone, expanding into a full-volume roar that blew the wool back from the Lamb’s face.

The two froze, their faces remarkably close– Narinder hadn’t realized until this very moment, but with each biting comment, each snap, each step closer in a conscious attempt to intimidate that which could not be intimidated, he had brought himself ever closer to the Lamb.

They were now so close together now, that he could make out some soft fur around their wide eyes, a soft breath puffing against his nose, the infinitesimally small movements of the Lamb’s eyes.

Narinder’s voice echoed through the trees, each reverberation getting fainter and fainter. There was no way none of the followers had heard him–

“Leader! Are you alright?”

Narinder instinctively stepped back from the Lamb, just as a few followers came running towards the graveyard.

A large gorilla wielding a carpenter’s axe was first; along with Tyan, riding on his shoulders and still wearing her chef’s hat (well, more accurately, clinging onto it for dear life).

A violet mouse with a tuft of fluff on her forehead, half-hidden by a straw hat that marked her as a farmer, followed just behind; with the final two that showed up to defend their leader being a chestnut horse with spots on the sides of his head and a tapir.

They all hurried to the Lamb’s side, the voices overlapping in a confusing rabble that was difficult to make out.

(Care. Worry. Worship.)

(It made Narinder sick.)

“We heard shouting–” That was the horse, putting a comforting hand on the Lamb’s arm.

(Narinder noticed them jerk away slightly, though it was more of a brief flinch than anything else.)

“Are you okay? Did the Hermit hurt you? I knew–” The tapir was raising her voice to be heard, shooting Narinder a nasty look that he easily returned.

“Y’all, calm down, Leader’s obviously not hurt, looks they just got heated–” Tyan’s distinctive little twang came across clearly. He’d been hearing it all morning, after all.

She seemed… strangely relaxed, considering she must’ve heard him literally roaring at the Lamb.

“What’s going on? Did–” the mouse was spluttering, a little confused and out-of-breath simultaneously– she had basically had to have run from the fields, and judging by the white whiskers and muzzle, she was getting on in age.

“…” That was the gorilla. He just silently looked between Narinder and the Lamb.

The Lamb put their hands up, placating, calming.

(Narinder wanted to cut their hands off. He was boiling inside.)

“It’s okay, guys, it’s okay… we just got into a, a little argument, is all,” the Lamb said, smiling reassuringly.

When had that expression returned to their face?

“Sounded more than a little,” the horse muttered, glowering at Narinder.

Narinder glowered back. He really didn’t have the patience for this farce, at this point.

“It got a little heated,” the Lamb admitted, grinning rather sheepishly. They reached up and rubbed the back of their head. “His voice carries a lot better than mine.”

The Lamb was remarkably good at faking.

(Had they faked the interest they had, back then, in him and Shamura and Aym and Baal?)

(Narinder ignored something deep down in him that whispered that they hadn’t.)

“Well… good to see y’ain’t killing each other. It’s nice to have a hand in the kitchen, and it’d be a shame if I lost my helper the day I got him,” Tyan said, her tone matching the Lamb’s cheer.

The Lamb laughed, and it rang out like the sound of the bell they wore. “You guys can go back to work. Or get ready to sleep. Either one, I guess. Sorry to bother you.”

The tapir continued to glare at Narinder. “Are you sure, Leader?”

He glowered back at the tapir.

The violet mouse glanced between Narinder and the Lamb. A knowing look seemed to flit over her face.

“Yeah, they’ve got it handled. C’mon, Nokimar, we’ve gotta get some of this beetroot planted; the weather’ll be great for it tomorrow.“

“Anyay–” And off the farmer went, dragging the horse behind her before anything else could be said.

“I’m sure, Brekoyen,” the Lamb said brightly to the tapir. “Thanks for checking up on me, though.”

Tyan shrugged, accepting their answer easily, and patted the gorilla on the head. “C’mon, Fikomar. We gotta get some logs ready to get the ovens going tomorrow.”

The gorilla gave Narinder a glance– he was rather thinner than most other gorillas Narinder had seen during his time, and shorter– before giving a grunt and loping off, Tyan riding on his shoulder and chattering away about how they’d make him a special treat for the help, but don’t tell Leader (in full earshot of the Lamb, who pretended the Crown was occupying their attention and that they hadn’t heard a word of that).

The tapir– Brekoyen– gave the Lamb a long look, before nodding (and shooting Narinder a nasty look) and following the chef and the carpenter.

A deafening silence settled over the two. The Lamb wasn’t looking at him, but he could feel the weight of the tension over them both.

He half-wished the Lamb would shout at him. It would make him feel justified in his anger.

“… Narinder?”

“What, Lamb?” he growled.

He was tired, now, all of a sudden, the long day weighing on his shoulders, and he found that even though something inside him still burned with anger, he couldn’t be bothered to try to continue the previous argument.

Now, he just wanted to go crash (literally, he had a tendency of full-body flopping onto his bed) and sleep until morning.

The sun had fully set, and the lamps illuminated the graveyard in a warm glow, softening the silvery light of the moon.

It was waning today.

The Lamb shifted; he didn’t turn to look at them but he could hear the bell around their neck jingle slightly.

“Do you want to play Knucklebones?”

“What?” That certainly hadn’t been what he’d expected.

He turned to glance at the Lamb. They looked up at him, back to blank; any frustration from the previous argument was wiped off their face. If they were still upset in any capacity, there was no way the former god would have been able to tell.

“We can talk a little while we play,” the Lamb offered.

Curiosity killed the cat.

“Don’t be foolish,” Narinder muttered, too tired to snap. “I’m going to go to bed.”

Was it a trick of the light, or did a little bit of sadness touch the Lamb’s features at that?

“… alright. Good night, Narinder.”

Narinder did not deign to reply to that (and why should he, when the Lamb had usurped him? Why should he?) and turned away, making his way through the tombstones and the flowers back to his own home on the hill; leaving the Lamb standing among the headstones and watching him go.

“– prophecies do not simply come to mind,” Shamura scolded. “Dreams and nightmares and prophecies are all intertwined–”

“– but they kind of just appear in your head, Shamura!” Leshy insisted.

Narinder blinked.

He was in Shamura’s library. It was lit, though not brightly– the spider god didn’t like blinding lights, preferring lanterns and bioluminescent moss to get the job done. It was a fairly large room, shelves filled to practically-bursting with books and scrolls. The amounts of silk everywhere (Shamura’s replacement for the mortals’ ladders and stools) kept the room from being neat, but it was definitely easier to traverse.

Something bitter filled Narinder’s mouth.

Ah. This was a dream.

(Or maybe a nightmare.)

He’d gotten used to the pattern by now, enough that he’d started recognizing what was happening in the middle. It was always a memory, and always one with his siblings or the Lamb.

The Lamb showed up in a lot of dreams, even the ones that didn’t wake him up in a cold sweat, honestly.

What did that mean?

(Narinder decided he was going to not wonder about it. He was fairly certain it would just cause a headache.)

Heket rolled her eyes with an unpleasant little ‘tch’. She was sat to Narinder’s left, with Leshy just a little farther past that.

A passing glance to his right confirmed that Kallamar was seated there.

“They just said they didn’t just ‘appear’ in their head, Leshy.”

“Th-that’s right! Don’t be ridiculous, Leshy!” Kallamar, always eager to hop onto the bandwagon, joined in haranguing their youngest brother.

“Don’t just dogpile Leshy,” Narinder found himself saying, though a part of him would now happily join in the mockery.

(Would he?)

Narinder’s eyes flicked over his siblings, brief and not caring to linger on them (Leshy, black eyes with red pupils intact and wide with embarrassment; Heket, croaking louder than all of the others in her haste to be the best, Kallamar listening awkwardly to the bickering, Shamura’s intact skull and soft gaze), before fixing his gaze on Shamura, awaiting a response that he already knew by heart.

It was the response that had caused him to be imprisoned, after all.

“You all know,” Shamura spoke, cutting over the argument loud enough to be heard, “how dreams work, yes?”

There was a chorus of ‘yeses’ from the sibling gods.

Heket (ever-so-eager to please, back then) puffed up a little, proud to be able to give her answer with utmost confidence. “Dreams are caused by the mortal brain unconsciously reacting to and processing stimuli.”

Shamura nodded, clicking their mandibles in a way that they all knew meant the Bishop of War was pleased. “Excellent. Mortals react to stimuli, whether or not they are aware of having received that stimuli. Now, why might prophecies react similarly to mortal dreams?”

There was a moment of silence. Even Heket was momentarily stumped.

Narinder found himself answering the way he had long ago. “… because prophecies are the way a God would process a different kind of stimuli?”

More pleased clicking. “Yes. Good.”

(Narinder found himself trying to suppress the brief well of pride in himself, as if something distant and small inside of him still wanted Shamura’s approval.)

“Many stimuli in this world cannot be processed by mortals. Gods and deities, however, are able to absorb and react to far more. The world attempts to give warning and advance notice of impending catastrophes, in its own ways.”

Shamura turned to look at the burrowing worm. “For example, when draughts occur, the soil is a little dryer than normal, even before it hits, correct?

Leshy nodded, and Shamura continued, clicking a little again. “Ergo, when a prophecy is born, it is from a God processing the signs that the world is giving, both those that would be evident for mortals and those that only a God could witness, and mentally forming images or words to verbally describe the impending fate.”

Shamura had been rather eloquent, back then. Well-read, and just naturally inclined to research.

Shamura, skull split in two.

“O-oh! That makes sense,” Kallamar nodded.

Kallamar, ears torn from the head.

Heket did not express her agreement, already beginning to bicker with Leshy over his initial slip. Leshy headbutted her, the two trying their best to irritate each other, though something in their actions made it obvious that it wasn’t truly serious.

Heket, throat slit neat.

Leshy, eyes gouged from his skull.

“Prophecy is a God’s ability to understand the world’s warnings,” the Lamb said.

The One Who Waits jumped, physically jolting away. In comparison to his siblings, the Lamb was tiny.

He realized he, too, was small now; and the gangly, bony claws– formed by his descent into Godhood, coated in black ichor and rotted flesh that sent needles of pain up his limbs– had been replaced by soft paws.

The library was empty. In fact, the library was torn apart, with shreds of paper littering the floors, stuck in the silk. Shelves had collapsed after centuries of rot, and the desk, formerly a place for them all to gather and joke over whatever Shamura wanted to go over with them, had split in two, mold and mushrooms sprouting from the wreckage.

The Lamb did not look at him, gazing instead at the destruction that had befallen a former sanctum of knowledge.

Think no evil.

Narinder blinked– had the Lamb’s horns grown longer? Was their wool darker than before?

Red eyes met his at last, and the Lamb’s lips parted to reveal remarkably sharp canines; far sharper than they should be.

“I wonder what the world is trying to tell you now, Narinder?”

Narinder shot upright in the bed.

There was a sharp ripping sound, undoubtedly the sound of him digging his claws into his pillow again– not that it mattered too much anymore; most of the fluff inside had scattered everywhere, all over the floor, and the pillowcase itself had been shredded so much that it was practically rags.

He should probably ask for another one.

The former god’s breathing was ragged, fast. Narinder’s eyes darted around, as if confirming he wasn’t in the library anymore.

As the oppressive darkness seemed to lift from the room, he realized that something felt sharper, clearer.

His eyesight.

He could suddenly see– not that he couldn’t see before this, but he was abruptly seeing in hyper-detail. What had been occasionally a little muddied before, obscured by darkness and the general failings of mortal eyesight, was suddenly razor-sharp. He could see a tiny splinter in one of the boards that made the floor, though it was out of the way enough that he could not accidentally step on it unless he purposefully sought it out. He could see individual furs raised on the back of his paw from his nerves being on edge, and a tiny scrape on the windowsill that he had left when he had accidentally yanked the curtains shut a little too violently a few days ago.

That was strange. His eyesight hadn’t been this good for weeks, really.

Not since–

Narinder fumbled his way out of bed suddenly, almost falling to the floor bodily in his haste.

Mirror.

There were no such devices in the village (for that was what it felt more like now, more members and more relaxed than a cult, but not nearly as many as a kingdom), but there was a small pond nearby. The moon was bright enough that he would be able to see his reflection.

Narinder didn’t bother to be quiet opening the door; though he did give a cursory glance outside his window– the Lamb was not there tonight.

Good. He… didn’t want to see them. Not tonight.

The former god hurried down the hill and stumbled; he caught himself on the stones surrounding the pond, peering into the water–

He didn’t really have to peer that much.

His red, third eye stared back at his wide-eyed reflection.

A moment later, something dark dripped in, further warping his already-wavery face in the water.

Narinder blinked as tiny dark spots obscured his reflection, spreading slightly.

At first, he thought it was his actual eyes, and he had somehow developed yet another affliction of mortal eyesight; but a quick touch of his paw to his face made him realize there was something warm and wet coming down his forehead.

He pulled his paw away to inspect. It was hard to make out the color in the moonlight, but he knew it wasn’t black ichor.

Black ichor was thick, like mud, and would glisten red-and-iridescent in an oil-like pattern if you tilted it side to side. It smelled sweet; not in a good way, but in the sense of rot, of festering.

This didn’t smell like black ichor.

It smelled like metal.

(Mortal blood.)

“Heya, Meran. That’s enough, Leader’s gonna worry about you, ya know.”

Narinder didn’t know why he found himself ducking behind the rock he’d used to catch himself and keep himself from falling headfirst into the pond, especially not when he heard Tyan’s voice– but he crouched, grimacing as he realized he’d smeared blood (his blood) on the side of the stone.

“Oh! Tyan, you scared me.”

Narinder knew that voice. It was the butterfly priest; he hadn’t even seen her near the Temple entrance while he stared at his third eye in the water.

He peered up over the stone, to confirm what he’d heard.

Tyan was riding Fikomar’s shoulders again, though Fikomar was silent and stone-faced.

Tired.

Narinder blinked, cautious not to draw attention to himself.

Yes, Fikomar was tired. But how did he know that? He certainly hadn’t seen it in the carpenter’s face; the gorilla’s gruff face was less expressive than the Lamb’s as of late.

He glanced from Fikomar to Meran.

Worry… Leader…

His ear twitched. The sensation was strange, but definitely present. It was like listening to a thousand people chant different mantras at different rhythms all at once; if he focused on one, he could make out little bits here and there, but not nearly enough to string together a full sentence.

“… Leader seemed sad, earlier,” Meran continued aloud, twisting her fingers together. The butterfly’s wings fluttered a bit in the breeze. “I was asking them about some of the other rites, so we could get some more practice in, but they seemed a little preoccupied…”

“Ah, prob’ly ‘cause they argued with the Hermit,” Tyan said easily.

Loud… Scream…

Unlike the ease he’d had as a God, where reading someone’s mind was as simple as glancing at their face and seeing their emotions and thoughts like one might glance at the page of a book, he really had to focus on person to person. Jumping between them felt like jumping a massive chasm each time.

It was giving him a headache, actually.

But he was reading their minds.

“You worked with him today, right?” Meran asked, twisting her fingers even more anxiously. “What… what was he like? Brekoyen insists he’s dangerous.”

Brekoyen… Trust…

Narinder turned his gaze to Tyan, who was tapping her finger on her chin.

This one came strangely easily.

Funny. Funny. Weird. Funny. Weird.

… Narinder didn’t know if he should be flattered, or thoroughly insulted.

“… he ain’t bad. Grumpy, but Fikomar’s kind of a grump too.” Tyan casually pinched the gorilla’s cheek, as if to prove her point. “Like, he wasn’t a bouquet of roses or anythin’, but he did his job like I asked. And he attended Feyen’s funeral, you gotta have seen him. He was basically standing next to Leader the whole time.”

Had he been? That was mortifying to realize.

There was a faint pain in his forehead, like when you tried to do a staring contest and your eyes eventually burned, tears welling up to try to soothe the painful itch. He ignored it, trying to focus a little harder.

Meran frowned slightly.

Safe? Mayb–

Abruptly, it felt like something in Narinder’s head was flipped. His vision… it didn’t unfocus, per se, but with a single blink, the hyper-detail he’d been seeing in was back to normal mortal vision.

“Well, as long as Leader trusts him… I guess it’s alright,” the butterfly was saying hesitantly. “Now, let’s go to bed. I know you have to get up early tomorrow, Tyan.”

“Caught me there.”

Narinder ducked down as they walked past the pond to head back to the little collection of huts.

He thought Fikomar might have glanced in his direction, but it was suddenly a little too far to make out.

When their footsteps were out of earshot, Narinder poked his head over the edge of the pond, for one last look at himself.

As he’d suspected, there was no more third eye staring back at him in his reflection– just the typical, pale crescent-shaped scar that had been present since the Lamb had defeated him.

If it hadn’t been for the blood, slowly spreading in the water, or the streaks of blood oozing from the now-shut area of the crescent scar, like tears welling out of eyes, Narinder would’ve assumed he was hallucinating.

… well.

This certainly wasn’t normal.

What is the world trying to tell you now, Narinder?

Chapter 5: Confusion

Chapter Text

After managing to clean the blood off of his face before having to go meet up with Tyan (which involved scrubbing at his fur repeatedly and squinting into the pond, because as it turned out moonlight was NOT helpful for illuminating blood in dark fur, and Narinder resolved to either ask the Lamb for a lantern in his home or to steal one), and spending approximately No Time at all sleeping; Narinder had decided to forego what little pride he had remaining and ask the Lamb in the wee hours of the morning the big question of excuse me why the hell is my third eye open again could you maybe shed some light on this situation.

However, a massive wrench was immediately thrown into his plan.

Namely, the Lamb was nowhere to be found.

This wasn’t for a lack of searching for them. He checked the Temple, the empty field they had an odd habit of standing and staring off into the distance in in the evenings (or, well, extremely early mornings); he even checked the graveyard, where he’d last left them– there was no sign of them.

More than likely, they’d gone fishing again, or had left to play Knucklebones again, or was going on another crusade for extra supplies, or was just exploring somewhere…

In summary, Narinder had no clue where they were.

He debated ‘skipping’ his work to go look for them– the only reason he was doing any work was to keep himself from ripping out all of his fur in boredom, after all; and serving duty had been humiliating. Not to mention Tyan had been one of the followers to happen upon him after he’d essentially yelled in the Lamb’s face, and after his utterly sleepless night, he didn’t really want to deal with those questions.

Yet here he was, standing in front of the kitchen, holding the stupid chef hat.

(After all, it would be more humiliating if the Lamb scolded him for not ‘doing his part for the cult’ in front of everyone.)

Tyan grinned at him through the doorway. “Heya, Grump. Up and at ‘em early, huh?”

He glared at Tyan, but said nothing. It seemed the most prudent choice.

(If she could see any lingering blood in his fur, she didn’t comment on it.)

“You up for cooking duty today?” she asked, cheerful as always and apparently ignoring his glower in her direction.

Narinder stared at her, silently. It was taking his brain a moment to catch up and translate her twang.

Plus, Tyan just spoke a mile a minute.

“It’s not ‘cause I’m feeling charitable,” she joked after a good five seconds of him silently staring at her, swinging over to the sink to wash her hands. “You just scared the poop out of a couple-a-fellas yesterday, what with your expression and all.”

She imitated his sour glare, but her ever-present grin peeked through and replaced it in an instant. “Literally.”

“What is it with you and telling me disgusting things at gods know what time of the morning?” Narinder grumbled.

Tyan swung upside down, totally ignoring his statement. “Anyhoo, it’s easier to have you in the kitchen makin’ the food than scaring folks half-to-death. We only got a couple outhouses, after all.”

“Gods above, please stop telling me about these things.” Narinder’s face was firmly in his hands now.

Cooking was hard.

Tyan had made it look remarkably easy the afternoon before; though in retrospect Narinder supposed that made a great deal of sense– she practically swung around the kitchen like she slept in there.

Which as it turned out, she did; as she chattily told him while she helped him with the initial round of preparations and kept a watchful eye on his hands as he chopped vegetables into slightly awkward chunks.

“Careful, don’t stick your fingers there or you’ll end up fingerless. Curl your paw in so– yeah, that’s it. Anyway yeah, I live in here,” Tyan said cheerfully, swinging over to inspect Narinder’s work. “Make ‘em a lil bit thinner, the kids have trouble with the big chunks.”

Narinder didn’t take his eyes off of the knife. He didn’t care so much about injuring himself (mortal injuries were nothing in comparison to feeling your arms rot for a couple centuries); but he feared that if he made eye contact with the monkey he’d be interrogated about the fight.

“Did the Lamb not make you a house?” he grunted, when the silence grew a little too long and he could see Tyan looking at him expectantly in the corner of his eye.

“I mean, they tried! But I fell asleep in here once after work and found it a lot comfier,” Tyan said brightly. “Not that I don’t appreciate Leader’s work on the house or anythin’. I just like being high up. Heck, I’d sleep on the Temple roof, if Meran didn’t get her robes in a knot over it.”

Narinder didn’t really doubt Tyan being able to get to the top of the Temple roof. If her swinging around the kitchen was any indication, she’d probably be able to climb a tree much higher than he could.

“Speaking of Leader…”

Oh great. Here it was.

“Uh, how to bring this up? I don’t mean to pry.”

Narinder steeled himself for the awkward series of questions that was about to follow.

“Sorry that you and Leader got in a lover’s spat last night. Meran said Leader was real sad afterwards.”

Narinder misjudged his next motion and cut a good quarter-inch into his paw.

He gave a vile swear (his tongue burned slightly with the utterance of an eldritch curse, but it didn’t shrivel into dust, and the sensation was abating slightly with every passing moment, so evidently he could still swear like that), dropping the knife onto the countertop with a clatter.

There was a few splots of blood on the knife, on the counter. Narinder grabbed his paw, but the pain was eclipsed by the frantic little flurry his brain cells had just burst into.

“What? We what?”

“Careful. Here, wash that in the sink.” Tyan landed on the countertop, her tail turning the faucet on. “I’ve got a bandage in here somewhere. Even I cut myself occasionally–”

“I– they– we– lover’s–”

“C’mon.” Tyan’s firm grip took ahold of his arm, the knife already rinsed off, and stuck the paw into the running water. The runoff turned faintly red.

It had to be the eldritch curse he’d just muttered instinctively and that was making his tongue tingle in the aftermath that was keeping him from not stumbling over his words; or sleep deprivation, after only sleeping long enough for his dream (nightmare) the night before and spending the rest of it scrubbing his face and pacing.

Or maybe it was just utter humiliation. He supposed that would explain why his entire head felt hot all of a sudden. His fur was standing on end, ears pinned back.

Of all the things for him roaring at the Lamb to be mistaken for, a lover’s quarrel?

Tyan pulled his hand out of the stream of water from the faucet and dabbed it dry, Narinder too (he didn’t really know how he felt. Mortified? Horrified? Mortally embarrassed?) much of an angrily-flustered mess to properly negate the statement, or protest her bandaging his hand.

“Careful not to get blood into any of the vegetable feasts. We ain’t trying to make cannibals here,” Tyan said cheerfully.

Narinder finally regained control of his tongue.

“We are not lovers!” he spluttered, trying to regain composure.

In his defense, it was very hard to be dignified when a bright blue monkey was bandaging your hand after you poked yourself with a kitchen knife and casually insinuating that your traitorous former-vessel-turned-god who you’d fought repeatedly in a bloody fight to the death was your lover, of all things.

“Really? Huh. Coulda fooled me.”

“What do you mean–”

“Whoops, looks like we got off-schedule,” Tyan said cheerfully, swinging out towards the serving area and leaving Narinder with a bandaged paw and a face so hot that he could’ve been mistaken for having a mortal fever. “Call out the meals as you finish ‘em!”

Narinder muttered another curse to the empty space where she’d been, ignoring the way his teeth and tongue ached immediately afterwards.

Thankfully, cooking duty was a little calmer. If Tyan was displeased by how quickly (or, well, slowly was more accurate for Narinder at the moment) he was making meals, she didn’t show it; greeting everyone she was serving with cheerful commentary and conversation while Narinder struggled to get the recipe semi-correct.

“Oh! Are these the twins? Awww, they look just like ya, Julkay.”

“Hey there, Fikomar! Here’s your portion. Also, here’s your treat; I know you like beetroot salad. Don’t tell Leader. That goes for you too, Hermit.”

“Thanks again for getting that cauliflower planted all quick-like, Anyay. We were runnin’ out.”

“Yeah, it’s Hermit cooking today.”

A pause, where Narinder couldn’t catch the response over the knife chopping and the crackling fire beside him (and him still being caught up on the lover’s spat comment, though his face was finally going back to a normal temperature).

“No, Brekoyen, he ain’t poisoning the food. Cool it with the conspiracy theories.”

The truly insufferable part of cooking duty wasn’t the adults who would peer through the window suspiciously (or cautiously) at Narinder; it was the kids. Word had spread from the three-year-old (he was debating asking the Lamb sincerely to put Yarlennor into the pillory) to the other children, who all insisted that he must be lying about the scar on his forehead being an eye.

So now, every few minutes, a child would poke their head through the window that led to the kitchen, watching him try to slice but not take too long but also not make it too thick, or Tyan would send it back with “this is for a little ‘un, they can’t eat this,” and inform him in the slightly-infuriating way a child speaks when they are sure they are right that he was Wrong and that his scar was Not an Eye.

(How it had opened the night before, he couldn’t figure out; and even when he prodded and rubbed the spot a few times when nobody was looking, it didn’t budge.)

(It was somewhat infuriating.)

It took much longer than the previous day to get all the meals out, but it was something else to think about (a lover’s quarrel?!), and Tyan didn’t complain at all.

If anything, she was weirdly kindly encouraging if he messed up; though she did laugh whenever a kid came by for the sole purpose of “politely” informing Narinder that he was Wrong.

Narinder was debating asking the Lamb if he’d be allowed to punt one of the children.

Probably not.

“Good effort, Hermit,” she said cheerfully, once everyone had dispersed to eat. “I set aside yours already.”

Narinder grunted– not a thanks, exactly, but not a disdainful sound either.

Tyan seemed to accept it regardless, and swung off back into the kitchen– either to clean up or to go back to wherever she lived.

His mind trailed to the thoughts he’d happened to overhear (over… sense? It wasn’t hearing, not in the real sense, but he didn’t have a better word to describe it.)

Funny. Weird.

He wondered why those thoughts of hers had come so easily. Perhaps it was because they were pertinent to him; but in that case the thoughts of Meran, who was clearly a lot less fond of his presence but certainly had him in mind when she thought them, should’ve also come more easily.

Narinder briefly entertained a thought where he wondered what the Lamb thought of him.

(He immediately quashed it to put in the ‘these thoughts will give me a headache’ corner of his brain.)

(It was becoming a rather large corner.)

He was in the midst of pondering how to bring it up to the Lamb, and where the Lamb might be so he could corner them and demand some semblance of an explanation for the night before, or how to maybe try to open his third eye again while carrying his food bowl; when he opened the door and very narrowly avoided tripping over the two children standing there.

Narinder recognized Yarlennor immediately (Lenny, as everyone seemed fond of calling her), not that it took much doing– there weren’t exactly a lot of green capybara children with mustaches strolling around the cult.

The other child was a duck, with lush green feathers on the head, and a far more muted brown on their wings and feet. This one had stared at him yesterday, to the point of twisting to look at him while they waddled away with their mother.

“What?” he growled, when neither child made any move to explain why they were blocking his path and staring up at him with giant, expectant eyes.

“I’m Noon, spelled N-O-O-N,” the duck said firmly, pointing at himself. He pronounced it like “noo-wun”, which made the former god pretty certain the child was used to having their name butchered.

Narinder stared blankly at the duck child, wondering why they were still there.

The duck seemed to summon up every scrap of bravery he possessed, and blurted:

“Will you play Knucklebones with me?”

“Do you want to play Knucklebones?”

Narinder’s eyes narrowed at the child slightly. “What?”

“I usually play with Leader,” Noon said, undeterred by his glower and the way his claws had started digging tiny gouges into the sides of the bowl again, “but they’ve gone out to play Knucklebones with other people, so I can’t. But Lenny wants to see how it’s played.”

“Yah,” Yarlennor agreed solemnly.

“No.” Narinder’s reply was instant.

“Please?” Noon put his wings together in a pleading motion, peering up at Narinder with large eyes.

Narinder was pretty sure the child was trying to pull puppy-dog-eyes on him, which he (somewhat begrudgingly) found amusing considering he hadn’t given into those for quite some time– even Aym and Baal, as children, hadn’t been able to get him to give in to anything.

(He ignored the little part of him that pointed out that the Lamb had basically given him puppy-dog eyes yesterday, fake or not, and he’d essentially caved into their demand. That didn’t count.)

(He also ignored the ghost of a memory of Leshy looking up at him, black eyes pleading, the moon high in the sky, and Narinder sighing and letting him burrow into the silk cocoon beside him because it was late and he didn’t want to point out that Leshy should get used to sleeping in his own space.)

(Heket had teased them both for a week after.)

(– blood pouring from empty sockets, gaping holes in the burrowing worm’s skull, and Narinder tightened his fist and felt something pop under–)

“No.”

“Pleeeeeeease,” Noon said, dragging this one out more. “Nobody else will play with me. Just one game.”

Narinder stepped around the two children. “I’m not interested in your foolish games, child.”

Noon winced at the word, said in a tone that implied the worst of epithets, but persisted, stubbornly trailing after even as Narinder did his best to lengthen his stride to lose the two children. “I can wager somethin’.”

Narinder raised one eyebrow as he glanced back down. His scar (his third eye) was nudged along with it.

How badly did this child want to play Knucklebones? What on earth was the Lamb teaching the children?

“What would you even wager? Grass?”

“If you win, I’ll tell everyone else you really got a third eye. You don’t even have to show me,” Noon said, firmly.

Narinder stopped in his tracks, so abruptly that Noon almost ran into him (and then Yarlennor did actually run into Noon).

“I don’t care.”

(He could have left right then.)

(Could have picked up the pace, lengthened his stride; he was far taller, far larger than they, and he could escape the children with ease. His house’s door locked, after all.)

(He did not.)

“P’ease? I will too! I wanna see Knucklebones!” Yarlennor clasped her little paws together, looking up at Narinder as if she was begging for food instead of asking to watch Narinder play a dice game with a child.

(He really should have cut off their access to gold coins while he had the chance.)

“I am busy.”

“Doing what?” Noon challenged the statement immediately, lifting his little head high to stare Narinder in the eyes, despite the former god’s obviously displeased stare.

Narinder felt his eyebrow inch higher.

A child with a steel heart.

Aym, standing tall and gazing upon Narinder with a fierce gaze, ready to fight.

Baal, meeting The One Who Waits’ eyes with conviction, even as he trembled from head-to-toe.

“I was trying to find a place to eat in peace,” the former god gritted out. He still did not attempt to disengage fully from the conversation.

“I’ll leave you alone after you play with me,” Noon offered stubbornly.

Narinder took a deep breath through his nose, feeling his claws grating against the side of the bowl.

He could appreciate a child with a backbone, but he was getting dangerously close to considering punting children again, and he had a feeling the Lamb would be rather annoyed with him if he actually went ahead with it.

(Foolish, soft creature.)

“Will you stop bothering me, regardless of the outcome of the game?” he asked, at last.

When they gazed at him uncomprehendingly (how old was Noon? He was obviously a child, but beyond that, Narinder couldn’t tell), he dumbed it down to “Will you stop bothering me even if I lose?”

Both children nodded eagerly.

The former god sighed, sharp and irritated. It was, at this point, swifter to play Knucklebones and get the hell out of there. “Fine.”

“Great! I have the dice already,” Noon said eagerly, digging in the pocket of the red garment all the followers wore.

Narinder set his bowl down. It was cloudy today, which he was grateful for– no blinding light– but it did mean the grass, instead of being warm and inviting like the day prior, was cool and slightly prickly when he sat down in it.

Yarlennor plopped herself down beside Narinder, giving a big sniff. Her nose was dripping a little bit.

The former god scooted away from her a little bit.

Yarlennor scooted closer.

Narinder scooted away again.

Yarlennor scooted back towards him.

“Found ‘em! … What are you guys doing?” Noon asked, looking up from where he’d been digging around for the dice to see Narinder scooting awkwardly across the grass, looking gangly and a little awkward with how large he was; and Yarlennor, practically chasing him by crawling after him.

“What on earth is she doing?” Narinder growled, ears pinned back against his skull.

Hadn’t he tried to attack this child the day he’d first arrived here? Why was she crawling after him like this?

“I wanna see you play,” Yarlennor said stubbornly.

“You can do that not next to me.”

Noon giggled, making Narinder turn his baleful stare onto the other child. Great. He was being laughed at by children.

(It was interesting, how they were similar to the Lamb, approaching him with no fear.)

(Though, in the Lamb’s case, it was less a matter of naivete (well, he was fairly certain at least) and just something else.)

Yarlennor thankfully abandoned her pursuit of Narinder to sit besides Noon, giving a hefty sniff.

Noon handed Narinder nine dice.

Well, more accurately, Noon reached to hand the dice over to the former god, and Narinder didn’t reciprocate the motion at all, so Noon just dropped all of the dice into Narinder’s lap without warning and began to draw a game board in the dirt, cheerfully ignoring Narinder’s startled swear.

He watched, silent. Ratau had instilled in the Lamb a love of Knucklebones, and Narinder had watched them both; between Ratau and the Lamb, he knew enough about Knucklebones to at least not need to ask the rules.

“You roll first,” Noon offered magnaminously.

Narinder rolled.

—

In theory, Narinder had watched Ratau play Knucklebones for years; and had watched the Lamb getting absolutely trounced by different people repeatedly. He should have been better at Knucklebones than a literal seven-year-old (Noon ended up dropping that tidbit in-between rolls).

In practice, his luck was just abysmal. He kept rolling rather low (a lot of ones and twos; he even tested the dice at one point to see if they were weighted and discovered that no, he was apparently just horrendously unlucky when it mattered), while Noon managed to get lucky enough to get a whole column of sixes and then a pair of fives.

“Noon wins!” Yarlennor cheered, putting her hands up in the air. “Noon’s best at Knucklebones besides Leader!”

Narinder debated pointing out that he’d just gotten exceptionally unlucky, but he feared that the kids would decide to start parroting that he was a bad sport instead, and he already had enough headaches from the kids insisting his eye was fake.

“I won! So you gotta do my wager now,” Noon said.

Narinder had never known a duck could grin.

“… we never discussed that,” he replied.

But, he supposed the agreement had been implicit with his acceptance of their wager, and he was tired of dealing with this… situation. Besides, this would likely be the end of the entire initial dilemma; he’d give the kids what they wanted, and then retreat to his house to eat in peace.

He breathed a sharp sigh through his nose again, and gave a curt nod. Both of the children brightened visibly at that.

“Fine. What was your wager?”

Rather than Noon, it was Yarlennor who spoke. “You have to be nice,” Yarlennor said firmly. “To Leader.”

Narinder waited for Noon to rebuff that and whine that it was their wager, so he got to pick the rules.

And waited.

It took Narinder a moment of staring at the two children, and the two children staring back, that he realized that they were both serious and in full agreement on this.

“What.”

Noon crossed their arms, though even though his little face was screwed up in consternation, he was obviously also concerned. “Momma said you yelled at Leader yesterday.”

Gods above. This whole cult was filled with gossips.

“That’s mean,” Yarlennor said solemnly.

“And Leader was sad yesterday,” Noon added. “They were all distracted when helping Miss Meran.”

“So, you have to say sorry to Leader,” Yarlennor said, puffing her little chest out. “And be nice to them.”

Narinder stared at the two children, simultaneously in disbelief that two children aged ages three and seven would apparently try to engineer such a complex plot just to get him to say “sorry” to the Lamb; and also terribly irritated that he’d actually somehow fallen for it.

(And that every follower showed such unwavering devotion towards the Lamb.)

The Lamb’s familiar bell tinkled right then, thankfully saving Narinder from this horrifically mortifying conversation and his growing desire to punt children across the cult grounds. “Hey guys! Whatcha up to?”

“Leader!” Noon exclaimed, jumping up and running over to the Lamb.

Yarlennor got up a little unsteadily and toddled over, clutching their waist in a hug with a little belated “Leader!”

The Lamb rubbed both of their heads. “Hanging out with Na–?”

They froze, briefly, catching their own slip before it made it fully out, before clearing their throat. “’Scuse me! Frog in my throat. Um. Hanging out?”

(Narinder was surprised that the Lamb would go to such lengths to hide his name from them.)

(Was it because of his own dislike of them using it?)

(… did he dislike them using it?)

“Knullbones!” Yarlennor cheered in her excitement, which made a slightly bemused look cross the Lamb’s face for a moment.

“Knull– oh! Lenny, I think you mean Knucklebones,” the Lamb corrected gently with a laugh that matched their bell.

Narinder wondered how they could fake smiles and laughter so easily. The sound was immaculate.

“We played Knucklebones!” Noon exclaimed, and even though the Lamb was not tall, the seven-year-old had to crane their neck back to make eye contact with the Lamb. “I beat the Hermit!”

The Lamb raised an eyebrow at that and looked up at Narinder.

He glared at them, daring them to say something.

“That’s great! Good job, Noon,” the Lamb said, their gaze lingering on Narinder’s face for a moment longer than strictly necessary.

“Also, he’s got something to say to you,” Noon said, turning expectant eyes onto the former god. Yarlennor turned too, staring up at him with a determined little expression on her face. The Lamb obediently looked up to meet Narinder’s eyes.

What little brats.

“… sorry,” Narinder grunted out. He was grateful that flushes didn’t show through his dark fur, because his entire face felt remarkably hot right now.

“… what?”

The children were not looking at the Lamb, but at Narinder; so they missed the way the Lamb’s face fell into blankness, out of their goofy little smile– shocked out of their usual facade. It was only for an instant, and they immediately caught the mistake and modified their expression, but Narinder saw the flicker between smiling, blank surprise, and smiling again.

(He didn’t know whether to be offended at that or not. Was it that surprising for him to apologize?)

The kids were staring expectantly at him. Apparently they wanted more from him than just that.

Gods above. He should’ve justed walked away earlier.

“I’m… sorry,” Narinder repeated the words, stumbling a little bit. “I shouted at you last night.”

More like he’d literally roared, as loud as a lion, but the children probably didn’t know the little details and he didn’t want to go into a play-by-play of the things he had said.

He was still struggling to figure out how to go about apologizing (really, how did you apologize for this sort of thing? Especially when you didn’t feel as though you’d done anything particularly wrong?) when the Lamb cut him off almost immediately.

“Oh. That’s okay. You’re forgiven.”

Narinder’s ears flicked in surprise.

The Lamb hadn’t even paused (well, besides that moment of shock, but that seemed more to be at the fact that Narinder was even apologizing than considering whether or not to accept the apology) with their reply.

He was struggling to come up with a response when the Lamb held out their hand; the Crown leapt off their hand to form an hourglass. Sand cascaded through the somehow-transparent part of the Crown.

“Hmm… it’s getting a bit late, your parents’ll be worried. Head home, you guys.” The Lamb smiled and ruffled both children’s hair, having to bend down a little bit to get Yarlennor’s.

“Okay! Thanks for playing Knucklebones with me, Hermit! Bye!” And Noon took off at breakneck speed, Yarlennor babbling out a “thanks” and hurrying after.

“Wait, I mean, grab the dice firs– annnnd they’re gone,” the Lamb said, their smile immediately dropping to blank; swift as flipping a switch.

They looked down at the crude little game board, the dice abandoned on the ground in the losing and winning formations respectively.

Their lips twitched, a ghost of familiarity touching their mouth. “Dreadful rolls.”

Narinder scowled at them, tail twitching. “As if you play any better, Lamb.”

The two were quiet for a minute, looking down at the game board.

A moment later, the Lamb crooked their finger, and the Crown hopped off of their head and started to gently roll the dice into its storage space. “I’ll return them to Noon sometime.”

The former god glanced at the Lamb. They had bent down slightly to help nudge the dice closer to the Crown. The Crown bonked their knuckles, trying to shoo them away from the task.

“Did you mean that, earlier?” he asked abruptly.

“Hm?” The Lamb glanced up; the Crown’s eye had darted up to look at Narinder, but hadn’t ceased its task of picking up, brushing off, and placing the dice.

“About me being ‘forgiven’,” Narinder clarified gruffly, doing little air quotes around the word ‘forgiven’.

The Lamb nodded. “Yeah,” they said, easily.

When they noticed Narinder staring at them, they shrugged a bit. Their bell jingled. “You were upset and wanted an explanation. I wasn’t giving one.I’m not angry at you about getting angry about that,” they clarified.

They were quiet for a moment, before continuing, softer than before, “I’m sorry as well. I know you said you wanted an explanation, but… I’m having trouble finding the words.” Their blank eyes met his. “It’ll take me a while to be able to give an explanation I’m satisfied with. I’m sorry.”

Narinder continued to stare at them.

He’d screamed at them (essentially) and encroached on their personal space in an attempt to intimidate the Lamb.

Even if he felt that he was in the right on that situation (he was… wasn’t he?), he wouldn’t have been shocked if the Lamb had resolved to give him the cold shoulder for a few days.

(What a fool, giving in so easily.)

“I need to eat,” Narinder said, abruptly.

His fish meal was still by his feet, so he scooped it up. Thankfully, because the fish was raw, it meant that the dish going cold wasn’t really a worry.

Wordlessly, the Lamb fell into a brisk pace beside him. The Crown took a second or two longer, finishing picking up the dice and putting them away, before zipping along, to settle on the Lamb’s head. His legs were longer, so for every one step he took, the Lamb had to take two or three.

He expected them to stop once they got near his house, but they followed him inside and shut the door behind them, glancing around his room. “Hmm. Remind me to instate someone as a weaver, your pillow is totally destroyed…”

Narinder grunted an affirmation, glancing at the shredded rag that had formerly been a pillow. “Need a lantern too.”

He didn’t explain why he wanted one, but the Lamb gave a nod and a hum. “Sure. I’ll get one to you later tonight.”

The Lamb leaned against the doorframe as Narinder plunked his bowl firmly down on the table.

(He sloshed a bit of broth out the sides, but he chose to ignore that.)

He sat down and began to eat, forgoing utensils in favor of just shoveling the fish into his mouth– he was hungry. The delay of playing Knucklebones with the children had led him to delay his food a lot longer than he was used to at this point, so rather than waste time trying to eat neatly, he just decided- screw it. He’d thoroughly humiliated himself in front of the Lamb at this point, anyway.

If the Lamb was appalled at the utter lack of table manners, they didn’t comment on it– just leant against the (closed) door.

He glanced at them. They were slouching slightly against his doorframe, staring off into space.

Their wool was slightly dirty– had they gone on a crusade? But then again, they were back too early for that… usually, they took whole days. It had barely been half a day.

A thought occurred to him mid-bite.

“What are you doing in my house?” he asked, suddenly.

He’d rather forgotten about that detail.

“I need a minute,” the Lamb replied, blank as always– but something about their shoulders seemed heavier than usual.

The Crown nuzzled (nuzzled? The Crown could do a lot of things that Narinder hadn’t realized, apparently) the Lamb’s tuft of wool.

“Take a minute outside my house, then,” Narinder grunted through another mouthful of fish.

“Can’t,” the Lamb responded just as swiftly.

He shot them a glare. It didn’t really have any heat, or if it did it felt severely lacking. Perhaps he was comparing it to the pure vitriol he’d spewed at them the night before. “Lamb–”

“I… they can’t know I’m… like this.”

That stopped Narinder in his tracks. He stared at the Lamb, trying to figure out what they meant.

Like… what? As far as he could tell, they were just tired. Sure, they were being blank, which he admittedly hadn’t seen them do in front of any of the other followers, but it wasn’t too out of the ordinary. Fikomar was like that, after all.

He looked at them again– their strangely heavy shoulders, their blank eyes.

Red eyes.

He blinked, and they were back to normal.

Narinder looked away. “Just leave once you’re done,” he grumbled.

“Okay, Narinder.”

The Lamb was looking at him when he glanced back at them. Their hand twitched, as if they wanted to do something (summon a blade? Slap him? Tap dance on the table with their fingers? Because they’d done that last one once while bored), but they did nothing. Just looked at him.

… which was all fine and well, but considering Narinder was basically horking down a whole bowl of fish, was a tad awkward.

They stayed only a few minutes longer after that.

After some arbitrary amount of time that Narinder chose to select as ‘minutes’ had passed, the Lamb stood up straight, adjusting their fleece and letting the Crown shuffle into a more ‘proper’ position on their head. “Thanks, Narinder.”

He glanced up at them, his brow creasing. “For what?”

The Lamb looked at him, as if debating explaining, before a smile touched their lips.

It was weirdly soft; usually their expression was kind of doofy, but this smile felt gentler– almost more intimate. It was especially faint on their face, almost more like a shadow on their face, but he caught the expression.

“Never mind. Thanks anyway.”

They turned to face the door, away from him.

The Crown did not.

It stared at him as the Lamb opened the door and stepped through; that single step almost seemed to totally rejuvenate them as they perked up fully into their usual, bright persona. “Oh, hey Nokimar! Yeah, just stopped in with him to say hi…”

They closed the door behind them, the Crown’s piercing stare lingering.

Narinder sat there for a while, staring at where the Lamb and the Crown had been, the broth for the fish going totally cold.

Thanks, Narinder.

It was after he’d sat there for a bit, staring thoughtlessly at the spot, that he realized something.

“Gods damn it all. I forgot to ask about my eye.”

Chapter 6: Nightmares (Prophecies)

Chapter Text

Narinder dreamt again.

This time, it was not of his siblings– a reprieve from the same old thing, of seeing split skulls and torn flesh and a time so long past that he could only wish the memories would stay buried, instead of being dredged into dreams that he woke in cold sweats from.

(That, at least, he could be vaguely grateful for.)

“You know you’ve been seeing prophecies when you sleep, and not nightmares, right?”

Instead, this time, he was sitting with the Lamb at a stream.

From the glance he took around, it was in Darkwood. The two were sitting a few paces away from each other; Narinder would have needed to stand up and take two steps over if he wanted to be right beside the Lamb; but it was close enough that he could still see them in his peripheral vision.

The area they’d entered was empty, so theoretically all the enemies had been killed in the area and the river should have dried.

The Lamb tossed a stone; it skipped a few times before plunking into the strangely still water.

Odd. Usually the water rushed so much that the Lamb would just kind of get floated along if they stepped into the stream. It didn’t help that their wool would get soggy and drag them along with the sheer weight.

He glanced at the Lamb.

Despite the carefree action, they weren’t smiling– just blank, as always (as of recent).

“Prophecies?” He spoke cautiously.

He knew this wasn’t real– the lack of rushing water was already a good indicator, and he hadn’t been to Darkwood in person in years.

(– blood everywhere, on the leaves, on the grass, Leshy screaming–)

If this was a dream (and it was), this Lamb was not real either.

Yet there was a definite edge that kept Narinder from relaxing, even with the chirping of birds and the sun on his back and the plunk of rocks hitting the water. Like something was lurking in his peripheral vision, and would vanish the second he turned to look at it head-on.

All that was there was the Lamb.

He tightened his fists, digging his claws into his palm slightly– it wasn’t enough to wake him up, but it was enough to distract him from a vague aura of dread that seemed to emanate from the Lamb.

Despite not being real, the Lamb before him sent chills up his spine.

– not real–

“They don’t exactly seem to foretell anything,” he growled, eyeing the Lamb cautiously.

He didn’t like how his nerves were fraying, with each passing moment of being in their presence. Not when the Lamb usually was a very normal presence, one of odd comfort and simple honesty.

(The Lamb, he thought, was not necessarily comforting– but their presence was steadfast.)

(Not this one.)

“Of course, they’re not literal. Prophecies rarely are,” the Lamb said easily, skipping another stone across the river and watching it sink into the water. “Otherwise, it’d be easy to avoid all kinds of catastrophes.”

They turned and smiled at him.

Their eyes were red– the same red his eyes had once been, with irises black as pitch and their already-horizontal pupils like slits. Where their eyes were usually blank, or a little warm, or masked with cheer, Narinder met their gaze and found nothing but ice.

“Shamura really had to puzzle through them. Oh, but of course, that was before you made it so they couldn’t.”

Narinder swallowed.

A part of him wanted to roar at this false Lamb, it wasn’t his fault, they’d all been trying to imprison him– the rest of him was rooted to the spot, chilled to the core. Every single hair on him was standing upright, and not being able to articulate why wasn’t helping him feel any less nervous.

He gritted his teeth to speak without his jaw chattering in fear (he wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t afraid, Gods don’t feel fear–)

(He is not a God anymore.)

– this isn’t real–

“Then why is the Lamb always present in these dreams?”

The False Lamb did not try to convince him that it was the Lamb; which he found interesting.

(Perhaps because, deep down, something was still familiar about this Lamb to him.)

(It knew that, and despite everything in him trying to say otherwise, it didn’t need to do any convincing.)

It tilted its head in a gesture of fake cuteness; sickeningly sweet. Its smile widened, far enough to show teeth; but never reached the eyes. The eyes were still cold, like ice.

This was not the Lamb.

(– so familiar–)

The Lamb might pretend, but they did not fake sweetness. They faked cheer and joy among their followers (and, before he’d been reduced to a mortal, in front of him), but never words that were coated in poison and icing sugar.

“Why, I would have thought that would be the obvious part, Narinder,” The False Lamb crooned softly.

The sound was like dragging claws down a chalkboard to Narinder; he had to physically resist the urge to shove his paws over his ears, it was wrong, the Lamb didn’t sound like that–

The False Lamb stood from where it had been sitting, taking a step closer.

Narinder’s vision blurred; if his third eye opening had been hyper-vision, the mere presence of the False Lamb was like getting sand thrown in his eyes. Except less painful.

He growled, ears pinned to his skull (and trying to pretend he wasn’t trembling from head-to-toe, and trying to stop just made his muscles ache), but no matter how much he tried, he still couldn’t move.

He tried desperately to focus (even through the screaming, somewhere in the back of his head, that this wasn’t real, none of it was real), trying to make out the figure of the Lamb.

Was its white wool darker, suddenly? Were the horns larger than he remembered?

Another step. He couldn’t see this one, but he could hear it.

“If the Lamb is a part of these oh-so-vague prophecies that you’re dredging up,” the False Lamb cooed, “and prophecies are the world warning you–”

Another step.

Was their footstep different? Was he just imagining it?

– not real not real all of this is imaginary not real none of this is real–

“– then doesn’t it stand to reason that the Lamb is a part of this prophecy?”

Another footstep.

This one was definitely louder.

And definitely different. Heavier.

“Stop,” Narinder said. It was too quiet to hear over the next footstep the Lamb took.

He strained to focus on the sound itself. What was different about it?

“If the world is trying to warn you, Narinder, and you are dreaming of the Lamb,” the False Lamb said, louder than before– closer–

Narinder tried to move, to stand–

– to run–

He couldn’t.

“Then surely, the world is trying to warn you about the Lamb?”

Another step.

He knew what it sounded like now. It was the sound of a cloven hoof meeting grass; rather than the Lamb’s typical soft steps that would have been inaudible without the jingling of their bell and the slight crunch of grass beneath their feet.

“Stop,” he said, louder this time.

The former God’s voice was firm (he ignored the brief crack, the slight quiver), but he could feel the aura of pure dread, of terror sinking its teeth into him.

“The world is trying to tell you something, Narinder,” the False Lamb said.

Another footstep.

The toll of a bell.

Two red smears. Narinder was pretty sure they were eyes.

He closed his eyes to block out the way they burned into him, but it didn’t shut out the tension on his shoulders, his back, the way his fur stood on end and his ears pinned back and the chill winding its way through his bones.

The Lamb’s voice was right next to his ear.

“You’d better figure out what it is.”

Narinder fell out of bed this time.

Suddenly being able to move, when he’d been paralyzed with terror in the dream–

– prophecy (dream, dream, he refused to listen to that stupid thing)–

– suddenly being able to move after straining against himself for so long meant that his violent roll to the side sent him crashing to the wooden floor, tangled in blankets.

He did not scream, did not gasp for breath– in fact, if anything, all of the breath was forced out of him as he hit the floor in a little uhff.

His vision was hyper-clear again, though Narinder found himself focusing on a small piece of dust floating through the air as he tried to mentally ground himself, his brain scrambling for purchase.

Prophecy is a God’s ability to understand the world’s warnings.

He is not a God anymore.

These are prophecies.

He stayed on the floor for the moment, half-twisted in his blankets, mind racing away and desperately trying to piece together the dream (but he wasn’t Shamura, he’d never been, he’d never be Shamura) prophecy.

If prophecies were a God’s ability to understand the world’s warnings… what did that mean?

He wasn’t a God anymore.

He ignored that.

The world was trying to warn him?

About… what? The Lamb? They’d already usurped him, so that was too late for a warning about that.

That didn’t sound right, though.

Dark wool. Growing horns.

Red eyes.

Was it something else? Was it a threat pretending to be the Lamb? The Lamb did not give off that aura of pure terror. If anything, they gave off a feeling of being generally incompetent at everything except running the cult. And even then, that wasn’t exactly something they excelled at, if you looked at the design of the place.

His heart was hammering away in his chest, but it was slowly calming down.

And no longer drowning out the sound of his claws obviously scraping on wood.

He looked down to see that he was digging his claws into the wood, slowly sending small, paper-thin-shreds of wood curling off of the floor. There were small specks of sawdust with every inch that his claws carved, floating in the air and falling to the floor.

Narinder forced himself to relax. His claws stuck in the wood; then with a further slump of his shoulders jerked free, sending bits of sawdust all over.

This was idiotic. It was just a nightmare, probably brought on by the frustrations of the day and the memories he’d been seeing.

His third eye blinked once, as if to say otherwise.

He shakily (he didn’t shake, he wasn’t afraid) detangled himself from the blanket, putting it back on the bed. He’d go to the restroom, go back to bed, and wake up at an ungodly time of the morning to get ready to work.

Of course, the world seemed to really like disrupting whatever plans he had.

Narinder was on his way to the outhouse when he saw a figure standing near them.

His fur rose on end for a moment, but a moment later, he realized it was the Lamb.

– dark wool, red eyes, long horns–

Narinder blinked.

It was the Lamb, no different than usual– except they were puttering about this time, rather than standing and staring off into space. With his expanded vision (and even without, thanks to the silvery moonlight), he could clearly see that their wool was the usual white, and there was no overwhelming aura, no fear roiling off of them in dark waves.

In fact, there was a little dirt in their wool. He could see a tuft at the very back that stuck up slightly. They probably couldn’t reach there to comb it out.

The Crown rose a little bit off of their head, as if to get a better look at something. The Lamb turned to follow the Crown’s gaze, nodded, and leaned over. They were wearing their yellow gloves, which meant they were cleaning the outhouse.

“Why don’t you get your followers to clean up the outhouses?”

The Lamb did not jump this time (at least, not particularly visibly, but he could see the Lamb’s shoulders give a tiny start), the Crown simply swivelling on their head to look at him approach while the Lamb focused on not dropping whatever they were cleaning. “Hi, Narinder. Maybe you should be the one wearing a bell.”

The Crown’s eye widened.

It started jumping frantically on the Lamb’s head, trying to get them to turn around.

Oh. Right. Narinder’s third eye was still open.

“Cats do not wear bells, Lamb,” he responded, too wound up from the nightmare (prophecy) and tired to deal with their jokes.

“We can just make it a new fashion trend.”

… the Lamb’s blank expression made it very difficult to tell if they were actually joking or not.

They turned their head enough that his heightened vision could spot the tiny quirk of their mouth at the corner– it was so slight that he may have missed it as a mortal.

(He was a mortal.)

Yeah, they were kidding.

The Lamb’s eyes flicked up– then they were stopped, motionless, in the middle of reaching to clean something else that Narinder thankfully couldn’t see in the dark.

A moment later, they took off the gloves– they vanished somewhere, Narinder couldn’t track the motion– and turned to fully face him.

“… your eye is back?” They didn’t exactly start around and cry out in shock, but he could see the hint of a smile drop, and the way their eyebrows inched upward slightly.

They were definitely surprised, but had his vision not been as sharp as it was, he would’ve missed the change of expression, if not the tone of their voice.

Narinder found himself unable to hold their unwavering gaze.

Red eyes.

“… this is the second time it’s opened. It opened a night or two ago.” He didn’t know why he answered them with full honesty, or less hostility than usual. “I don’t know how–”

“Oh, Gods, it’s bleeding.”

The Lamb was suddenly tugging at his collar, pulling him down closer to their eye level, the few steps between them and him completely closed before he could even properly blink. They were making unwavering eye contact with his third eye, peering closely at it.

Their face was close; he could see every little single fur on their face, the way their lips tightened (in concern? Anger?), the way their eyes were filled with something that he didn’t know how to identify.

“It doesn’t seem like a blood vessel has burst… it’s red, but your eyes used to be red. I wonder why it’s bleeding–“

Narinder forcibly jerked away from the Lamb.

His heartbeat had grown loud in his ears again, almost drowning out the Lamb’s voice.

Fear?

The Crown squinted at Narinder, but said nothing.

Obviously. The Crown couldn’t talk.

The Lamb looked dumbly at him for a moment, before letting their hands fall back to their sides.

“Does it hurt?” they asked, barely audible over the sound of his blood rushing through his ears, the thumping of his pulse.

Narinder sneered at the Lamb, though it had no real heat to it. “I’ll thank you not to manhandle me, Lamb.”

The Lamb’s lips twitched again, and the tension seemed to leave their shoulders.

Tension? They’d been tense?

“Sure, Narinder.”

He glared at them, annoyed at his racing heart. “Besides, you were just cleaning the outhouses. I don’t want your filthy hands near me after that.”

“I was wearing gloves, Narinder.”

“Still disgusting.”

The Lamb shook their head, but the corners of their mouth were still faintly upturned, barely visible even with his enhanced sight.

The gloves practically re-appeared on their hands (seriously, how were they doing that? He couldn’t see any kind of sleight-of-hand, and that was with heightened vision) and they took the few steps back over to begin cleaning the outhouse again. “If you need to use the bathroom, give me a minute. This one’s almost done.”

He watched them clean for a moment. They weren’t doing it fast, but their steadfast movements were methodical; the way someone who’s been doing something for years and years would go about it.

“Why not let the followers clean the outhouses?” he asked, at length.

The Lamb shrugged a little, not taking their eyes off of their task. Narinder supposed it’d be rather disgusting if they ended up making a mistake while doing this task after getting distracted.

“I can’t get sick,” they replied. “They all can.”

Narinder gave a little scoff of a laugh. “So?”

The Lamb didn’t look up still. “So, it makes more sense for me to do it, then, doesn’t it? Sick followers mean either wasting a ton of camellias at the healing bay, or several dozen people being down with bedrest.”

They finished one outhouse and moved to the next.

“… I don’t understand you.”

“You’ve made that quite clear,” the Lamb replied, though they didn’t sound particularly offended.

Narinder’s third eye was starting to burn. If the last time was any indication to go off of (and it was, because it was the only other time this had happened), that meant his eye was about to close again.

Why would a god-killer become a God if they did not want to?

“You ascended to Godhood, Lamb,” he emphasized.

He could see the tightening of their shoulders at that. The way the gloves squinched at the knuckles from clutching too tight.

“I don’t want to have this discussion again, Narinder.”

The Crown turned to glare at him– it practically roiled with the vibes of daring him to push farther.

He pushed farther anyway.

“You are a God. You have enough followers that you could lose a few to sickness or injury or old age. Do you not understand that?”

“Narinder, stop,” the Lamb said, and even though their face was rigidly blank (tighter than before, their brow not quite forrowed), he could tell they were getting tenser and tenser. They’d completely stopped the pretense of the cleaning and was just staring dead forward, into empty space. He could see their mouth set into a line.

The Crown’s eye narrowed farther, but didn’t move for some reason. He had the overwhelming feeling it would have happily tackled him for this.

“Your followers would happily do whatever you pleased, so why lower yourself to–”

“Because I’m bored, are you f*cking happy with that answer then?!”

The Lamb froze immediately, regret instantly crossing their face the second the last word tumbled out of their mouth.

They’d whipped around to glare at him (and for a moment, Narinder had felt his entire body go rigid at the way he thought he saw red in their eyes), but the anger had switched to surprise and then regret in the same beat and their eyes were the regular pearly white.

The two stared at each other, both tense, as if waiting for the other to spring and tackle them and rip each other to shreds.

The tension left the Lamb’s shoulders first. They almost drooped. “… I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Narinder didn’t know how to reply– whether to wave it away (he didn’t care, after all), glower (it seemed to be an appropriate response), shout (he was far too tired to shout), or just walk away.

He was saved from a decision by the Crown suddenly sitting on his head and forcing him down to eye-level with the Lamb.

Unlike before, where the Crown sitting upon his brow could send a surge of power through him, there was certainly no flicker, no rush through his veins– so it seemed that the Crown had to cognitively (did the Crown have cognition?) recognize him as its master to give him power.

At the moment, he felt much more like a chastised child, being forced to give a chagrined apology to some angry elder or parent.

The Lamb had sent the yellow gloves away again and were frowning at his forehead; though this time there was no eye contact made. “It’s bleeding again… is that why you’ve had blood in your fur all day? I thought it was from your hand.”

“It’s fine,” Narinder snapped on autopilot, followed by “I’ve had blood in my fur all day?”

“Only a little bit. Not enough to say anything.” The Lamb reached a hand up (for his throat)–

It stopped.

Narinder realized he’d unconsciously bared his fangs, a growl settling deep in his throat, humming against his ribs.

The Lamb hovered, for just a moment, before pulling their hand back to their side. If they were hurt by his reaction to them reaching up (he wasn’t afraid), their expression didn’t show it.

“Does… it hurt?”

“… no.” Narinder turned his gaze towards the Crown.

Well, he tried to, but he could feel the weight on his head and he didn’t exactly have the ability to see through his skull. “Get this thing off my head.”

The Crown tunked against his skull a bit, again making Narinder feel like a scolded child. He growled a little. Why on earth did the Crown like the Lamb so much?

“Tia, c’mon.”

The Crown popped off of the Lamb’s head. Narinder straightened back up as quickly as possible, glowering as the Crown happily settled into the little nest of wool atop its head.

“… Tia?”

“Yeah. Plimbo once called the Crown a ‘weird two-tipped tiara’.”

… Narinder was unsure whether to laugh (he didn’t want to laugh in front of the Lamb, of all people) or be offended.

“So I started calling it a tiara to make fun of it.”

The Crown proceeded (seriously, how was it this versatile? Narinder was pretty sure it had never done anything like this with him) to noogie the Lamb.

“Along the way– ouch, Tia– I just started shortening it to ‘Tia’ since Tiara was too long.”

Narinder stared at the Lamb, ignoring the way the Crown had re-settled happily into the Lamb’s wool.

“It’s three syllables.”

“Too long.”

“Imbecile.”

“I get the feeling you picked a three-syllable insult this time to mock me.”

It didn’t take very long to finish cleaning the last outhouse; as methodical as the Lamb moved, they had a way of doing things that clearly worked the best, and before long it was clean.

Narinder didn’t say anything the rest of the time. He and the Crown (Tia? Did he need to call it that now?) just side-eyed each other the whole time.

Well, part of the time, he watched the Lamb. Despite their fairly neutral facial expression, they were obviously a bit tired; they kept rubbing their eyes and stifling small yawns.

The moment they finished, he turned around and began walking home. The urge to use the bathroom had passed a long time ago.

He heard the little jingle of the Lamb’s bell as they came hurrying alongside him.

“Go to your own house,” he said, without looking at them.

“Don’t have one.”

He shot them a side-eye.

He quite literally had to look down to do this.

The Crown side-eyed him back. Probably because the Lamb wouldn’t, even when they weren’t faking the cheeriness.

He opened the door (and totally didn’t almost run into it, and almost smack his face on the door, and nearly completely mortify himself for the second time today, and oh good now that he was thinking of the mortification the “lover’s spat” remark was back in his head) and walked inside.

The Lamb followed and shut the door behind him, turning back just in time to watch Narinder practically plank onto the bed. The combination of the Lamb’s sudden outburst and his nightmare-prophecy had left him feeling totally drained.

“… I’ll ask Fikomar to make you a longer bed.”

“Leave, Lamb.”

There was a brief silence.

Then he found the blanket being pulled around him, one of the Lamb’s hands briefly pressing against his shoulder to tug it around him.

He whipped his head around to glower at them. Great, they were babying him again. Tyan had already made enough fun of him earlier today.

“Lamb–”

“My brother used to do this for me when I had trouble sleeping.”

Narinder went silent.

The Lamb was moving carefully, careful not to touch him for too long if at all.

The Crown glared at Narinder, but eventually began to help a little bit when the Lamb was having trouble reaching around Narinder without trying to flop over him.

… he’d known the Lamb was the last of its kind. The others had all been killed, in an attempt to prevent the Lamb from reaching Narinder.

Which was a foolish idea in and of itself; even without being able to enter the mortal realm, even in chains, he was the God of Death.

(He had been, at least.)

But none of the other lambs made for appropriate vessels for The One Who Waits. They were a peaceful kind before the Bishops had begun to slaughter them; elders and parents and children. Even after the slaughter had begun, they continued to flee and hide, rather than try to fight back.

He definitely did not let the children take large portions of his power to try to avenge the slaughter of their kind, even if they were angry. That just seemed like a horrible idea.

(Aym and Baal had used to play with the children a little bit to comfort them before Narinder ushered them onwards.)

But the Lamb… the Lamb was the last.

Had survived the bloodshed until then, had watched everyone they loved around them be slaughtered.

(Had a feeling around them, as they approached him with blood pouring from their throat, their head, that they had spilled blood before.)

If even the most peaceful of creatures had everyone they loved around them be slaughtered, and then was given a blade; they’d spill the blood of those who had slaughtered in vengeance, after all.

Somehow, the fact that that meant the Lamb had had a family before hadn’t fully occurred to the former God until that very moment.

“… you had a brother?”

The Lamb went still.

It didn’t take hyper-enhanced vision for Narinder to see the instant where their eyes widened a little past its usual blank state, where their fingers curled into the blanket, in the midst of pulling the blanket up to Narinder’s chest.

“Lamb?”

The Lamb sat there, unblinking, for three seconds– Narinder counted each of them.

Then the Lamb abruptly yanked the blanket over Narinder’s face.

(A brief moment of panic, thudding into his ribcage–)

There was a flurry of footsteps in the interval where Narinder scrabbled at the blanket (and tried not to shred it), much less calm than the Lamb usually was, and the sound of a door being fumbled open and shut again.

By the time Narinder wrenched the blanket off of his head, the Lamb was gone, and he once again, for the second time that night, found himself staring at the place where they’d been.

Lambert woke up in the shed.

… right. Nightmare. Again.

They didn’t need to sleep, but sometimes, on nights where there really was just nothing for them to do, they’d go borrow an empty follower hut or lay down in the grass outside and drift off.

However, it was misting outside, so they’d gone and slept on the podium in the Temple.

They sat up with a hefty sigh, giving a cursory check. Looked like they were starting in their family home’s shed, pitch black and the tiny bit of light coming through the crack in the door– usually silvery but shining searing orange– catching the shiny metal parts of a few tools.

At least in dreams, the cricks in the neck from sleeping in here weren’t nearly as bad.

They’d always had a tendency to lucid dream (and to have nightmares), but this was getting ridiculous. At least with their other lucid dreams, they could kind of spin it into a more positive route.

(Like the time they’d changed the dream about approaching The One Who Waits so that they could just break the chains right there, though that dream hadn’t really been a proper nightmare at the start in the first place.)

With these recent ones… it was like being fully conscious, but unable to change anything while someone slowly submersed you in water and let you drown. Helpless to do anything, but screaming internally the whole way.

Fun.

It was an easy trend to recognize. It would always start with a memory of some kind, before getting twisted into something dark and undoubtedly upsetting.

The worst part was just how everyone addressed them, no matter who it was or when it was or what the dream was about.

Lambert.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the name. Plenty of people they knew (had known) had the name Lambert. Gods, their elderly neighbor had been named Lambert, and he’d been very friendly.

It just… didn’t feel right anymore.

After surviving everything, somehow, albeit with a ragged pale scar marring their black fur that they remembered every time the bell jingled and rubbed against it, after surviving the razing of villages, the burning of forests, being shot at with flurries of bows and arrows in the woods, of fighting gods–

– an axe splitting their already-bloody head, from the wound they’d received when running and stumbling and falling into a rock, allowing for them to finally be captured after years of running, a sickening crunch as their skull split from their spine that they only caught half of–

To use the name Lambert– to harken back to a time that would never return, where their older brother would call them ‘Lil’ (because they were the second one), where their hands had never gripped a weapon except for a kitchen knife–

– where the name Lambert would only be used when their parents wanted to pretend they were their oldest sibling, or to give them a sharp rebuke when they did not want to be as outgoing as they’d been told the first Lambert was–

… it felt wrong.

Lambert sighed. At least they had Tia to talk to after these things.

Not that the Crown could ever respond, but no way could they dump this on a follower.

(They debated, once, bringing it up to Narinder– but his range of responses that the Lamb could feasibly think of included laughing at them, telling them it was what they deserved (and while that was true, Lambert didn’t need it to be rubbed in), or just staring at them blankly.)

The smell of smoke leaked into the air– barely a whiff, like there was a campfire in the distance.

Lambert looked at the blanket that had been put over them– they’d never confirmed this (and never would be able to), but it had probably been tucked around them by Flan.

(He’d tuck them in at night, sneaking out to the toolshed where their parents had ‘lovingly’ made their bedroom, and make them a salad on their birthdays (quietly, so that their parents didn’t find out), and rope them into games with him and his friends, all much older than them, just so they didn’t feel lonely.)

(They missed him.)

“Flan? Lacey?”

Great, speaking against their will. Definitely another nightmare.

They could never change what they did or said– it was truly like watching someone else control their body.

Nor could they control the emotions that sometimes washed over them, such as the wave of reluctance that preceded a more hesitant, “Mother? Father?”

The smell of smoke was stronger now, more prevalent. Lambert shifted the blankets aside and stood, peeking through the padlocked door at a sight they knew they’d see.

Flames. Smoke, so bright that it seeped through the crack of the door, even in the pitch-dark space.

Two shadows, emerging from the searing brightness.

“– torch the shed?”

“Doesn’t hurt to be thorough.”

Lambert remembered terror, in that moment, split between fear for Flan and Lacey and fear for themself.

In this moment, as an adult who’d spent years running and even more years as a leader, a fighter (a God), they felt nothing but resignation.

They knew what happened next, after all.

Lambert slipped towards the back of the shed, feeling along the wall in the near-dark. Their hands, clumsy with what tiny amount of grogginess remained, found a long, heavy handle– so heavy that when they pulled it from the wall, the weight made them stumble, made metal scrape on the wooden floorboards as they tried to lift it.

The door creaked open–

Lambert spun, the axe blade flashing in the firelight–

– blood on the floor and doorframe and on their face, the other heretic staggering back and stepping on the hem of their robe in shock before Lambert spun to them, too–

They scrambled towards the house, abandoning the bloody axe and the bodies on the grass behind them, knowing that the memory was ignoring the ball of fire their family home had been turned into, and only dimly noticing the flames on either side of the houses as well.

Damn it. Of course they were doing this part too.

Lambert steeled themself to see Flan and Lacey as they shoved through the remains of their front door.

It was a sight they’d… gotten used to, these past few weeks.

They took a deep breath, shoved through the flaming wood– it fell to the ground in a crash of sparks, leaving the space clear–

And felt all the breath disappear. Not exhaled, just… gone.

Narinder was on the ground.

This was new.

New was bad.

“Narinder?” Lambert didn’t remember crossing the floor, ducking under the beams and avoiding hungry flames; they were just beside him all of a sudden.

They hesitated to touch the former God, remembering the way he’d flinched earlier when they reached for him– then they remembered, right, this was a dream, this wasn’t real (this is too real) and shook him. “Narinder?”

– wake up wake up this is a dream this isn’t real wake up wake up–

When Narinder didn’t immediately snap at them, Lambert rolled Narinder towards themself, pawing at his red robe desperately– the tall cat was heavy– his head lolled, sickeningly (this isn’t real this isn’t real), and Lambert caught a brief glimpse of glassy eyes before they forced themself to focus on rolling him over, refusing to look at his face–

Their hand touched something sticky.

Lambert jumped and looked down– when they pulled their hand away from his chest, their hand was stained with–

– blood on their palm–

“Narinder?” Lambert’s voice cracked this time, and it hadn’t done that since they were a child, “God, this is stupid, it’s a f*cking dream, you’re fine– Narinder–”

They reached out (to touch his face? to shake him again?) but stopped.

Their hand was no longer their hand, was a jagged set of black tipped claws reminiscent of The One Who Waits, shining with barely restrained black ichor (if the smell was anything to go by).

And tipped with dark red and a scent of metal.

Lambert looked down at Narinder.

Dark, claw-like marks on Narinder’s chest seemed to ooze, glittering black ichor and drying red mixing together as it sluggishly crawled and stained his robe.

They screamed.

Lambert shot awake, falling off of the podium at the front of the Temple.

It was misting outside– not quite raining, the weather would be a bit spotty but overall dry for another day according to Plimbo– but it was enough to feel the slight chill in the air, even within the walls of the Temple.

(Lambert had learned to trust Plimbo with the weather. The grasshopper smuggler had a strange knack with predicting sun, rain, or (once, somehow) a very bad hailstorm that blew in out of nowhere.)

Lambert struggled to sit upright.

The Crown hovered in front of their face, its singular eye looking concerned– usually, the stony-faced lamb would just jerk awake and stare up at the ceiling or sky for a while before turning to Tia.

“I– Tia, I just– Narinder– should I check on him? No, he doesn’t want me to do that. Why would he? Um–”

They were stammering, obviously unsure what to do.

Tia stared, obviously overwhelmed by the sudden flood of unfinished thoughts from their Lamb. And probably immensely confused.

“I…”

Something tingled back at the back of Lambert’s head– that little sense that had been painful at first (physically, though emotionally it was always a bit sad to lose someone, a sharp sting at the back of the head like a needle had pricked the skin), but had dulled into a tickle over time.

Lambert took a deep breath, wiping a few lingering tears (when had those gotten there?) from their eyes.

“… there’s an elder dying… let’s go, Tia.”

The Crown still looked concerned, but ‘nodded’ and flitted onto the Lamb’s head.

Narinder had not slept.

(This was getting stupid.)

He kept turning over the Lamb’s words in his head, like he’d find some new meaning if he looked at it from enough angles and for long enough.

My brother used to do this for me when I had trouble sleeping.

The implications were strangely heavy on Narinder. He shouldn’t have cared. Why would he care about a usurper’s family? And one that had long been dead, by this point?

But… still.

The Lamb had had a brother.

Maybe more family members.

They’d always responded to flock members who asked about their family (usually children, who didn’t know any better), but the Lamb had always smiled and ruffled their hair and said something (with a touch of the sincerity that lay in how blunt they were, when the smile dropped from their eyes and their voice went flat) along the lines of ‘you guys are my family’, which would always get excited reactions from the children.

They’d never once brought up their own family. Their brother.

Their parents.

He once again wondered just how little he truly knew about the Lamb.

There was a strange prickling at the back of Narinder’s head. Dully familiar, but he wasn’t sure why.

Suddenly, it sharped to a searing–

– peace, warmth in a bed, moonlight shining through a window–

Narinder found himself getting out of bed once again, throwing the blankets onto the floor carelessly. He didn’t know why he did that.

Someone was dying.

Not someone young; those deaths were often painful and full of confusion– no, this person had lived a long life (he could feel a lingering ache in his bones). An elder?

How did he know that?

He opened his door, took a few long strides down the hill, and tripped over the Lamb, who was running towards the huts.

Both faceplanted into the grass, but the Lamb recovered a little faster than Narinder did, grabbing his paw to help him up.

(He thought he caught a glimpse of something in their eyes– relief?)

“Narinder. I’m in a hurry, there’s–”

“An elder dying?” Narinder found the statement coming out of his mouth before he fully recognized it.

The Lamb blinked.

The Crown (Tia), knocked askew on the Lamb’s head, blinked too.

“Well… yes… but how did you know that?”

Before Narinder could answer, the prickling at his head cut off.

The Lamb’s head moved slightly, as if the same sensation had just occurred.

The two looked at each other for a long moment, before the Lamb reached out (reaching) and helped him onto his haunches. “I’ve got to get things set up for the funeral. We can discuss tomorrow after the sermon.”

Then the Lamb was gone again, before Narinder could think to formulate a coherent response.

He watched them disappear into the houses.

His forehead prickled again, in a familiar way.

A single drop of blood rolled down from his eye and past his nose, bringing the scent of iron with it.

Chapter 7: Cryptic Fates

Chapter Text

The funeral was brief again.

The Lamb’s sermons were always short and to the point. Rather than a few vessels, who had bored even Narinder to tears listening to the sound of their voice for hours, it seemed they preferred to get it done and swiftly move onto whatever else they had to do for the day.

Which the followers seemed to appreciate, if nothing else.

Meran, her wings fluttering and casting tiny translucent bits of light on the floor with each flap, spoke some pleasant words about the elder again (good with children, neighborly, other things Narinder didn’t care about); before the funeral was over and Narinder waited, in the corner of the Temple by the door, as the other followers filed out and the Lamb spoke with Meran and the other priest about something.

Narinder glared at everybody as they left; mostly anyone who idled and shot him curious or surprised looks.

Some glared back (Brekoyen and Nokimar), others averted their eyes awkwardly (Anyay), and others would ignore his glower and wave enthusiastically (Noon and Yarlennor both did this, and their mothers strangely permitted them to finish waving before gently ushering them out of the Temple).

And others just… approached him, anyway.

And by others, Narinder specifically meant Tyan, because of course Tyan would.

Tyan paused mid-exit, waved cheerfully, and then hurried over to stand in front of Narinder. She looked strange, standing on the ground, rather than perching in the rafters or swinging from the ceiling.

Narinder supposed the Temple ceiling was a bit too high for her to reach. The expansive space made it more obvious to the former god that the monkey, whose personality made the whole kitchen feel snug (and almost a tiny bit cramped) was remarkably tiny.

“Heya, Hermit. Glad to see you’re comin’ to these things,” she said cheerfully.

Narinder glared at her.

Fikomar grunted as he walked up behind Tyan, which made her turn to look at him.

In comparison, the carpenter towered over her. Even though he wasn’t quite as tall as Narinder, and was a bit thinner compared to some other gorillas Narinder had met, he still was a good distance taller than most of the other followers.

He shot Narinder a look– which, if Narinder had to hazard a guess as to what it was, since Fikomar tended to look stern at all times, was probably a look of distrust– and signed something at Tyan.

Narinder hadn’t really learned sign language (Heket’s throat hadn’t been cut until just before he was chained, after all), just little bits and pieces, so all he could catch was ‘okay?’ in the series of signs Fikomar made.

Tyan grinned and patted Fikomar on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Fiko, Hermit’s just a grump. He looks like that all the time.”

Narinder’s glare intensified.

… even though she wasn’t exactly wrong with that remark.

Fikomar signed again, and after shooting Narinder a look that conveyed the general vibe of ‘if one single fur on Tyan’s head is disturbed I’ll toss you off of the top of a tree’, loped outside to join everyone else.

Narinder privately wondered what on earth the Lamb had been on when they said that he would throw Fikomar out the window if they tried to have him repair the creaky floorboard in his home. Fikomar looked more like he could throw Narinder out that window.

(Gods, Narinder would’ve believed it if someone said Fikomar would throw him through the wall.)

“Fikomar’s a real peach,” Tyan said brightly, watching him go through the door. “Always helps me out with gettin’ enough wood for the ovens.”

Narinder grunted.

Tyan seemed pretty happy with the lackluster response, and the two fell into a slightly awkward silence.

Narinder was used to her in the kitchen, but she looked surprisingly vulnerable, standing in front of him and practically leaning backwards to meet his eyes. It probably didn’t help that the kitchen was small, cluttered with pots and pans and crates of food, and that the space around them was just large enough that Narinder could stand without slouching; while in the Temple the ceilings towered above them and was remarkably clean.

She snapped her fingers suddenly, startling the large cat momentarily. “Right! Totally forgot. Leader asked if I could excuse ya from work for today; think they gotta talk to you about something.”

Narinder glanced over, as if he could somehow get visual confirmation from the Lamb.

Of course, he couldn’t; the Lamb was talking to the possum priest, mid-conversation and saying something kind if the little flush under the possum’s white fur was any indication.

Meran looked over and made eye contact with Narinder.

The two stared at each other for a moment. Almost as if they were two wild creatures, sizing each other up to gauge if it was wise to attack.

Meran was surprisingly tall, especially for a butterfly– most that Narinder had encountered were small and slight. The priest, however, was a little taller than the Lamb– not nearly as tall as him, but he hadn’t met any mortal as tall as him as of yet. She had an ethereal look to her, a pale gray color that made any light cast onto her vibrant and colorful. He supposed that fit the bill of how a priest might look, to some degree.

Narinder couldn’t read the butterfly’s face– he knew he wasn’t particularly popular amongst the followers (Fikomar, the tapir, and the horse were a good indicator of that), but her facial expression was surprisingly neutral.

If anything, her body language seemed a bit apprehensive.

The Lamb turned to speak to Meran, and her attention snapped off of Narinder and back to her leader (her god).

“Do you refer to the Lamb as your god?” he asked, turning back to Tyan suddenly.

Nobody really seemed to call the Lamb anything like ‘my god’ or ‘my Lamb’ or anything particularly worthy of a title of a God– most just called them something like ‘Leader’, now that Narinder thought about it.

Tyan laughed. “Weird question. Where’d that come from, Hermit?”

Narinder just stared at her for a moment, ignoring the way he felt his face warm at her laugh, despite her remark not being particularly mean-spirited or mocking.

He refused to be embarrassed by Tyan again. He refused.

“Well, after… defeating… the One Who Waits, that technically makes them a God,” Narinder grumbled. He might have to admit that, but he could damn well be as displeased as he wanted about it.

Narinder glanced over at the Lamb again. They were gesticulating fairly wildly now, animated and excited about whatever they were talking about. “However… I don’t hear many of the followers referring to them as such.”

The blue monkey scratched her head. She didn’t laugh again; but that goofy smile of hers didn’t go away either.

“Uh… I guess when I swear, I do.”

Narinder’s brows went straight up. “When you swear?”

“Like, Lamb-dammit! Or stuff like that.” Tyan shrugged, nonchalant. “We did try, at first. Mostly ‘cuz Meran insisted on the formality and all that. She’s a li’l more strict on stuff like that then the rest of us.”

The butterfly was now scolding the possum, who was trying to smother giggles, and the Lamb laughed, clear like bells, the only thing clearly audible from this distance.

“But, whenever we went ‘my Lamb’ they got all flustered and insisted we just stick with Leader.”

The two stood there for a minute, Narinder watching the Lamb and feeling Tyan watching him.

Narinder was starting to wonder why Tyan didn’t just leave for work; considering she’d just exempted him from his cooking duty, which he presumed was the entire reason she’d come over in the first place. He wasn’t exactly a friendly coworker.

“Where’d Leader pick ya up, by the way?”

Narinder’s ears promptly flattened to his skull, his eyes darting to the blue monkey. “Excuse me?”

Tyan seemed totally unconcerned about the drop to a growl his voice had just taken. She’d stopped looking at him and had turned to look at the Lamb, watching them chat with the two priests.

She continued in her usual breezy, twangy way a moment later.

“They found me in Silk Cradle.”

He didn’t stop glaring, eyes still narrowed on Tyan, but the growl petered out to silence.

Tyan took that as her invitation to continue.

“My old village– think they worshipped Shamura, ‘cause, well, they definitely took the whole ‘war’ thing real seriously.”

“I don’t care.”

Tyan absolutely ignored that. If the jab had bothered her at all, she didn’t express it.

(Maybe because Narinder only grumbled it, rather than disengaged himself to go wait for the Lamb. Which he should have done. He didn’t care.)

(Why did he insist on not leaving these situations that made him uncomfortable?)

Curiosity killed the cat.

“Ya get kind of sick of it, though, y’know? All the killing and all the violence. So, uh, ran away.” She grinned at Narinder. “Used to be this real angsty teen back then. Was gonna rough it all on my own.”

Narinder tried not to stare at Tyan. Angsty was definitely not the word that came to mind when he looked at the bright blue monkey.

“Surprising, right?”

Damn, she’d noticed his look.

“Then, Leader came along while I was having… kind of a terrible time.” She laughed, surprisingly quietly. Perhaps the air of the Temple, strangely formal and somber compared to how bright and chaotically decorated the rest of the cult was, subdued her natural effusiveness. “Silk Cradle ain’t exactly pleasant; especially not to deserters of Shamura.”

The Lamb was frowning slightly now during their discussion, the two priests’ smiles (or Meran’s scolding expression) falling into more serious expressions.

Narinder wished his hearing was better. Or that Tyan would be quiet.

He listened.

“Leader promised to lead with peace, and not war and bloodshed like my village, so… came back with ‘em. Haven’t proved me wrong so far.”

She paused briefly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s the occasional sacrifice, and all that. Those ain’t exactly my favorite rituals.”

Narinder glanced at her. She was deep in thought, arms crossed as she stared off into space. The closest look to a frown Narinder had seen from Tyan was fixed on her face.

She looked at the Lamb, and her eyes softened a bit.

Worship.

No, not quite. That wasn’t the reverent look he’d seen fixed upon faces when they gazed upon the Bishops back in the day, intermingling with fear and awe. Nor was it the look of the fearful Lambs who had approached him in the afterlife, trembling in terror and breathless in shock at the sheer size he’d once been, the power he’d exuded.

He looked at the Lamb again. They were waving their hands about, beaming now that whatever issue they’d been discussing had been finished. The two priests seemed more relaxed, and he could see the Lamb practically bouncing from here.

They’d always seemed so unrelentingly cheerful; even when approaching him after dying, they’d have a little doofy smile fixed on their face.

… yet the blank look they gave was, oddly enough, more relieving to see, now, rather than jarring.

Narinder wasn’t entirely sure why.

(The False Lamb’s smile did not reach the eyes, their smile sweet with poison and sugar and–)

“But, well… they’ve been a good leader. And a good God, I guess, now,” Tyan said, abruptly making Narinder realize that he’d been gazing silently at the Lamb with an expression that wasn’t a glare or a scowl for a little longer than necessary.

He tore his eyes from the Lamb to look at Tyan again, arching one brow.

“You guess?”

“Don’t get your pants in a twist over it, Hermit. I trust them to do what’s best for the cult.” She turned to him abruptly, suddenly all cheeky smiles again. “So! Where’d they pick you up?”

Blessed be, some God must have still smiling upon Narinder somehow, because the Lamb came hurrying over right then before Narinder had to give an actual answer, their bell jingling and feet tapping on the wood cheerfully.

“Sorry to keep you both waiting! That took a bit longer than I thought.”

“Nah, was just keeping our resident Hermit company.” Tyan squinted and pretended to point accusingly at the Lamb. “Ya better not take my kitchen assistant away permanently, Leader, or it’ll be meat meals for ya for the next couple of months.”

The Lamb put a hand on their heart, grinning teasingly back. “Swear on my life, I won’t steal your assistant.” A pause. “Permanently.”

“Heard that pause.”

“No you didn’t.”

Narinder watched the Lamb, smiling in a silly way as they lobbied jokes back and forth with Tyan. Their smile was bright, goofy.

(Impersonal.)

“Well, I’d better get to work. Followers won’t feed ‘emselves.” Tyan paused. “I mean, they totally could, but I still better get to work.”

The Lamb laughed again, clear as bells and bright as the sun. “You got it. See ya, Tyan.”

The monkey hurried away, and the possum and the butterfly began making their way out of the Temple, a little delayed. Narinder noticed that the priest-like robes, white with red trimmings, had vanished, back to the usual follower robes.

He supposed it was likely a ceremonial dress of some kind.

“Don’t be too nervous, Yartharyn,” the Lamb said, giving a brief thumbs-up. “You’re doing great so far.

The possum smiled, lips trembling with anxiety, before they made eye contact with Narinder. Instantly, they shrank back– Narinder realized he’d been glowering at them.

Somewhat unintentionally, but that didn’t stop his gaze from sharpening even more.

The possum squeaked and hurried out, ducking their head. Meran looked at Narinder warily, and the Lamb, who’d reached out to comfort Yartharyn and watched them flee out the door, just turned and gave her a sheepish smile.

“Ahh. Sorry. He’s just… like this.”

Meran looked from the Lamb to Narinder.

He glared at her, too.

“… I see that.”

The awkward silence between the three of them stretched for a moment, before Narinder suddenly felt the Lamb’s hand on his elbow, tugging him outside. “Well, I needed to discuss something with him earlier. Let me know if you need any help with any of the rites, I know Yartharyn is worried about messing them up, alright-see-you-in-a-bit–”

And they were around the corner and walking into the fields behind the Temple. It was cloudy today, and darker than before– probably would rain tomorrow, or later today.

The moment they were far enough away, Narinder yanked his arm free, his brain finally catching up to the action. “I will thank you not to manhandle me, Lamb,” he growled–

“Does your eye see when people die?”

Narinder had been getting accustomed to the Lamb’s sudden ‘drops’– the way a smile would flatten instantly, the crinkling of the eyes totally relaxing to leave their large eyes round– hell, their entire body would simply stop the usual, absentminded sway they had while standing still.

But this one was almost so sudden that Narinder stopped mid-thought.

“… yes,” he said, finally.

It was an honest answer, but he found it lacking, so a moment later he glanced away from their piercing gaze.

“… I couldn’t always. It started around the time my third eye opened,” he grumbled. “I only saw the one elder last night.”

Tia squinted at him. The Crown’s gaze was almost less intense than the Lamb’s; a moment later it floated off of the Lamb’s head to give a nod.

“You don’t know how it happened, then?”

“If I did, do you not think I wouldn’t force my third eye to remain open the entire time?” he growled, but there was no heat, no bite to his words. In fact, he half-turned his head away from their gaze, feeling it boring into him.

The Lamb considered for a moment. Narinder watched them put their thumb to the corner of their mouth, thoughtfully.

They didn’t usually do that. Did that mean it was an especially expressive motion, for this blankness? Or did that mean they were particularly worried?

(Or was a part of them still masking something, hiding something?)

“We could ask Myst about it? Maybe they’d know.”

He blinked, snapping out of his thoughts in an instant.

That… was not a familiar name.

“… Myst?” Narinder repeated, his forehead scrunching slightly as he ran the list of followers he knew through his head.

Which wasn’t that many, but it was worth a shot. Who could Myst be? It didn’t really seem like any of the average follower names. And he was certain he’d never met a Myst.

“Myst is… wait, maybe you’ve dealt with them before…”

Narinder stared blankly.

Tia bounced on the Lamb’s head once, though whether or not that was just something that the Crown did or something to confirm what the Lamb was saying, Narinder had no clue.

If that was supposed to narrow it down, he still had no idea. He’d dealt with hundreds of thousands of souls, mortal and immortal. Unless the Lamb literally meant a deal, which did narrow down Narinder’s internal catalogue of ‘people he bothered paying attention to’ a great deal– but as far as he knew, he’d never encountered a Myst.

When Narinder didn’t immediately express understanding, the Lamb gave a single nod. “Right, so… I’m not sure how to explain it, but Myst is this weird… God? I don’t know what they are, actually.”

The Lamb said this so bluntly that it was almost funny.

“But they have a circular head with two eyes, and it looks like black ichor leaks from it, though there’s no ichor smell; and they wear a white robe, but it looks like there’s a galaxy under it… besides that, I don’t… think there are any other notable features…”

This sounded more and more familiar with every passing second.

– a being that appeared before him, and Shamura nodded when he looked to them, and Narinder stepped forward to make the deal–

– “give unto me a name”–

Wait.

Narinder’s face went straight into his open palm with the realization.

He didn’t know whether to laugh, hit his head on the wall, or just be extremely exasperated.

“You… named the Mystic Seller… Myst.”

Exasperation seemed like the best option he had been given.

“Yeah.” If the Lamb was embarrassed by Narinder’s exasperated reaction, they didn’t express it at all.

Which he kind of expected, at this point, but still.

“How did I choose you as a vessel?” he grumbled.

(There were actually several fairly good reasons that flickered through Narinder’s mind at his words, but he promptly shoved all of them into the ‘potential headache’ corner of his mind to hopefully forget about it until later.)

(All of the thoughts in that corner pertained to the Lamb, actually.)

(He decided to also put that thought into the potential headache corner.)

“Why? Of all the names– Myst?”

(The others had their own names for the Mystic Seller. Shamura (though they barely talked to “Myst”) named them Nous. Kallamar had decided upon Minerva. Heket, if he remembered correctly, had called the Mystic Seller Isis; while Leshy had called it Veles.)

(Narinder’s had admittedly been the most plain, to the point where he couldn’t remember it now that he actually thought about it; which the others (fine, just Heket and Kallamar) had poked a bit of fun at him for it.)

(At least it wasn’t just a chopped version of Mystic.)

“It’s simple,” the Lamb said with a shrug– he could hear the bell jingle from where his face was firmly pressed to his hand. “I didn’t want to pick something weird and wind up forgetting it.”

“But Myst?”

Tia bounced up and down on the Lamb’s head. Either it was laughing at the Lamb, laughing at him (which was likely), or just impatient.

The Lamb decided to move on from the topic, apparently, because they spoke again a few moments later. “Do you think Myst would know what’s going on with your eye?”

Narinder glanced back at the Lamb. Their expression, despite not actually having any expression in it, looked strangely earnest. Like–

– “do you need help with anything?” the Lamb offered.

Aym and Baal seemed to exchange glances, but their own veils hid their faces.

“Help?” The One Who Waits repeated, slowly, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness. “I am a God, little Lamb. What help would I need?”–

“Maybe,” he conceded.

He expected the Lamb to nod again, and just begin departing with “I’ll let you know,” but they gestured with their head. “Okay, let’s go.”

Narinder stared blankly at them. “What?”

“Let’s go and ask.” The Lamb paused, and looked up at the sky. “Doesn’t look like the sky’s clearing up today, so you won’t get blinded by the sun, either.”

“Wait. You want us to go ask now?” Narinder was scrambling; they were usually strict about letting followers leave– unless they were in demon form, ready to defend themselves for a crusade. Suddenly, they were just letting Narinder come along?

“No time like the present,” the Lamb replied.

“Why am I coming along?”

They gazed at him, clearly not understanding why he was asking.

(Clearly? Their expression hadn’t changed.)

“… because this pertains to your third eye?”

Tia rolled its singular eye and jerked off of the Lamb’s head, gesturing with its entire form towards the exit.

Narinder composed himself. He’d take the time to be confused about the Lamb’s behavior later (he’d once watched them repeatedly reject a follower who begged to tag along, and any subsequent ones, so why were they letting him simply walk out with them?), after they got some answers.

“Fine.”

He’d never known an object with a singular eye could look so damn smug.

The Lamb nodded. Their fleece shifted briefly, only for a moment, but he saw the flicker of their fingers (reaching) before they were passing it off as brushing their tuft of fluff on their forehead aside slightly. “Okay. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t a long walk to the area where the gateway to his realm had once been was, but Narinder found himself having plenty of time to glance at the Lamb. Their wool was getting a bit long; probably because it was the middle of autumn and they tended to grow it out in the winter.

He didn’t really want to know what they looked like fully sheared.

There was an empty well where a statue had once been in the area. He did his best to not look at the doors to his siblings’ realms (the golden emblems above them, when his eyes passed over them briefly, had uncracked somehow), and looked at the gateway in front of him.

It was empty.

“Hi Myst. This is Nar– the One Who– you know who they are,” the Lamb said, surprisingly cheery again.

(Narinder briefly wondered how exhausting that must be, to put on a facade in the blink of an eye or the thump of a heartbeat.)

He glanced at them. They were looking at the empty gateway– which, granted, was giving Narinder a vaguely uncomfortable feeling. Had he been a regular follower, he probably would’ve found a reason to just leave.

But it was definitively empty.

“Is… are they there?” He nearly asked if it was there, but disrespecting a deity that dealt with–

Something clicked in his head.

Ah.

The Lamb paused.

Then turned to face him. “… you can’t see them?” they asked, although their expression gave him the idea that they already knew the answer, without even asking.

There was a bitter taste in Narinder’s mouth at the reminder; sharp and unrelenting even when he swallowed to try to rid himself of it.

I deal only with Gods.

He was no longer a God.

“No,” he said, looking away from their gaze at the empty gate. “I cannot, Lamb.”

The Lamb looked back at the gateway as well, half-shifting to face the deity that Narinder could no longer see. It seemed that even former Gods weren’t permitted to even lay eyes upon the Mystic Seller.

“It said it’s good to see you,” the Lamb said, after a moment, eyes flicking between the two spots hesitantly.

(Narinder highly doubted that Myst had said that, or honestly even cared, but the sentiment was still strangely vaguely comforting.)

“Just ask about my eye, Lamb.”

The Lamb gazed upon him. Narinder found, in the brief glance he took at them, the hint of something in their eyes– not quite pity. Empathy?

He averted his eyes.

Foolish lamb.

They turned to look at ‘Myst’, speaking clearly. “Ah… Narinder’s third eye has been… opening. How many times has it opened?”

“Twice now.”

“Twice. He can see… what I do? When a follower dies.”

“And I can read minds.”

“And he can– what,” the Lamb was turning to face Narinder again, their eyes widened slightly.

Narinder growled and forced himself to meet their eyes.

Red and icy–

– they were slightly wide, pure white and black meeting his own eyes.

“It’s not complete. I require focus to read them at all. And it’s only phrases and singular words,” he grumbled.

The Lamb kept staring at him, rather than turning to face Myst again. “You didn’t mention that until just now.”

“I can also see more clearly.”

“Narinder, you’ve got to tell me about these things.”

He scoffed, a mix between a snort and a derisive laugh. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”

The Lamb suddenly turned away, which almost made Narinder puff up in anger until he realized the Mystic Seller must have begun speaking. They stood, staring at the spot quietly for a moment, before a frown creased their brow.

“… well, that’s cryptic.”

“What is?”

(Narinder hated the note of eagerness that made its way into his voice– the way it made him sound desperate for an answer, an explanation.)

The Lamb turned to face him. “Myst said that ‘the Red Crown’s abilities are like the moon’.” They paused, then elaborated, “that’s literally it. They didn’t add anything to that.”

Tia gave the empty gateway its own wrinkled eye– disgruntlement? Confusion?

“… could you ask them to elaborate?”

“Myst can hear you, you know…” The Lamb turned to look at Myst regardless.

This would be a terribly strange sight for any mortal to stumble across– a towering large black cat standing half-over the Lamb, looking and listening at what seemed like empty space.

They finally turned back to Narinder. “They said something that I couldn’t understand, and then added ‘waning, waxing, new and full, the push and pull of tides will bring a new dawn.’”

The former God frowned. So they weren’t really any further along in the search for an answer than before. He didn’t know if they’d get anything else out of Myst, nor what else to ask that wasn’t just going ‘and what does that supposed to mean?’

The Lamb was looking at Myst again, but this time he watched a brief frown cross their face, before they looked between the empty gateway and Narinder.

“What is it, Lamb?” Narinder didn’t bother trying to hide his disappointment and frustration from his voice, so it came out as a growl.

The Lamb didn’t look awkward– if anything, their facial expression had just gone a bit blank, as usual– but they did fidget their fingers together, briefly. It jingled the bell at their throat as they momentarily shifted their weight.

“So Myst asked… demanded… you just made a demand, don’t look at me like that,” the Lamb said, though the last part was obviously directed at the empty gateway where Narinder assumed ‘Myst’ was standing.

(Though, a part of him was somewhat amused that the Lamb’s irreverence towards other deities extended to the Mystic Seller.)

(… and then perplexed him, as to why they’d seemed reverent to him back then. Why they still, to some degree, seemed reverent of him, or at least tolerated him. Even after he’d roared in their face and thrown used bowls at their followers and glowered at everyone around him, they had not said a single word about it, not breathed a single word about punishment or scolding.)

(The thought was starting to give him a headache.)

He forced the thoughts out of the forefront of his mind and turned his attention back on the Lamb, who had been saying something to ‘Myst’ the whole time. “Spit it out, Lamb.”

The Lamb sighed, and turned to face Narinder again. “I need to go back to Darkwood, crusade through again, and get your brother out of purgatory.”

Narinder stared at the Lamb.

“… what.”

“You told me to spit it out.”

“My– Leshy? You’re getting Leshy?” Narinder growled as the words actually clicked into place enough for the cogs in his brain to turn.

The Lamb’s voice was a bit wry when they responded, “I did just say I was getting your brother, yes.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Their expression seemed almost sympathetic. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice. I have a choice on whether or not you do this! They imprisoned me!” he barked at them, and the Lamb almost seemed to tense at the hints of a roar, low in his throat.

“And they ordered my kind to be slaughtered and beheaded me,” the Lamb pointed out–

“And then I am the one who brought you back from the dead, Lamb. If anything, I have more say on whether or not you do this, and I say no.”

“– and Myst just demanded that I, as an ‘infant God’, ‘give peace the Bishops trapped between life and death’–”

His lips peeled back, baring sharp teeth at the Lamb. “What part of no do you not understand?”

The Lamb’s brow had creased. Tia was glaring at Narinder again. He wasn’t stalking towards them and bordering on hysteria, like last time, which was probably why it wasn’t immediately attacking him.

“Look, I understand you’re not thrilled about it, but I can’t do anything about it,” the Lamb responded, a hair louder than usual.

(He’d never actually heard the Lamb shout, now that he thought about it.)

“You–”

The argument may have proceeded into Narinder screaming at the Lamb again, but the crease suddenly disappeared from the Lamb’s face, and they almost looked like they were about to buckle to the ground. Narinder had less than a second to wonder why before it hit him too.

If the feeling he’d been faced with when looking at the empty gateway had been ‘vaguely uncomfortable’, every muscle in Narinder’s body was suddenly screaming at him to run away. His legs were wobbly, and every fur on him had stood straight up.

– poison and icing sugar and darkening wool and red eyes–

But the Lamb’s wool was white, as always, and they too were trying not to buckle to their knees from the force of whatever was hitting them.

The feeling subsided, and the two stood there, the Lamb with their hands on their knees, and Narinder half-slumped against a tree.

“I… Myst just…” The Lamb cleared their throat, shaking like a leaf. Their face wasn’t fearful, blank as always, but they certainly seemed unnerved.

“Myst said, ‘foolish beast. The boundary betwixt this world and the next is fraying, and you choose to argue the reasonability of freeing the restless bishops?”

They hesitated for a moment, before finishing, almost meekly, “It is no wonder that Godhood chose to replace the former God of Death with an infant God.”

Narinder may have taken offense at that, and he did, but he was in the middle of trying to not feel as though all feeling had left his limbs, leaving them tingling and numb in the wake of the wave of Myst’s fury, and so he was unable to formulate a reply beyond numb, dull anger.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Fine.”

The two stood in silence for a while. Narinder was silently stewing with anger, feeling his tail flick against the ground angrily, but he didn’t dare say anything about that, in case Myst took offense again.

He hoped the Lamb was too. It was difficult to tell when they didn’t emote around him.

“Do you want to come with me?”

He shot the Lamb another glare. “What?” he growled.

The Lamb didn’t even flinch at his tone. They’d recovered a bit faster than him–

– they were a God, after all–

– and were standing upright again, albeit with some of their wool a bit more disheveled than before and Tia resting on their head gently.

“Do you want to come?” they repeated.

He turned his gaze to the ground, staring daggers at a stray flower on the ground. “And what exactly would I be doing?” he muttered. “You are the God who possessed the Red Crown. I cannot exactly do anything useful.”

The Lamb did not reply immediately. “You might like it,” they said at length.

He did not reply for a long time. The flower did not wither under his gaze; he didn’t want to touch it. It would just be another reminder of the loss of his power, and the uncertainty of… whatever was happening to his third eye.

Damned Mystic Seller. He knew it had a habit of being mysterious, but it would’ve been nice to just have answers. Or to let him have a say in the fate of the siblings he had trapped in endless hell.

“You will let me kill him,” Narinder growled finally. He could feel his claws digging into his hand a bit.

He didn’t have to elaborate on who he meant.

“No,” the Lamb responded, simply.

There was not even a scolding tone to their voice, which purely annoyed him that he couldn’t just feel rightfully irritated with them.

He whipped his head to face them. They, of course, were standing and fully-facing him, eyes watching him as always. “And why not?” he growled, low and rumbling.

They didn’t have a response immediately ready. He watched them gaze evenly at him, a steadfast gaze meeting one filled with hatred.

“You seem to hate mortality,” the Lamb said quietly, after a few moments. “He’d probably hate it just as much. It’d be more satisfying to watch him go through the same process as you, right?”

“No.”

The Lamb blinked at the immediate reply.

“Why not?” they asked when no further explanation came from the glowering cat, though rather than seeming contrary, they seemed more curious this time.

He growled a little, ears pinned back. This entire conversation was ridiculous. It was his brother–

– a rather short burrowing worm, covered in leaves and greenish fuzz, and all of the Bishops turned to look at Shamura, who was patiently standing beside who was undoubtedly their newest family member–

– “your brother”–

– and so it should be up to him if he wanted to kill the damn worm or not.

“Because I hate him.”

The Lamb was silent for a moment at his rationale.

A tiny smile touched the corner of their mouth– vaguely bitter, but the bitterness changed solely to amusem*nt before Narinder could look any closer.

“Well, that just seems a bit unfair.”

They began to walk towards the gate to Darkwood. “C’mon, let’s go.”

He gave them a black look, but when they paused in front of it and looked over at him, he reluctantly pulled away from the tree he’d been leaning against and began to make his way there as well.

There was a chance the Lamb’d still change their mind about letting him kill Leshy, after all.

Darkwood did not have the ethereal beauty of Anchordeep, or the anxiety-inducing claustrophobia from Silk Cradle. It was a lush forest, with leaves that rustled in the breeze and bits of shrubbery dotted around, but Leshy had always been comfortable in the woods and the dirt.

(Literally. He was constantly covered in bushy foliage.)

For a few clearings, the Lamb would have Narinder stand in a corner while they went about slaughtering the things that came to attack them, dodging and ducking around burrowing worms, heretics with crooked daggers, and bats.

He got bored very quickly and began to start attacking things himself. Once the Lamb saw him use nothing but his claws to slaughter a heretic, they were fine with letting him fend for himself in the fights.

Narinder had not fought in a long time; at least not in the mortal sense, where he had to rely on his own reflexes and senses to detect incoming threats, or his own hands– the Lamb had tried to see if they could give them both a weapon, but because the Crown merely shapeshifted to match the shape of the weapon they picked, it meant that Narinder was left without one.

Not that he particularly minded, he found. There was something that got his blood pumping a little faster as he dodged and swiped at the enemies that swarmed them, something that made his vision sharpen a little bit–

– something that made his lips curl back, without his noticing, into a sharp-toothed grin–

Perhaps it was because it was almost easy between the two of them, clearing out each area of the winding forest, that Narinder found his mind wandering.

My brother used to do this for me.

They’d only mentioned one family member. What of others?

He hadn’t been able to keep track of the Lamb prior to their death. The Crown was his connection to them, after all, so without it, anything prior to that was simply guesswork.

He’d known they were the last of the Lambs– that in itself was evident from the flood of dying souls that had entered his realm. And that they had shed blood before.

But anything else…

It was this curiosity that led him to speaking while fighting through a room filled with heretics.

“Lamb,” he called out, dodging a heretic that swung at him. His movements were lithe, graceful– as opposed to the Lamb, who would always kind of scramble about in their fights, rolling and practically scampering about to avoid things before whipping around to finish it off.

“What is it?” the Lamb grunted, deflecting three separate bowsman’s arrows in a swing of the dagger they’d selected.

“What were your parents like?”

The Lamb’s head snapped around, eyes wide– just as an arrow they’d been in the midst of deflecting before he answered the question soared just over the dagger’s blade and punctured their upper arm, narrowly missing their heart.

The Lamb’s head snapped back around, giving a pained yelp.

Narinder was across the clearing in the thump of a heartbeat. The heretic wielding the bow and arrow barely had time to nock one in an attempt to hit him before he was abruptly on top of them, one paw gripping their throat.

– blood, pouring, all over grass and cobblestone and it would stain, even after scrubbing and scrubbing–

His vision was suddenly sharp, suddenly clear; he could see the way the eyes, hidden mostly in the shadow of the cowl of their hood, widen; the hitch of breath, the terrified tremor of the hands.

“Wh-what–”

Crack.

The head flopped limply backwards; Narinder had, without thinking, tightened his grip so thoroughly that there was a sickening snap and a dead heretic suddenly dangling from his hands.

There was another creaking bowstring– Narinder whirled around, the momentum of the motion allowing him to throw the heretic in his hands, bow and arrow thudding uselessly to the dirt, directly into the other one. There was a dry snap– the breaking of a bowstring.

Good.

The large cat lunged, a shadow in the air, soaring a massive distance, and landed, pinning the already-off-balance heretic to the ground. He slashed downwards with his claws, and the heretic gurgled something a second too late; massive, ragged gashes replacing the flesh and cloth where the throat may once have been.

Then, the heretic beneath him withered; flesh decayed and flaked off of the bones; hundreds of years of death exposed to the elements compressed into a few moments. The Crown’s doing.

Narinder whipped around; in a few sharp strides, he was at the Lamb’s side, the Crown frantically flitting around the area of the wound.

The Lamb’s breathing trembled. Obviously, if they died now, they’d simply resurrect– the perks of being a God– but resurrection, even as a God, hurt. It wasn’t merely the sealing of wounds, it was the mending of bones, the stitching together of muscle; all compressed into a matter of seconds and augmented with the presence of black ichor in place of blood and the Crown.

Which was why the truly staggering amount of times the Lamb had died to something stupid was impressive, if for all the wrong reasons.

The Lamb’s lips twisted– it seemed like they were confused on what the appropriate reaction should be. He didn’t even know what the expression on his face must look like. He hoped it was disgusted.

“Um. Oops.” They gave a dry half-laugh, which died before even fully making it out of their throat. “That was close.”

“You’re an absolute dimwit,” Narinder hissed. The Crown helpfully floated some bandages to Narinder– he didn’t even know where the heck it got them from.

He snatched them from the Crown (for once, Tia didn’t glare at him) and glowered at the wound. “Hold still, Lamb.”

They reached up with their uninjured hand instead– then paused.

After a moment, they touched their forehead instead of reaching up to him. “Your eye’s opened again.”

Oh. That explained why he could see the blood seeping into individual furs. Spreading to their wool. The material of the fleece wrapped around them and the stitches, everything pushed to the side so that he could see the wound clearly.

He grabbed their arm forcefully, ignoring the pained hiss the Lamb gave. “Hold still.”

Pulling the arrow out, wrapping the wound, and taking a minute to wipe the blood dripping down his face was all conducted in total silence. The Crown did not settle back on the Lamb’s head, but hovered around the wound, as if checking to see if it was alright.

“I’m fine, Tia,” the Lamb said, beginning to raise their arm to give it a reassuring pat– then winced; the movement had pulled at the injury.

Narinder shot them a glare. “What part of hold still do you not understand, Lamb?”

“It’ll heal eventually,” the Lamb said, but their expression still looked a bit sheepish.

The two of them lapsed into silence again. The Lamb made no effort to jump to their feet and continue the crusade, so they just sat together in silence for a bit.

“My brother’s name was Flan,” they suddenly said.

Tia gave the Lamb a look as it settled back onto their head, though what the look was, Narinder couldn’t decipher.

Narinder looked at them. His third eye was glancing around. It hadn’t started burning quite yet, but there was still blood oozing down his face.

“It was short for Flannel. He hated being called that, though.” The Lamb had leaned against the large rock they were resting against. There was blood smeared on it, from their wound. “And Lacey. Lacey was my little sister,” they added, hastily. “She was only a few years old when… they started the Slaughter.”

He didn’t respond. It was a name of a now-bygone era, the Slaughter– many had actually not even heard of it, since the only target had been lambs and sheep. The Bishops weren’t exactly subtle about their actions, but when most of the species affected by your genocide was wiped out, the memories could fade very quickly.

And they’d succeeded.

(Almost.)

“She was a little goofy.” The Lamb’s smile was soft again; that gentle, almost intimate smile that was softer and warmer than anything they’d ever directed at the other followers. “She always liked to yank on my tuft.”

They touched it, as if remembering it being pulled. “Flan always sheared my back for me, since I couldn’t reach. They trimmed under my head, too.”

The smile fell. They didn’t look away– they just weren’t really the kind to do that– but they simply stared off into the distance. “… sometimes I think about them.”

That was… a loaded comment.

“Why not resurrect them?” Narinder asked, deciding to change the subject promptly. His third eye was starting to burn again, just a bit.

(He tried, briefly, to read their mind again.)

(He couldn’t.)

The Lamb looked at him.

“You could. You have the power to.”

The Lamb shook their head. “I can’t.”

Because death is (beautiful) inevitable.

“The… the heretics burned our village down. My house was included. Resurrection rituals need the body. I doubt I could find the ruins of my family home, let alone find distinct bodies to bury, let alone resurrect,” the Lamb said, simply (though Narinder caught the small bob of the bell as they swallowed, the waver to their voice that grew steady after a short breath).

“Oh,” was all Narinder could think to say in response to that.

The two sat in silence for a moment. The shadows were lengthening slightly, even through the thick layer of clouds that covered the whole forest. His third eye shut at some point, leaving him with a faintly-stinging sensation under his skin and blood that he wiped from his fur, ignoring the way it stained his robe.

“Can I ask one question about Shamura?”

“No.”

The Lamb considered the brief answer. “Leshy?”

Narinder almost snapped ‘no’ again.

But, Narinder played fairly (it was, honestly, one of the things he’d prided himself about as a God), and the Lamb had divulged more information when he asked (though, not about their parents).

“… fine. One question. And if you try to ask a follow-up question–”

“I won’t.” The Lamb silently considered their options of questions. Tia, at some point, had hopped from their head into their uninjured arms, and was snuggling into their chest.

Finally, they gave a single nod. “What was his favorite food?”

Narinder stared at them.

The Lamb looked back.

Apparently, this wasn’t a joke question.

Narinder almost pointed out that they could ask any question, about weak spots (not that Leshy had any such Achilles spots), or personality flaws (he was prideful; not as much as Heket, but he tended to be fairly overconfident)– but he wasn’t about to throw the Lamb a bone.

“… he had a penchant for liking vegetables. He specifically liked beetroot leaves.”

The Lamb nodded and gently shooed Tia off of them, using their uninjured arm to stand upright. They almost fell again, but they managed to steady themself with a few awkward steps. “I think we’ve rested long enough. Let’s go.”

Narinder was baffled. Was that it?

… well, they’d always accepted his brief answers, back when he’d been chained and they’d come to him every single time they’d die via spike or dropper or poison or whatnot. Perhaps this was just similar to that.

What a frivolous question, though.

It was the middle of the night when the Lamb dragged Narinder on a detour.

The Lamb was looking towards one of the paths behind him, a room having been totally cleared and leaving smears of blood and smashed rocks everywhere.

The paths were faint, and often twisted and twined through the trees, obscuring any of the following clearings, but the Lamb stared for a moment anyway.

Narinder glanced at them. There had been no heart vessels in the following areas, so the Lamb’s wrapped wound was still present. The white (black-stained) bandage was totally hidden beneath their fleece, but if they shifted, he could catch glimpses of it from underneath.

He expected the Lamb to ask his opinion on where to go next– that had been how they’d been making their way through since asking what Leshy liked to eat; stopping after collecting some grass or wood from the clearing they were in (and, occasionally, large stones) before turning to ask Narinder where they thought he should go next; which he always responded to with “I don’t care” or “hurry it up, Lamb.”

But this time, they were just staring vaguely off into the thick cluster of trees. It was a bit eerie.

“… Lamb?”

“… this way.” And the Lamb abruptly started to scamper down the path, grabbing him by the paw to tow him that way.

“Lamb!” he barked, but their grip and the burst of speed they’d given fumbled him off-guard enough that he was forced to follow, though thankfully he was given an opportunity to catch his balance through the run and not just trip and get dragged along.

They reached the next clearing, and Narinder jerked his hand away from the Lamb– just in time for them to also let go, so he ended up smacking himself slightly from the unexpected lack of restraint.

He scowled at them, ears pinned back. “What was that?” he snarled.

“Sorry.” The Lamb did not look that sorry. “I saw the stars.”

Narinder looked up automatically. There were wooden moons and stars swaying in the breeze, crudely hooked up onto the branches of the trees– you really had to crane your neck back to look up at them.

“Hi Clauneck!” The Lamb was perky again, all of a sudden, which startled Narinder until his eyes fell upon a tall owl, covered in deep red feathers. He wore a hood, the same color red as his feathers, and despite the shadows the cowl cast over his face, Narinder could see a serene expression on the owl’s face.

The owl gazed at them. “Greetings, Lamb.”

He lifted his head to meet Narinder’s gaze, whose gaze sharpened a bit as their eyes met. The owl seemed totally unperturbed by the glower he was now being fixed with.

“Ah. The One Who Waits. The cards do not lie, then. You are no longer a being of the world below.” The tall owl’s hands shuffled every so often, flicking the black-backed cards and bringing them back together. “So the cards foretold.”

“And how long ago was that, owl?” Narinder growled, shoulders tenser than he wanted them to be. It was no Myst (ugh, what a stupid name. He wished he remembered the name he’d picked for the Mystic Seller back then), but something about Clauneck sent a little shiver of unease up his spine.

Another shuffle of the cards. It sounded like the flipping of pages. “Perhaps a breath. Perhaps a century.”

“Cryptic as always, I see!” the Lamb practically chirped, before Narinder could seriously begin considering if owl tasted good. With the amount of cryptic information he’d been given recently, it was starting to drive him half-mad.

They went over and began perusing the cards that he’d held out for their benefit. “Oh! By the way, do you know Haro?”

“Haro?” Narinder asked despite himself.

The Lamb glanced back at him, before reaching out and touching two card backs to indicate they wanted to select between those two. “Also an owl. But he doesn’t really look like Clauneck or Kudaai. He’s kinda… actually, he reminds me of Myst, shape-wise…”

Clauneck shuffled the cards again, placing the selected two delicately on the purple rug that he sat on. “We have met before,” he said, presumably to the Lamb, but his eyes practically bored into Narinder’s soul.

(Narinder let his lip curl enough to show sharp canines, another growl settling in his throat.)

“A cryptic prophet. One who served the Bishops, once.”

The Lamb was looking at the two cards they selected, lips pinched thoughtfully, but they glanced up at that. “A prophet?”

“Prophecy are the way gods ‘dream’,” Narinder grunted, making the Lamb swivel to look at him.

It was a little funny, the way they awkwardly twisted around from where they were crouched down to look at the cards to look at him.

When they didn’t turn back around, just looking at him curiously, he sighed (a bit explosively) and gruffly continued, “A god can pick up stimuli that mortals can’t. The world can give… signals. Warnings. Gods are able to pick up on the signals, and their minds interpret them into dreams.”

“Oh!” Something crossed the Lamb’s eyes, briefly–

– red eyes–

– before they turned back to face the cards. “That makes sense, actually…”

– Shamura clicking, pleased that their siblings understood–

“How do prophets exist then?”

Clauneck was the one who spoke up here. “While it is true that prophecies are stimuli that only Gods can perceive, a God can give vessels the ability to absorb some of the same signals.”

Hm. Narinder hadn’t remembered that part. Though, in fairness, he tended to forget details about the lessons they had on vessels and mortals and such. You tend to stop retaining the information when you spend centuries chained in an empty white void and fixated on your own hatred, after all.

The Lamb hummed, drumming their fingers on their arm. They were a lot more fidgety when they were like this; a lot more active, with wild gestures that flipped their fleece into their face.

Interesting.

“Is that what happened to Haro? They do wear a funny crown…”

Tia shuffled on the Lamb’s head, as if to tell them to pick a card, already.

The Lamb quickly returned to looking at their options, and selected one– Narinder couldn’t see what it was from this distance.

He wished his third eye hadn’t closed earlier, for the umpteenth time since it had first opened.

“Thanks a bunch, Clauneck. For, uh, both the card and the half-explanation-that-kind-of-started-from-his.” They flailed their hand in Narinder’s direction without looking.

Clauneck bowed his neck. “Your cards have been drawn, and your path lays ahead,” he said simply– it was, clearly, the owl’s way of saying ‘you’re welcome’.

The owl turned his gaze back onto the former God, who was standing a bit behind the lamb, glowering at Clauneck with the intensity of a small inferno.

Once upon a time, a look of that caliber would’ve melted flesh from bone and snuffed a soul.

Now, it just seemed like everyone chalked that up to being Narinder’s personality.

“Would you care for a reading, Narinder?”

The Lamb froze, in the middle of standing back up, as Narinder’s glare sharpened.

He ignored the way the Lamb glanced at him, suddenly-blank– apparently, surprise could cause them to drop their cheery facade, at least for a few moments.

Neither of them brought up how they hadn’t mentioned his name to the owl.

“No.”

Clauneck began to shuffle the cards anyway, apparently ignoring Narinder declining. “I have not drawn your cards in a long time. Or perhaps it was recently, or yet to be.”

After a moment, the owl held out the deck, the same way he’d displayed the cards to the Lamb, fanned out to display the full array of tarot cards, the black-and-red cards almost taunting him. “Select two cards.”

“I said no,” Narinder growled.

“You are plagued with visions, are you not?”

Narinder’s already-gritted teeth clenched together tighter.

The Lamb glanced at Narinder again, but said nothing.

He could see their hand flutter towards his, just for a moment (reaching, clawing), before the Lamb pulled their hand back to their side. They still said nothing.

“Your path is decided. Or, perhaps it is not. The cards will give you answers, though whether they are the answers you seek is perhaps up to the Fates,” Clauneck continued, still not retracting the fan of cards.

Narinder glared at the cards.

He would’ve backhanded them out of Clauneck’s hand, the way he’d done to the meal the Lamb had made him a while ago, but something about the red-cloaked owl gave Narinder an overwhelming impression that doing so was a terrible idea; or at least that he would not be nearly as tolerant as the Lamb had been about it.

– strangely reverent, strangely tolerant, the small smile they’d fixed him with, softer and warmer than their usual face–

“I don’t want to. Let the Lamb do it.”

“The Lamb’s time to draw for their fate is not now,” Clauneck responded, as if he’d expected Narinder to say that. “Perhaps it shall be the next time we meet. Perhaps it was before this, when they plucked a card to add to their arsenal.”

Narinder waited for the Lamb, in their cheery mask, to make a joke about ‘hey, why didn’t you let me know when I was picking my cards that I was about to decide my fate?’

They did not.

When he glanced at them, they were looking at him, with a strangely encouraging look.

“Or, perhaps,” Clauneck continued, “it will be a distant eon from this day.”

Eon. That was what he’d named the Mystic Seller.

Narinder growled and snatched two random cards from the deck. A few ended up falling onto the rug from the force of the snatch, but a sweep of Clauneck’s scarlet wings cleaned up the mess nicely.

Clauneck didn’t rebuke Narinder for the very rude selection of cards– simply motioned to turn them over; and the former God, refusing to break eye contact with the owl (even with the sense of unease knotting in his stomach) did.

He lowered his eyes to the cards.

“The Lovers… and Death’s Door,” Clauneck said, quietly, even as Narinder stared at his cards. “Fascinating.”

Narinder stared at the cards for a moment. “What is the meaning of this?” he growled, his fingers tightening and making them crinkle slightly.

“Pick one of the two selected,” Clauneck responded calmly.

Narinder glowered.

… well, in fairness, he had just snatched random cards.

He shoved Death’s Door back at Clauneck (it hit a bit too close to home). “Fine. I’ve selected.”

The Lamb was looking at the card a bit strangely, so he turned his glare onto the Lamb. “What is it?” he growled.

Tia was looking between them. The Lamb hesitated, before shaking their head. “Nothing important!” they said, surprisingly breezily. “Should we get going? We should probably head to the next clearing if we want to make it out of the crusade before the dawn of the third day.”

“You are the one who chose to go on the crusade, Lamb.” He turned away from the tent of tarot cards, and the red owl that sent little uncomfortable chills through his bones.

The Lamb smiled and hurried into the trees, their bell jingling loudly with each step.

“I have a riddle for you to consider, One Who Waits,” Clauneck said, before Narinder could follow in the Lamb’s footsteps (somewhat literally) and retreat from the clearing.

The former God glanced ahead; the Lamb had already disappeared on the winding path– presumably out of earshot from Clauneck and Narinder by now, if the lack of jingling bell was an indication. “I don’t want to hear it, owl,” he growled.

Clauneck continued anyway.

(He had an infuriating habit of doing that.)

“You may answer me the next time we meet; or you may simply ponder my query. It is of little consequence to me that you answer, but of the utmost consequence that you understand.”

“Hurry up, then,” Narinder snarled– the Lamb would likely come hurrying back to see what was going on.

(And for some reason, some strange twist of Narinder’s gut that sent a rush of unease through him, he didn’t think he wanted the Lamb to hear this part.)

Clauneck did not seem put out by the growl; simply bowed his head politely and continued speaking.

“Prophecies are the dreams of Gods, meant as warnings and spoken as truths,” the owl spoke.

No sh*t, Narinder internally wanted to snap, but he remained silent.

“Thus, the question remains… if you see a prophecy, and select a card meant to guide your path, does that mean that the card discarded was not a part of that truth? Or is it meant to be the outcome of ignoring your warning?”

“I selected my cards randomly,” Narinder hissed. “It was merely the choice I was given.”

“Was it truly random? Or was it, perhaps, the will of the Fates?”

The cards fluttered, turning in Clauneck’s hands, as if of their own accord.

Clauneck plucked Death’s Door from the deck flawlessly, despite him having shuffled the deck at least a dozen times since Narinder had put it back and, with a sweep of the wing, sent it fluttering back towards Narinder– he instinctively caught it.

“Or, perhaps, does it mean that the choice did not matter, and both options are part of the same path?”

“Narinder?” the Lamb was hurrying back down the path, their bell swinging around and jingling like crazy; they had to half-skip because of how short their legs were. They arrived right before Narinder could snap something about not caring about this ‘riddle’.

They looked worried, which was probably just because Clauneck was in the vicinity.

It’d fade to their wooden expression the moment they were out of sight and earshot of the cryptic owl.

“What’s up? Everything alright?”

Narinder forcefully shoved the tarot card into his pocket before the Lamb could get a good look at it. “Your owl friend was spouting nonsense,” he growled, taking his usual long strides to meet them.

“Ahh, Clauneck is… confusing, sometimes,” the Lamb said, giving another half-bow-half-curtsey in Clauneck’s direction and an apologetic little smile– though whether it was directed at Narinder, or Clauneck, the former God had no idea. “But he means well.”

Narinder stalked out of the clearing without another word or looking behind him.

(And he ignored the tarot card crumpled in the pocket of his robe, practically burning a hole into his leg with every step he took.)

Is it the will of the Fates?

Clauneck gave the deck another shuffle, watching the two disappear into the trees.

“Both of them selected The Lovers,” he mused to nobody in particular, the cards slipping inbetween his feathers as he reshuffled the deck. “Though, it certainly doesn’t take a selection of cards to see that outcome.”

He selected another two cards, after a third shuffle, and laid them out in a sweep of the wing, all facedown and evenly spaced. He did not uncover them as of yet, simply turned his head up towards the cloudy sky.

“My Fates, you are dealing some interesting decks… grant me insight into their futures, if you please, for their fates may define that of those around them.”

The owl lowered his gaze back to the rug and reached out.

Flip.

“The Deal…”

Flip.

“… and a Shield of Faith.”

There was a distant rumble of thunder that Clauneck paid no attention to, simply pondering the cards in front of them.

He flipped The Deal back over, tracing a tiny shape on the back with his feathers.

“The moon is beginning to wane.”

Chapter 8: Questions and (Sometimes) Answers

Chapter Text

Amdusias was not particularly difficult to fight against. Especially when it was the Lamb’s second time getting through.

Well, fourth, if you counted that the first time they’d done so, they’d accidentally dodged straight into Amdusias’s very sharp teeth (the crunch of bones had made even Aym and Baal, fearsome warriors, flinch slightly in sympathy); and the second they’d bumbled so much during the regular crusade that a single wound (not even from Amdusias; it had been from a random burrowing worm) was the cherry on top of the ‘oh gods i’m bleeding’ cake, and they ended up collapsing and succumbing then and there to their injuries.

The third time had gone great, in comparison.

It probably also helped that Narinder was actively helping the Lamb, because if they died and got yanked back to the cult, Narinder would be stuck in this room fighting, with nothing but his claws and possibly no actual exit, alone; and he would be damned if he died to something this idiotic.

Thankfully, by this point the Lamb had beaten far worse adversaries (literally himself, though he chose to put that particular thought into his steadily-growing headache corner), and they were competent enough that he reluctantly had to admit that he wasn’t completely fighting the resurrected thing on his own.

“I ended up adopting Amdusias after I beat him,” the Lamb called out from they were ducking said large burrowing worm, as if he didn’t remember them mentioning this to him the next time they died (the very next crusade, to an arrow to the face).

“I don’t care,” he grunted, swiping a burrowing worm across the face and narrowly dodging back to avoid getting hit in the face. “Focus on the battle.”

The Lamb dodged backwards, narrowly avoiding getting bitten.

Foolish mortal. So many of them enjoyed chatting while fighting. A clear display of hubris that always inevitably failed them in the end.

Except the Lamb clearly wasn’t just being chatty, because they did end up going quiet; when he glanced over his shoulder at them after finishing off a burrowing worm, he could see their face was slightly troubled.

Caring.

Ah. Fighting a former follower, even in this form, was making the Lamb feel conflicted.

Foolish false idol.

He turned away and managed to get a slash in on Amdusias as the worm leapt past him. “So what, then?” he growled. “Why are you thinking about it?”

The Lamb sent a wave of tentacles at the monster, though Narinder noted they aimed quite far to the left and more into Amdusias’ path, giving Narinder himself a very large berth. Whether or not that was more because they’d learned the pattern, or they were just… specifically avoiding hitting the former God for some reason (he didn’t need their pity), he wasn’t sure.

“… I’m not sure, honestly. I didn’t exactly talk to him much.”

… well, that was bluntly honest.

“I don’t talk to many of the followers that much,” they amended a moment later. “Not enough. I only know little bits about them, even if I read their mind. But it’s always a bit sad when one of them dies.”

The final blow was struck, but the Lamb didn’t watch as the flesh and muscle dissolved from the bones in a matter of seconds, as per usual.

Well, they were looking in that direction, but Narinder could tell their gaze was a little faraway.

(He could have shaken them out of it, literally– he was larger than they, and it would have been easy to push at them and growl at them.)

(He didn’t.)

“… it’s a bit silly, to care about people you barely know,” they said, after a moment (and Narinder arched his brows at the self-awareness). “But I still miss them, every once in a while.”

Narinder watched the Lamb. Their expression wasn’t exactly emotional– it was as blank as always– but there was something forlorn in their eyes.

He tore his gaze from them, looking at the skeleton of the burrowing worm instead.

And froze.

… there was… something there. Emitting shining golden light, from inside the monster’s rib-cage.

The Lamb had looked over at some point– he realized that they must’ve noticed his entire body tensing in surprise.

After a moment’s pause, they were treading over, fearlessly reaching into the skeleton for their prize. “Ah. This must be for Myst.”

“What?” he asked, a little dumbly.

“Myst asked me something about ‘god tears’ the other day. This must be it,” the Lamb called out over their shoulder, pulling the object out (and snapping at least five rib bones on their way back out, but those the Lamb just grabbed with their free hand and popped into Tia’s storage, as if they did that every day.)

(Actually, they probably did.)

He treaded a little closer, curiosity reluctantly winding its way through him.

Narinder didn’t remember doing that many deals with it, but he had never dealt in god tears with Eon.

(He was not calling them Myst anymore, now that he remembered his own moniker for the deity. It was just too silly. And the large cat still possessed some shreds of his own dignity.)

(There were really not that many shreds left, at this point, but he still possessed a few.)

He had no idea what one might look like; and he realized, as he looked at the thing, that he possibly never would.

Because whatever the Lamb was holding, he couldn’t perceive it. It was glowing, but from there as he tried to focus on it, he could feel his own vision sliding, like oil on water, unable to focus his eyes unless he looked to an area where the tear was sitting in his peripheral, leaving only a golden glow.

But he could certainly feel it. Every time he tried to look at it head-on, he thought he could feel Shamura’s leg on his shoulder as he told them about a dream he’d had, hear Heket chattering away about this or that gossip in her realm.

Stop.

He could see Leshy headbutting Kallamar and both of them clutching their heads in pain immediately afterwards, and Kallamar pulling out FOUR weapons during practice and Narinder promptly fleeing because that was just unfair, and the Lamb, smiling–

Stop it.

His entire chest tightened, to the point of it being painful, and his eyes felt suspiciously damp (he’d better not be crying in front of the Lamb and his traitorous Crown, of all people).

Though, now that he looked at the Lamb in an attempt to not dredge up more of those thoughts, they were blinking tears out of their eyes as well.

They immediately shoved the glowing thing into Tia (who briefly twirled, as if the feeling was surprisingly nice) and wiped their face with a sniff.

“Ah. Well. Sounds like Myst had the right idea calling it a ‘God Tear’,” they said softly.

(Narinder hastily took them not looking at him to surreptitiously reach up and scrub his own eyes.)

“Did you see anything?”

“No,” Narinder lied.

The Lamb didn’t try to press. Their gaze was a bit far away. “I saw Flan and Lacey, just for a moment. Or– well, memories of them, I guess. It’s not like I saw ghosts or something.”

Not their parents.

They’d never brought that up. Or answered Narinder’s question about them, now that he thought more about it.

“… you think about them a lot,” he said, at last, when he reached for something else to say and found nothing.

Kallamar listening to him complain and Shamura teaching them all in the library and Heket babbling about a sermon she was working on and interspersing her draft with regalings of what was going on in her realm and Leshy looking at him in the moonlight–

“Yeah,” the Lamb said, without any embarrassment or denial. “I think about them all the time.”

They reached up and gripped their bell, holding it still. Or clutching at it, like it was the only thing grounding them.

Was it both?

“Lacey loved carrots, but she hated broccoli.” The Lamb’s lips twitched, almost fondly. “Flan liked broccoli, so he’d steal hers, but since he was older than me, I sat in the middle; so it was always like this weird pass-along where I’d have to pass food between them. I got in trouble all the time for it.”

Narinder said nothing.

The Lamb didn’t divulge anything else, but also lapsed into silence.

“Would you resurrect your siblings?” Narinder asked, at length, when the silence threatened to stretch just a tad too long and his thoughts began to grow too loud. “You said you cannot, because there are no bodies. But would you?”

The Lamb didn’t meet his eyes still; still far away in their mind. But he could see their lips thin slightly, thoughtful.

“… I don’t know,” they said at last, softly. “Death is beautiful, after all.”

That, again.

“… what do you mean by death being beautiful, Lamb?” His voice came out as a growl.

They made to respond, but he was cutting them off and grinding out his next words through gritted teeth. What a stupid notion. “Death is cruel. It’s painful. You have seen your followers die, from old age or stupid mistakes on missionary missions or– or, hells, by falling from a tree. You have a whole graveyard full of them.”

The Lamb looked at him. If the sudden burst of anger startled them, they didn’t express it.

Weren’t afraid of it.

“And yet you… insist on saying that death is beautiful. You say it in your sermons.”

And they did. Short as the sermons always were, there was never one that went by without the Lamb saying that phrase.

Death is beautiful.

(What foolishness.)

(Because death is not kind, no matter what anyone said, death was cruel and harsh and painful and inevitable, it was the cessation of life, so how could anyone who loved life think death beautiful?)

“Even I performed resurrections of mortals,” he snarled, and the Lamb’s head tilted briefly, as if something he’d said had caught him off-guard. “It was my domain. I could do what I want with it. And yet even I, as a God of Death, supplanted the natural order, because why contain Death? Who–”

He caught himself before he could spill a little too much.

Who could prefer death over life?

“Death inspires fear in every mortal, every being, even Gods,” he growled at them. “It doesn’t matter who it is, or how much they bluster on, they are afraid of death, you should have been afraid–”

“I was.”

This effectively cut Narinder off from his steadily-rising volume, as he almost literally screeched to a halt in mid-thought.

The Lamb was still looking at him.

“Everyone is a little afraid of death, I think,” they said, their voice somehow softer than their usual blunt tone around him. “Only fools and children don’t fear death. Children learn eventually, and fools will learn the hard way.”

Their hand found its way to their collar.

– a hooded executioner, face practically clouded in shadow–

– the swing of an axe–

He’d never actually seen the scar afterwards, since he couldn’t see their wound once they entered his realm. The Lamb rarely took off their fleece, even in private, and even when they shed the fleece, he’d often watched them keep the bell and collar he’d given them firmly on.

The Lamb gripped their bell again.

“Of course I was afraid.”

Narinder was silent.

The Lamb looked up at him, their bell bumping into their fingers as they released it after a moment and jingling quite cheerfully, breaking the silence resoundingly and suddenly.

“But that’s why it’s beautiful.”

Narinder’s entire face scrunched slightly and unintentionally– the entire statement caught him off guard.

“… I do not understand what on earth you are trying to express, Lamb.” He wanted to sound angry, still (he was), but it just came out baffled.

They gazed up at him, before looking around– as if searching for something, or checking to make sure no enemies could make their way here (which they couldn’t, but Narinder didn’t think it was the latter).

After a moment, he Lamb took Narinder’s sleeve (he noticed, briefly, the twitch of their fingers that directed their hand off the path to take him by the hand) and walked him over to Amdusias’ skeleton.

“What–”

“Look at this.” The Lamb touched the skull.

“It is a burrowing worm skull,” Narinder stated, because it was, barring some weird twisted growths that undoubtedly stemmed from how the creature had warped in its quest to serve his brother, then warped further in Death and the influence of purgatory.

“And what happens to things that are left out in nature?” the Lamb asked, for some reason remaining entirely patient with him.

He glared at them for a moment (Shamura always guided via questions, rather than spelling out the answer for the young Gods), but reluctantly grunted, “they decay. You cannot tell me you think decay is beautiful.”

“Obviously not, but decay is what allows new things to grow.”

“So, it just circles back around to life.”

The Lamb tried again– he could actually see the way their cheek puffed out briefly, like they were about to sigh, before changing tack.

“And look at the bones.” They touched the skull briefly. “You can see how Amdusias lived.”

“I really could care less, Lamb.”

“There’s a kind of elegance to them, though, right?” the Lamb pushed. “To the shape, and the mutations that it underwent to get to this state.”

“… are you telling me you have a fascination with bones?”

The Lamb huffed, but he caught a brief twitch of their mouth. “Never mind.”

They seemed like they were about to ask something, but decided against it.

“For a ‘God of Death’, you sure are fixated on only the negative parts about it.”

“There is nothing but negativity about death,” he snapped back, because he’d long since accepted that. Resurrection, in itself, was the reversal of death. Going back to life wasn’t permitted– wasn’t normal– and yet, that is what he’d done.

Yet, even though he could sense the pure disapproval from his siblings, he had been permitted to continue. Perhaps because it was the closest he would ever get to life again– a supplantation of the natural order of things.

His fists tightened. Claws dug into the meat of his hand.

“For the new God of Death,” he gritted out, “you are fixated on finding a positive when there is none to be had.”

He was hoping they’d have a negative outward reaction (allow him to just be angry at them), but they shrugged at his response. “Agree to disagree.”

The Lamb didn’t say anything besides that, but the way they turned away to start harvesting the massive skeletons for bones for the rituals signaled to Narinder that they had decided the conversation was finished.

Which was frustrating. At least, when they got frustrated back, or laughed at him, or raised their voice in response to him, he found it easy to be angry with the Lamb. Which he very much should be, considering it had only been a few weeks since his defeat.

Narinder abruptly paused as he mentally parsed the odd thought.

… huh.

It had already been a few weeks.

Time felt strange as a mortal– long and short, all at once. A week was a blink to an immortal God, but the past few days felt like forever to him, and yet the previous day’s events felt like an age ago.

He averted his eyes from the Lamb when Tia turned to look at him. The last thing he wanted was for his own Crown to think he was softening towards them.

When he felt Tia continue staring at him (seriously, what was with it? It was a lot more… sentient than he recalled it being, at this point), he began to check over himself instead, to pretend he totally wasn’t trying to avoid the Crown’s gaze.

“Narinder?” The Lamb was still snapping bones out of the rib cage. Probably for rituals.

“What?” He was checking his claws. None of them hurt, thankfully, but there was dried blood crusting under a few of them that was definitely going to be a pain to remove.

“You asked me another question about my siblings.”

He shot them a disgruntled look immediately, narrowing his eyes into red slits. “Do not take it as a sign of affection or some nonsense. I have not forgotten your betrayal,” he growled, voice dropping into a brief snarl on the last word. “I was merely curious about your perspective as a God on resurrection.”

(He ignored how Tia rolled its singular eye at that, as if going ‘sure, Narinder’.)

(If Tia had a voice, it probably would actually be saying that. What a pain in the ass it was turning out to be.)

“Sure,” the Lamb said, totally unbothered by his withering stare, “but if you asked me a question about them, does that mean I get to ask a question about Leshy?”

… he very much wanted to snap ‘no’ at them, but that was how they’d done the first round of questions.

And as much as Narinder wanted nothing more than to go home and go fall onto his too-short bed at the moment, the Lamb had clearly entertained a conversation that they had, only a few days ago, gotten into a loud fight (okay fine, a fight that was one-sidedly loud) with him over.

– “it’s not fair.”

“Life is not fair,” Shamura replied, calm and collected as ever.

He held a crushed scarab in his paws, cradling it gently, before Shamura’s spindly legs folded his fingers over it.

“But death is.”

(Maybe that was one positive about Death.)

“… fine, Lamb. Ask your damned question so we can leave.”

“What was Leshy like?”

“You fought–”

“Not that,” they said, dismissively and ignoring his offended snarl at being interrupted, “I mean like… personality-wise. I didn’t exactly get to meet him outside of him trying to erase my entire bloodline.”

“And you don’t need to. I hate him.”

“That’s not answering my question.”

Narinder snarled, louder, but pressed his face into his paw. It was nice and dark there, which helped to soften the headache that threatened to press against his skull.

“… he liked to play pranks.”

The Lamb did not respond. It made it a little easier to keep speaking, face firmly pressed to his paw with silence surrounding him, except for trees rustling in the breeze.

“His favorite was to hide underground, then burst out of nowhere and bite us. Heket really hated that particular one. He kept doing it, even after she shrieked at him. It wasn’t particularly Godlike behavior, but we never corrected him for it. He’s the Bishop of Chaos, so the rest of u–”

He cut himself off.

If the Lamb noticed (they absolutely did. Who was he kidding?), they were gracious enough to not comment on it.

Either that, or they were really building up a blackmail library.

“… the Bishops and I let him be.”

The Lamb still did not respond. He supposed that was more something Leshy liked, than an actual personality trait.

He hated that he’d set a precedent where he’d reciprocate fairly. He should’ve just told them to shut up and be done with it ages ago.

“… fine. He was a mischievous, conniving brat who sought to make my life miserable through pranks and hijinks, and behaved far too much like a child than suits a God.” He dropped his paw, glowering at them. “Happy?”

The Lamb was looking at him. Their ears were slightly perked to listen, and he could see that they’d stopped in their task mid-motion, hands poised above the rib cage of Amdusias.

“… sounds like he would’ve gotten along with Flan and his friends,” the Lamb said at last, turning back to their task. “They loved little practical jokes.”

Narinder would have asked more, probed further– but he didn’t feel like letting himself think more about back then (about when he’d walk around a corner and Leshy would spring out of a hole like a demented jack-in-the-box and knock them both to the floor, to when he resurrected a Follower and the other Bishops had disapproved but it was his realm, so they let him be and listened to the rumors and the legends and the heresy grow louder), so he stayed silent.

“Here.”

Narinder turned as they came back through the teleportation stone, just in time for the Lamb to thrust a piece of mesh-like fabric into his hands.

He looked down at it automatically.

It was his veil.

Well, not exactly his veil; that one had been significantly larger (for… obvious reasons), but it was a fairly faithful recreation of the thin, dark gauzy veil that had covered his face for a few centuries.

This one, though, had slightly clumsy stitching on the band to keep it on the head, and the material itself looked a little thicker.

“I had a tough time figuring out how to make it see-through,” the Lamb said simply, “but the band should fit over your ears without tugging at them. That always hurts when you fold your ears the wrong way.”

“… it’s satisfactory,” he grunted.

It would, at least, do its job of blocking the sun from searing into his eyeballs. It certainly didn’t look flawless– the stitching was uneven and a little crooked, though he could see an obvious attempt to correct it later on and making the fabric pucker unflatteringly in a spot.

Obviously hand-done. No machine or sorcery could mess that up so badly.

“What weaver did you get to make this?” And can you tell them that they should never sew again? was the question he was tempted to follow up with, but he’d accept this… offering?

Gift?

“Oh, I made it myself.”

He paused.

“I’m gonna give the God Tear to Myst now. Bye, Narinder.”

And they were hurrying off towards the gateway before Narinder could say anything more to them about it, ranging from ‘you’re terrible at sewing’ to ‘take it back, you imbecilic heretic’ and storming away.

He looked down at the veil again. They’d taken time to make the band stretchy, so he could pull it on with ease and without folding his ears painfully in the process; they were right about that. However, it seemed that the material the veil was made out of was durable enough that pressing his claw to it tentatively didn’t instantly shred it.

(He wasn’t stupid. This was definitely made out of the Lamb’s wool. He was just choosing to pretend that wasn’t the case.)

His grip tightened on it, and it took him a tremendous amount of restraint to not just tear the thing in two right then and there.

(Though, the Lamb’s wool was frighteningly durable. His pillowcase– made from plant fibers woven into thread, with the slightly dry texture– was in shreds.)

(Meanwhile, his blanket, a softer and slightly thicker material that resembled a… well, thicker material than the mesh the veil was made from, had no tears in it, despite Narinder undoubtedly scraping at it in his sleep.)

“… what a foolish being.”

The former God stood there for a while, holding the veil in his hands and staring at it.

Finally, after a very long time of him standing and staring, he tucked it into a pocket in his robe. For later.

After all, it would be useful for sunny days.

Lambert made their way to the gateway.

It had been a surreal experience, holding an object that Narinder couldn’t really see.

(They had spotted the stray tear (and a singular drop of blood, rolling from the closed eye on Narinder’s forehead) that snuck its way out of the former God of Death’s eye– holding the tear itself, in their bare hands, made a combination of emotions knot themselves in their chest, a mixture of loss and grief and loneliness, all at once; and when they blinked they saw–)

They blinked hard. Tia had snuggled into their wool on their head.

(The Crown always found it comfortable up there. Sometimes, when Lambert let themself sleep, they’d wake up to the Crown having snuggled into their arms like some bizarre toy.)

Tears of the First Gods… for what were they mourning?

Apparently, even as a former God, the emotion made itself present.

Myst was waiting in the gateway that led to empty blinding white, patiently.

Or impatiently. If Lambert had mastered their own poker face, Myst was a poker face, so Lambert couldn’t read their expression worth squat.

The deity lowered its gaze to Lambert.

“I sense your success,” it said– though Myst didn’t exactly speak. It wasn’t exactly the presence of vocal cords, and no sound really came out, but it was almost like the earth itself vibrated slightly under the Lamb’s feet to convey what the being was saying to them. “I feel the presence of a God Tear. Strength, longevity, and a mourning that stretches eternally.”

Aptly named and described, considering the feelings both (former and infant) Gods had undergone at the sight of it.

“But, seen only by those ascended to godhood.”

… that did explain why Narinder couldn’t see it, at least, before Lambert even had to attempt to broach the topic.

(But to feel it? Was that normal? Could even an ex-God feel the emotion emanating from the tear?)

“I am glad to have underestimated you, for I deal only with Gods.”

Lambert held out the Tear. It made goosebumps rise on their skin and, if they looked at it for too long, made tears start to bead in their vision.

It was rather inconvenient that way.

“Uh… yep! Here you are.”

The God Tear simply floated off their palm, towards Myst.

“… you have dealt with Narinder before? He seemed to know you,” the Lamb said, hesitantly. (It was so easy, to slip into more effusive behavior; to slip on a mask that was so, so hard to keep up.)

Myst did not respond.

“… do you know why he got imprisoned? He… talked about resurrection, earlier,” the Lamb spoke after a moment. “But… it didn’t seem like that was the whole reason, like the myths said. You wouldn’t happen to know what happened?”

Myst said nothing. (Worth a shot.)

“… uh… earlier. You said the Red Crown’s abilities were like the moon. Do you mean that as mine ‘waxes’, his ‘wanes’?”

Myst did not answer, once again.

Man, what a taciturn deity.

“Because… I mean, when his eye is ‘active’, I guess, is that the right word for that? Um, it’s not taking away from mine. Or at least not that I’ve noticed,” Lambert fumbled a bit.

How exactly were you supposed to talk to Gods? The Sheep had never been religious folk, so Lambert had never learned or been taught the rites or the prayers, and of course the Bishops had all been trying to kill Lambert so they didn’t really care how they spoke to the Bishops (it wasn’t exactly like inviting them to tea would’ve kept the Old Gods from slicing off their head), and Narinder…

Well, Narinder hadn’t exactly been angry whenever the Lamb spoke to him like any other person.

No, he’d only been angry after they’d betrayed him, hadn’t he?

(Lambert filed that away into their mental corner reserved for when they had a horrible headache.)

But Myst wasn’t exactly on the same tier as a regular ‘God’.

While Heket and Leshy and the others had certainly inspired fear and awe; something about Myst set the Lamb’s nerves on edge, fraying them, constantly wearing on them just by looking at them.

They had said, once, that they were merely a merchant– but even for only being a ‘merchant’ for Gods, something about Myst simply caused the Lamb’s muscles to tense for so long that they’d feel sore when they returned to the cult.

Myst said something in a tongue that made Lambert’s back teeth grind– what was it saying, when it spoke that? Narinder sometimes said something similar, quietly in a way that obviously indicated a swear, but they could never catch it.

“The push and pull of the tide is ceaseless, as is the power of the Crown.”

(Tia puffed up a little at that. Lambert shook their head a bit, but couldn’t be all that disappointed with the smug little thing; the Red Crown was often so pleased with itself, and it had taken a long time to earn its trust.)

“A Crown may not sit upon two brows.”

Yes, I’ve heard this before. Lambert rarely expressed sarcasm in front of the followers– yes, they occasionally got away with a bit of sass; but it was easy to simply fake affability and cheer, rather than deal with–

– “Lambert!” came the typical sharp bark from their father–

– the usual reaction to their sarcastic jokes, so instead of making their instinctive comment, Lambert waited patiently.

“– but as the push and pull of a tide is eternal, a Crown’s power can not–” Annnd there came more of the eldritch words that made Lambert’s skin crawl, cutting off the rest of the sentence.

A Crown’s power can not– what? There were hundreds of ways that sentence could finish. It seemed important, but of course Myst wasn’t going to just say ‘sorry, let me explain that again’ if Lambert asked.

They hadn’t really tried as of yet, but they didn’t need to to know what the outcome was going to be.

They let Myst finish speaking their eldritch words, before giving an awkward little half-curtsy. “Um… yeah. Thank you for the help, Myst.”

The deity just stared at them.

Geez, it was hard to have a good conversation with it.

A moment later, a necklace was pulled from the void of space beneath its robe, dropping into Lambert’s hands– they nearly fumbled it before drawing it back to take a look at it.

The pendant was crescent-moon-shaped, like the Moon necklace that the Lamb had simply stopped giving after realizing how exhausted their followers became while wearing it.

Unlike the moon necklace however, this moon was carved from bone, with red symbols engraved in it, the string black with red threads decorating the sides.

“The necklace has no effect,” Myst said, staring at Lambert with its two misaligned eyes.

Well, that was straightforward.

“However,” Myst spoke again, before Lambert could say anything, perhaps knowing what Lambert had been preparing to say, “knowledge is oft gained through sacrifice.”

Tyan was at the kitchen chatting to Fikomar (and Yarlennor, who was perched on Fikomar’s shoulder) when Narinder walked up to grab a meal– it was clearly not the actual food line, since it was far too late in the afternoon for that, but he could see that Tyan had set aside a fish meal at the end of the counter.

She grinned when she spotted him and waved exuberantly.

Narinder’s response was a darkening scowl.

Wonderful. He’d been hoping to escape this with as little social interaction as possible. He was tired from the crusade and wanted nothing more than to eat and then crash on his bed as soon as he finished.

At least Tyan wasn’t particularly rude to him.

(Actually, she was weirdly pleasant to him, despite him constantly glaring at her. What a strange creature.)

“Hermit!” Yarlennor shouted (happily?), pointing at Narinder as he approached.

“Why is a child sitting on the gorilla’s head?” was Narinder’s reply, directed to Tyan.

Fikomar grunted and signed ‘hello’, though he seemed reluctant to do so.

“Oh, Lenny’s ma is working the crypts today, and sweeping the graveyard-garden-area on top of that. She said it’s a bit bleak for a four-year-old, so she asked Fiko to babysit,” Tyan said breezily.

Yes, bleak. The way people should feel about death.

“… I see.” He reached for the bowl–

“Oi!”

Gods damn it all.

Narinder turned to see two farmers approaching.

One– Nokia? No, Nokimar– a chestnut horse with spots on the side of the head was storming towards Narinder, while the other, an older purple mouse, struggled to keep up and was clearly trying to get the horse to cut it out.

(Narinder spotted Brekoyen– stupid tapir, he was tempted to pull its tongue out– sweeping up something nearby, and purposefully giving a disdainful sniff and turning away from the scene when she made eye contact with the former god.)

Nokimar scowled at Narinder as he drew level with him. Narinder, standing up straight, was probably still a good few heads taller than most of the tallest people in the cult, but it wasn’t like he cared enough to have good posture.

Unfortunately, in this case, because he didn’t loom above the damned horse, he was probably opening himself up to what was shaping up to be one of the most irritating conversations he was about to engage in.

And he’d just spent about a day talking with the Lamb between rooms while they ripped bones out of skeletons and cut grass. That was saying something.

“Heya, Kimar–” Tyan started, in her typical cheerful twang.

Apparently, he usually went by a shortening of his name, like Yarlennor did. Though Narinder saw no point in simply removing one syllable.

Nokimar (Kimar? Whatever. Less syllables was easier to remember) cut her off mid-greeting.

(Fikomar frowned.)

“You’d best stay away from the Leader, Hermit.”

“I’d love to, considering they’re the one who keeps seeking me out,” Narinder growled in response.

“Like h–”

Tyan casually took out a very large cleaver (her favorite knife; she never let Narinder use it while in the kitchen) and placed it on the counter in full sight of them with a decisive clunk.

“HEY, Lenny, how ‘bout I prepare you a snack?” she asked Yarlennor loudly, drawing the toddler’s attention.

“Snack?”

Toddlers were very fickle creatures with their attention spans.

Kimar glowered at Narinder, but begrudgingly lowered his voice. “Like hells that’s true. They’ve been acting all– subdued whenever we see you talking to them.”

Narinder just stared at Kimar for a moment, internally wishing he was anywhere except for here. He would prefer to be back on the crusade and listening to the Lamb say idiotic things like ‘death is beautiful’ than to be here in this moment.

“… and?” he growled, when apparently nothing else was forthcoming.

Kimar gave a sarcastic laugh. It was terribly annoying. He wanted to throw the horse across the cult.

“Are you joking? It’s obvious you’re doing something to upset them!”

Tyan was loudly asking Yarlennor if she wanted a banana in her snack, which at this point in her effort to keep the toddler from listening to this conversation, looked more like a whole meal.

“Have you met the Leader? Well, clearly you don’t know them very well–”

(No, sadly, it was a bit too much the opposite at this point, and that was a fact Narinder was going to reserve for his rapidly growing headache corner.)

“– since if you did, you’d clearly see they always smile around us. Whenever they’re talking to you, though? I’ve seen their face. They just look–” Kimar pulled their best blank facial expression, or at least the best they could manage while also simultaneously glowering at Narinder like he wanted the former God to explode.

Narinder would’ve laughed hysterically, if he was in the mood to do anything except glare at Kimar. If anything, their blankness was totally normal. They never put on that cheerful mask around him.

Not anymore.

(What did that mean? Never mind. He’d save that for the monster migraine he’d have one day about the Lamb.)

Anyay had caught up to Kimar and was currently pulling at his arm. “Kimar, seriously, need help with the beets,” she said, but unlike Tyan who seemed unrelentingly cheerful, Narinder could clearly hear the pitch of her voice being a little too high, her eyes darting between the two as if she expected Narinder to haul off and throw Kimar.

She wasn’t terribly far off the mark.

The former God rolled his eyes, restraining his rapidly thinning temper. This was already too much trouble than it was worth, so he stepped forward and snatched his bowl of fish off the counter, giving Tyan a curt nod. He’d entertained enough of this nonsense today, especially regarding anything Lamb-related.

He turned to leave–

“Hey, I’m not finished with you!” A rough hand grabbed his shoulder–

– the Lamb, reaching for him–

– red claws emerging from shadows–

Narinder whipped around, yanking the hand from his shoulder and straightening to his full height in the same instance, and he found himself glowering down at a suddenly-several-inches shorter Kimar.

“Do not put your hands on me!” he snarled, and the starts of a roar rumbled deep in his throat, low in his chest and sending tension into his shoulders.

With that, he turned back around on his heel and stormed off towards his hut, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes.

Fools, all of them.

Especially the damned Lamb.

(Fear, pooling in Kimar’s eyes despite the horse’s anger a moment earlier, a step back from both Anyay and Kimar, Yarlennor startling about with wide eyes, the abrupt stiffening of Fikomar’s shoulders and the tightening of Tyan’s fingers on the knife–)

“Of course I was afraid.”

“That’s why it’s beautiful.”

(What a stupid idea.)

The next crusade was the next day– the Lamb, apparently, wanted to get through this as quickly as they could.

Not that he was complaining. It certainly gave him an excuse to avoid the kitchens, after the scene yesterday. As much as Tyan seemed to tolerate him, he didn’t feel like being questioned.

He was certain the Lamb was aware of what happened (no doubt, Tyan or Anyay or one of the dozens of other gossips who had witnessed the thing had told them, or more likely the damned horse had gone boo-hooing to the Lamb about Narinder rightfully getting angry about Kimar touching him), but they hadn’t brought it up yet, perhaps waiting until he himself was comfortable to talk about it.

Foolish creature.

Narinder looked over at the Lamb, who was in the middle of looting a corpse.

(They had a tendency to do that; finish fighting and then have Narinder stand, sometimes awkwardly in the center of the clearing or off to the side, while they took the time to harvest grass, or rocks, or bones.)

(It gave him a moment to catch his breath (being mortal was ridiculous. How was he so out-of-breath from something so exhilarating?), so his grumbles and snipes were fairly toned down from what he might usually spit at them.)

Kimar’s words, as blindingly stupid as they were, had sat with him for a while.

Was the Lamb merely acting differently towards him because he had upset them somehow? It was a long time for them to feel ire towards him.

That said, they had only recently repeatedly fought to the death with him, so perhaps that was justified.

Before he could stop himself, he found himself calling across the clearing. “Lamb.”

“Yeah?” They stopped, mid-harvesting some bones, looking up at him.

It was almost comical, the way their arms were covered in heretic blood, rooting around in a rotted skeleton for bones; posed in a way that suggested they really had to reach in deep to get anything of value.

Narinder realized, a few seconds too late, that he had no idea how to broach the subject.

For one, he didn’t want it to seem like he was being soft on his traitorous former vessel. He didn’t want them to think he cared about their well-being or if he upset them or not.

He was just curious.

Curiosity killed–

For the other, it would be extremely uncomfortable if it turned out he had upset them, and they then had to continue this crusade for several more hours, if not days.

But he’d already said something, and they were looking expectantly at him (well, he presumed, they didn’t exactly make a facial expression to indicate so), and it’d probably be more strange to not follow through at this point, so he gave a sharp sigh.

“Have I… happened to displease you?” he finally asked.

“No.” The Lamb promptly went back to rooting around in the corpse.

Narinder blinked at the swift answer.

“No?”

“No,” Lambert responded again, pulling out several bones from the rib cage, mouth scrunching briefly at the misshapen, sharp bits. “Hmm. These are broken. I guess we can use them for rituals or something.”

They held them up to Tia for storage, glancing down to meet eyes with Narinder. “Why?”

They were always so even-tempered. Even when they stopped being cheery and bubbly, like they were with the followers, Narinder hadn’t even heard them raise their voice beyond fighting with him, and even that was barely louder than usual.

They were just so… blank, sometimes.

“Why do you stop… being cheerful, sometimes?” he found himself asking, seemingly of his own accord.

(Why was his mouth insisting on running away before the rest of his brain caught the memo? He’d never had this problem as a God.)

“I asked you first.” The Lamb straightened up, putting away the rest of the bones they’d gathered.

The large cat let out a sigh that almost amounted to a snarl. Fine. He’d play fair. (Damn himself for even doing that. He was no longer a God. He did not have to abide by his own rules.)

(That made something tighten in his chest, at the reminder.)

“Your damnable farmer decided to harass me while I was getting my meal for the day.”

“Ah, Nokimar.”

He watched them as they dusted off their hands, then began to harvest bundles of grass. “So you were informed about what happened yesterday,” he grumbled.

“Several times over,” the Lamb said, and he thought that he saw their mouth twitch upwards briefly. “But also, I can’t imagine you’d call Anyay a ‘damnable farmer.’”

True. The mouse, at least, seemed more well-behaved compared to the horse.

“… you did not see fit to punish me? Make an example out of me?” His voice dripped, heavy with sarcasm. The Lamb never doled out punishments; only occasionally to dissenters and even then they usually reserved that for sacrifice. They’d tolerated him throwing bowls at their followers.

The Lamb looked at him again, this time continuing the harvesting of bones. “Tyan frightens me sometimes.”

Narinder blinked.

That was certainly an unexpected turn of the conversation.

“… she approached me when I got back,” they continued after a moment. “Said that Noki– Kimar. Right, he prefers that– Kimar was trying to start a fight with you, and you only reacted once you got grabbed.”

Narinder blinked again.

“And Tyan has a lot of knives, so I don’t really want to deal with her wrath if I punished you for something that doesn’t seem to be your fault.”

Narinder was silent for a moment, parsing the thought.

“Lamb, you are immortal.”

“Does that mean I am somehow exempt to not wanting to be stabbed with a knife?”

“… you answer my question now.”

The Lamb blinked, before the half-twitch of their mouth fell.

“Why do you… not emote, sometimes?” Narinder repeated, though he changed the wording this time.

It was less than simply not being cheerful, it was almost like taking a slate and scrubbing it clean, but at a click of the fingers. It was easy to compare their cheer to a mask, and it simply dropping and coming back on in an instant.

“It’s normal for me.”

Somehow, their tone, even though they sounded as placid as ever, had changed slightly. What before had felt slightly more whimsical, more like they were teasing him, fell totally flat.

“… obviously, Lamb, I was inquiring why you bother being cheerful at all, if this is your… normal state,” he growled.

“… can I get a rain check on this?”

Narinder blinked again.

“… what?”

“I’m not skipping out on answering,” the Lamb hastened, though his tone had not been one of anger but bafflement, “but… it’s one of those things I have to think about more before I can give an answer you’d find satisfactory. I can answer later, or… I could answer two questions next time you have one? Or you can skip my next question?”

How annoying. But they were in the middle of a crusade, and if he had a shouting match with them now, there wasn’t much stopping them from abandoning him in Darkwood to fend for himself. Nor would he be able to use the teleportation circle. He’d be trapped.

“… fine,” he muttered. “But if you do this to every question I plan to ask you, I’ll throw you at a tree.”

“Strangely specific threat, but I won’t.” The Lamb paused, then gave a firm nod to him. Their arm moved as if they moved to gesture to shake his hand, but they seemed to notice their blood-soaked arm and decided against it.

“I promise.”

Narinder blinked at that again. Something fluttered in his chest.

Fear? Hate?

Did hate make your heart beat a little faster?

“We are wasting time. Finish gathering materials and let’s move on,” he said at last, deciding that simply pretending they had said nothing was the easiest solution. “The sun is setting.”

“Okay.”

Being mortal sucked.

As a God, Narinder did not need to sleep.

He could, and he’d had a long time ago, but he could simply go on forever and ever without once shutting his eyes, if he so decided.

– waking up with a whole-body violent start and blinking away sights of black ichor everywhere–

As a mortal, his entire body was starting to feel the toll of a second full day of crusading without sleeping. A bat had managed to clip him on the cheek with a talon (which he’d promptly had to fight the Lamb off when they tried to take a look at it, after the coast was clear and the enemies they’d been battling were nothing but bones) because he was a bit too slow in ducking; his eyes felt like there was sand constantly in them and blinking sometimes led to him keeping them closed for a little too long, and something in the side of his head was thumping. (Probably that headache he was delaying.)

“Narinder?”

He growled, but there was no bite to it and he was obviously too out of it to be anything resembling threatening– every time he tried to focus his vision, his eyes just itched badly. “What?”

“I’m tired.”

That made his eyes widen a bit.

Narinder turned and stared uncomprehendingly at the Lamb; who was standing just near enough to be in the range his eyes could sort of focus on them, but far enough that they couldn’t touch him.

– they took a step towards him–

He blinked hard, and they hadn’t moved an inch; just staring at him with their hands clasped together rather politely.

“… what?” he asked, when no explanation seemed immediately forthcoming.

The Lamb shrugged. “I could use a break,” they said, quietly. “Do you want to take a nap?”

“Here?” was all Narinder could think to say, stupefied.

Granted, since the clearing was empty, nothing should attack them– once a space was cleared, it remained clear, thank the Gods for that– but Narinder would have thought the Lamb would be uncomfortable, in a space filled with scattered remains and nothing but open air and chopped grass.

(– the aura of having spilt blood hung around the Lamb–)

(Perhaps not.)

The Lamb shrugged again, perfectly nonchalant. “Sure. We’ve been going all day. We could use the rest.”

Had Narinder not been exhausted from slaying enemies for two days in a row, with the restrictions of a mortal body and without a weapon, he would’ve snapped that he didn’t need pity (especially not from them), that he knew they didn’t need the rest, that he could see through their flimsy ploy to let him sleep–

But he was exhausted. Fighting in itself was strenuous, especially when he could only rely on his claws and his own reflexes. His eyes itched with the desire to close them for longer than a few hard blinks to try to clear his aching mind, and the small wound on his paw (the comment Tyan had made about a lover’s spat still popped to the forefront of his mind periodically, which annoyed him to high heaven) was starting to ache.

So rather than snap at the Lamb, who was patiently watching him, he sighed (rather explosively, more of a huff than a sigh) and let himself ease into a sitting position on the grass.

Immediately, the ache in his legs halved, and he half fell backwards onto his bottom.

Damn being mortal.

He didn’t make eye contact with the Lamb. Even if they themselves never seemed smug when he inevitably embarrassed himself in front of them, Tia certainly did. Insufferably so.

“I can hold first watch,” the Lamb offered.

Narinder grumbled something incoherent and leaned against a rock. Not particularly comfortable, but at this point you could give him a piece of wood with knives stabbed through it and he’d probably find a way to sleep on it.

Before he could think to mutter something like ‘don’t do anything stupid’, Narinder was asleep.

He found himself sitting at the eerily-still stream in Darkwood again, the False Lamb the same distance away from him as before.

Only this time, instead of that tension running through his spine and his blood, it was the strangely steadfast presence of the Lamb– his Lamb (no, that was a ridiculous notion, and he immediately banished it to the headache corner the moment he thought it) that seemed to greet him.

He side-eyed them, debating seeing if he could get up and hurry away. He didn’t think so. It was the same feeling of being unable to move, or at least finding it immensely difficult.

The Lamb turned to look at him.

“Do you understand now?”

The question was blunt, blank. Normal. It wasn’t the poisonous sugar he’d been greeted with the last time, nor the leering red eyes.

If it hadn’t been such a stark reminder of the last time he’d dreamed of this place (red eyes, darkening wool, blurry vision and pure terror in his bones), Narinder wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

He glared at them. “Understand what exactly?”

He knew exactly what they were talking about.

The False Lamb smiled sweetly at him again, but this time instead of looking like it was venomous, it looked almost kind–

– warm and soft and “thank you, Narinder”–

“Well, let’s review, shall we?”

“Die.”

“I’m a figment of your imagination, Nari, can’t exactly die,” the False Lamb replied, remarkably amiably.

“Do not–”

They pulled out two cards.

The Lovers and Death’s Door.

He’d shoved them both under the loose, creaky floorboard near his front door. The board wasn’t nailed down, but it was definitely loose enough that he could pry it up a few inches, and there ended up being a nook large enough to toss both cards inside.

The less he thought of them, the better.

So of course the False Lamb would pull them out now.

“You’re not stupid, Nari. We both know that.” The False Lamb held them both out, offering them to him. “And combined with what Eon told you, you have enough to figure something out, don’t you?”

He didn’t take them.

“I picked those cards at random,” he ground out, glaring at them with enough heat to set fire to the sun. “They mean nothing.”

The False Lamb ‘tsked’ slightly, shaking their head. “Did Shamura teach you nothing?”

Narinder growled and forced himself to look away from them. It was very hard to move, like he was stuck in a pool of black ichor and trying to stay afloat, lest his head sink beneath the inky waves. “It doesn’t matter–”

The whole world seemed to slide, like oil on water, and suddenly he was in the library again, but this time it was just him and Kallamar sitting together on the little vaguely-uncomfortable stools weaved from spider silk (perhaps that was why the Lamb’s was thicker; he distinctly remembered his old veil being made of something thin and delicate), with Shamura climbing on the webs and fetching some books from higher up.

(Heket and Leshy had come later. Not particularly long after this, but it had still been some years before they’d find a four-eyed frog.)

“So our fates… can’t be changed?” Kallamar was asking, hesitant and twisting his tentacles together nervously.

He’d always been a bit shy. Even as a bishop, filled with confidence (arrogance) in his own abilities and his realm, he had a habit of slinking off at celebrations to a quiet corner, listening to the festivities rather than engaging in them.

Coward.

“Not quite,” Shamura responded, clicking their pincers together– whether in displeasure or reassurance, Narinder couldn’t tell.

(There was a time, long ago, where he would’ve known how Shamura felt with the twitch of their eye.)

(Not anymore.)

“Take a web, for example.”

The web Shamura flung onto the table from their height in the webs nearly missed and hit both Narinder and Kallamar in the face.

He remembered squealing and ducking back, and then both him and Kallamar giggling a little at each other (with each other) as they realized both had leaped backwards to avoid getting sticky webs over them both.

“Stop this,” he gritted out to the False Lamb, leaning on their side and watching silently with that damned smile on their face, trying not to think of that. His chest felt strangely tight again.

“Oh, but you really need the refresher.”

He snarled at them. At this rate, he was preferring the abject terror to this. “You have mutton for brains.”

“Oh, that’s a funny one. Tell that to your Lamb when you wake up.”

Shamura turned around, not having heard any of this back and forth, vicious barbs from Narinder and a nonchalant coolness from the False Lamb.

Of course they wouldn’t. It had never happened.

The large spider clicked their pincers. “Oops.”

They knew Shamura had thrown it on purpose, to tease both of them, but neither Kallamar nor Narinder had ever said anything, too busy stifling laughter.

“If you start at the center– there are dozens of ways you could go, and dozens of things you could reach,” Shamura said, giving a gesture at the web before them. “What determines Fate is not only dependent on how the world is–”

Shamura tugged the table so that it tilted awkwardly, then fell onto its side with a resounding clunk, meaning the web became awkwardly draped half-over the edge, snapping several of the delicate threads in the process.

“– but on your own choices. For example, let’s say I take this path.” Shamura placed one of their legs on it, not putting any weight on the thread. “Then, I only have a few options from there, and a few options from that other point, and so on. Understanding so far?”

Both (small) Gods nodded, and Shamura continued, “in the case of a prophecy, the Fates have watched your actions and the world’s since long before you even were a thought in somebody’s head.”

They snapped that string. “Thus, a prophecy–”

More strings snapped, until only a path with a few offbranches remained.

“– is your actions being interpreted along the state of the world, and the possible outcomes remaining.”

“Stop,” Narinder growled at the Lamb. His chest felt even tighter, strangely– panic?

The world slid around again, and he found himself gripping a handful of grass beside the stream.

It was peaceful and bright, compared to the dimness of the library, and Narinder had to blink several times to get the light to stop stinging.

(Which was stupid. This was a dream.)

The False Lamb watched him, smiling still.

“Consider something Clauneck told you,” they began.

The former god glowered at them, teeth half-bared. It was too calm, too steadfast. He could not quite be as angry as he usually was, which honestly kind of just made him a little angrier. “I do not care what the damn owl said.”

“You should.” They leaned in, but their touch was not harsh or dangerous, but just gentle as they took their face in his hands.

He tried to jerk back, but the feeling of swimming in black ichor had returned.

“He would not let the Lamb pick their cards. He said their time was not right then.”

Narinder glowered at them, his glare searing into the Lamb’s face, only a few inches away. Their hands were soft on his face, but firm– even when he did try to pull away, their grip was somehow still present. “I don’t care, you traitorous wretch.”

“Tell your Lamb that one, too, they’ll get a hoot out of it.” The Lamb laughed, still dangerously close to him. “Get it? Hoot?”

He glared harder.

“Tough crowd. But think about it. You know that the Lamb must be a part of your prophecy. Your fates are intertwined, like the tide and the moon.”

Narinder’s heart was going surprisingly fast.

Fear?

(a God isn’t afraid)

(he’s not a God anymore)

(is he afraid?)

“Clauneck mentioned they could have drawn their cards already, right before you drew yours.”

“Stop,” Narinder repeated, closing his eyes.

It helped calm the way his heart had suddenly picked up, faster than before– was he afraid of them? Or was it some sort of boiling hatred deep in his stomach? Perhaps it was a reminder of the pure terror he had been stricken with before.

The False Lamb laughed softly. It wasn’t the bright sound of bells, but something gentle and soft and matching their facial expression. Their soft touch slipped away from his face, leaving it surprisingly cold.

“Just for you, Nari.”

Narinder, for the first time in a long time, did not jolt awake from his nightmare(?)-prophecy, but found himself easing into consciousness. The outdoor air was fresh and crisp, like the smell of dew on grass and autumn leaves.

Something was warm, in a spot against his chest. Like sunlight.

Oh, great. The sun was shining today. At least he’d brought the veil with him, and shoved it into a pocket inside the robe. It would prevent him from going blind. And at least the sun would cut through the autumn chill slightly. Fall was in full swing, and it brought the smell of browning leaves and cooler air.

Though, it was a bit odd that it was only in one spot against his chest.

It felt a little heavy, too, like something was pressing against it.

Narinder forced his eyes open, blinking a few times.

He distantly noticed the crispness of the browning leaves in Darkwood, the blades of drying grass, the sensation of something warm trickling down his forehead.

Great. His third eye was open again.

He looked down– and immediately felt all three of his eyes go wide, snapping him awake instantly.

The Lamb was sitting upright– well, presumably they had been, probably keeping an eye out.

Of course, since the area was clear, no enemies had ended up arriving, and they must’ve drifted into slumber themselves out of boredom.

Which he could have tolerated, except that they had slumped backwards and were now leaning against his chest.

Narinder didn’t exactly see what happened next, but there was an abrupt scuffling and a surprised yelp (from who, he didn’t know– he thought it came from the Lamb, but he was in such an instinctively panicked frenzy) and he was standing with the Lamb going flying across the clearing.

Ah. He’d thrown them.

The Lamb nearly went flying headfirst into a tree, which probably would’ve snapped their neck, but Tia moved in a blur of black and red and suddenly the Lamb was being turned in midair and went flying into a rather large, intact bush at the edge of the clearing instead, sending a small explosion of leaves into the air.

There was a moment of silence, a moment where he thought the Lamb was dead and that the impact had just been too strong– then their head popped out of the bush.

Besides some leaves and twigs haphazardly caught in their wool, they seemed no worse for wear.

“Morning, Narinder.” They rubbed their eye a little bit, looking fairly unperturbed about being woken up by being thrown at a tree and promptly diverted into a large bush. “That was effective.”

Tia glared at Narinder, then began to pluck twigs out of the Lamb’s wool. He glowered at them both.

“I didn’t divert any more questions yesterday, so I think it was a little unfair to throw me at the tree.” He wished he could tell when the Lamb was joking. It was nearly impossible with their facial expression unless he spotted their lips twitching.

The Lamb wiggled until they were free from the bush, and began to dust themself off. “Thanks for the catch, Tia–”

“What were you doing?”

The Lamb turned to face him, though he did notice their mouth tightened briefly as the movement caused a twig to get caught in their wool. “Ouch– Tia was keeping watch, so I decided to get some sleep–”

He growled. “Do you not recall what you were doing?”

“… no, I was asleep. Why?”

… maybe that was a boon in and of itself.

He glared at them before looking off into the trees, neglecting to answer them.

It wasn’t quite sunny today, but there were patches where the sun did peek through the clouds and foliage.

The Lamb was suddenly beside him, and by beside him he meant right in front of him, inspecting his eye. They didn’t push on the subject any further. “It’s not too… bloody, this time around…”

“Don’t fret over me, Lamb. I’m not a naive little sheep in your flock,” he grumbled.

“Nobody’s a Sheep in my flock.”

… he couldn’t tell if the Lamb was being sarcastic there. (Damn it all.)

He sighed and wiped blood from his head, cautious to avoid his third eye. It seemed to consistently bleed, a sluggish flow of red that stained and dried a rust-brown in his dark fur. “Never mind.”

“Did you sleep alright?”

He stood, the slog to his limbs alleviated immensely from the previous day, stretching a little. His mortal joints popped. (Ugh.)

Narinder didn’t answer, but the Lamb seemed satisfied with that as an answer, because they nodded and stood as well in his peripheral vision. “If you need to take a break, tell me. It’ll be inconvenient if you get your eye taken out by a bat or something.”

He grumbled again without any actual confirmation, but they apparently took it as one, because they nodded and turned to the only path in the clearing that they hadn’t taken.

“Let’s go.”

Chapter 9: Black Ichor

Chapter Text

Narinder knew the smell and texture of black ichor well.

It had oozed from his skeletal arms as a chained God, constantly.

Even before he was trapped with the smell and agony for centuries, he could feel the sluggish, muddy substance in his veins, and grimaced every time he got a tiny cut as the red-and-iridescent liquid would ooze out and immediately taint the air with its sickly-sweet scent; no matter how little ichor actually came out.

(It was the first time he’d been aware that he was different from his siblings.)

(They all bled regular ichor, which too was dark and had an iridescent glimmer to it, but lacked the venomous red glow it would emit or the thick consistency; while he was left with thick, poisonous sludge in his blood and seeping from his arms and rotting everything he touched.)

Suffice to say it, he was more than a bit baffled at the fact that the Lamb used their own blood (their eyes bled red with the power of the Crown, but their wounds, their body, bled black ichor) to poison enemies.

A heretic got trapped in the thick sludge; he could see them struggling and growing weaker while trying to free their ankles from it.

Not only did black ichor smell rank, it had a tendency of sapping strength from any mortal unlucky to stand in it– which marked the end of this heretic who stopped struggling and collapsed after only a few moments; decaying rapidly into a puddle of blood, floating atop the smear of black ichor.

“Do you always do such idiotic actions such as throwing projectiles of your own blood at enemies when crusading?” he growled at the Lamb.

They shrugged. “Tia keeps me from bleeding out when I do,” was their almost nonchalant reply.

Narinder glared at the Crown, who gave him a stink-eye in return.

What an irresponsible habit. It had certainly never supported him in combat that way.

The Lamb, satisfied that the enemies in the room were dead, began to cut more grass and shove it into Tia’s storage space. The Crown helpfully followed so that they didn’t have to go far before they could put it away.

“Why are you so insistent on gathering grass, Lamb?” Narinder asked, watching them move around the room and slice at the grass with huge swings of their axe, decimating camellias and tall plants alike. This was the fifth area they’d stopped in for the Lamb to spend a few minutes collecting grass.

“We’re out of fertilizer,” was the Lamb’s plain reply, totally unperturbed at how annoyed he was.

It took forever to get through the crusades, even if their weapons were better, strengthened by faith and their swings more accurate, more sure with experience; because the Lamb insisted on walking around each clearing to harvest grass.

“Just kill one of your followers and turn them into fertilizer, then. Problem solved.”

“I think that just causes more issues, to be honest,” they replied, making their way closer to one of the paths– before their head snapped up, as if double-taking in surprise.

They stared into the trees for a moment.

For a moment, Narinder wondered if they’d seen ‘stars’, and internally grimaced at the idea of having to meet Clauneck again, and lifted his own eyes– but the sight that faced him baffled him a little more.

There were… strange things hanging from the branches. A bundle of strawlike-hair tied with a bow, a half-shattered dice with an eyeball gazing listlessly from one of the faces, a seal dripping with thick red wax (some of it dripped onto the stone and sizzled, but no smoke rose from the drop), a gnarled and yellowed tooth that looked as though it had been pried from a skull.

The Lamb looked at him.

He looked back at them for a moment.

“… I don’t know what this is either, Lamb.”

“Worth a shot.”

They took his sleeve and tugged him forward, their feet landing first on soft moss with grass feebly poking through, then stone.

He nearly protested, then gave up– the Lamb did what they wanted, and nothing a (former) God did would stop them.

The air changed; instead of being out in the woods with fresh, slightly-damp autumn air, they’d entered some kind of structure made of stone; only slightly warmer than the autumn chill and with a different type of damp smell to it.

The room that the two entered was mostly empty, but there were vaguely-person-shaped sacks tied to poles circling the room.

Narinder’s eyes passed over crumbling stone, stained glass windows, a few candles made from red wax, oozing red down the sides of the pillars and nooks in the walls they were set in.

“Hello?” the Lamb called out, tentatively.

There was a flurry of movement– Narinder jerked backwards, yanking the Lamb with him, before the blue thing that had just descended from the ceiling was yanked to a halt and bounced back upwards slightly.

The movement slowed, revealing that it was a large, blue-feathered owl; a strange Crown with three misshapen eyes dotted into it, tendrils clinging to her scalp. Narinder caught a glimpse of tatters, of torn, ichor-stained flesh that continued to bleed sluggishly where legs might have been, and tore his eyes from them.

Her slow bouncing made Narinder realize that the reason she had not gone slamming full-force into the floor after diving down from the ceiling was a strange contraption– hooks bound to stretching ropes which in turn hooked onto a harness wrapped about the odd blue owl.

His eyes landed on the mutilated legs again, for just an instant, and then looked back up to meet her eyes.

The owl’s eyes bulged large and round and red; darting around the room until they landed on the two gawking up at her. She bounced in mid-air, still recovering from her initial plummet downwards, but also because she seemed… strangely pleased at their presence.

“Ah. Ah! The Red Crown,” she exclaimed, voice high and piping as she fixed her bulging gaze upon the Lamb. “You, beast… Godly.”

Her voice changed on the last word, briefly.

Her large red eyes flickered to Narinder a moment later, curious. “And you, beast…” Her whole body swayed in her harness as she tilted to one side, as if trying to get a better look at him. He glowered at her.

“… strange. Odd. Not Godly. But not mortal, neither, no.”

She turned her full attention to the Lamb before Narinder, ears half-folded backwards, could think to ask what she meant by that; she seemed totally bored by him already.

(He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved, or thoroughly insulted.)

“Come, come. I have tools to give, yes? Crafted by Chemach. My brothers, they might have pretty things, but mine? Power. Powerful things.”

Chemach. The name rang a bell…

“Your… brothers?” the Lamb asked, tentatively. “Do you mean Kudaai and Clauneck?”

Ah. Now that the Lamb said that, Narinder could see the slender beak that both brothers possessed, and while her own shape was a little less put-together than the blacksmith and the prophet (for that was what Narinder was fairly certain the red-cloaked owl was), she still had an angular look to her body that reminded him of the two owls.

He remembered her.

... but she was different, than what he remembered. She’d always been a little odd compared to her brothers, even back then; but now she looked outright deranged.

“Yes! Yes! Chemach is better. Better than silly card. Better than pointy sword. Ah! Yes,” the owl confirmed.

Chemach, too, was unsettling; a bit like her brother Clauneck, Narinder thought.

Unlike her brother though, it had nothing to do with how much Clauneck knew, or at least seemed to know; and more in how… different her behavior was, from what she remembered. She’d been put-together and cryptic once, just like her brothers, only providing tools for Gods.

He did his best to not stare at the Crown on her head.

(Three eyes stared back at him.)

Perhaps her legs were mutilated, perhaps her eyes bulged red and wide from her skull, perhaps Chemach was bound in a harness and dangled from a ceiling.

But the feeling the owl gave was the same as a shark circling a drop of blood in the ocean.

“Oh, I see. So you make… tools?” the Lamb probed further, seeming politely perplexed by her wording.

The blue owl puffed up happily. “Ah! Yes! Will you look? Will you take? What will you give in turn?”

Somehow, despite dangling in midair by a harness and some cords, she managed to lurch closer to the Lamb. She was around the same size as Clauneck and Kudaai were– actually, if anything, she was a bit smaller– but her bulging eyes made the proximity to her narrow beak a little more jarring, and the Lamb took a small step back and bumped into Narinder.

“Your flesh? Your bone? Your Crown?”

Narinder snarled, abruptly (and somewhat despite himself); his voice reverberated in the empty space. Tia glared at Chemach as well, silent.

The Lamb turned startled eyes upon him. He did not meet them.

The blue owl bounced back upwards with a hooting, nervous laughter that made Narinder grind his teeth at the shrill sound in his ear. “Ah! Ah! I jest, I joke! I won’t take anything. Nothing for Chemach! Gift for Lamb. Come come.”

A pedestal emerged from the ground, sprouting the strange, misshapen tooth Narinder had spotted hanging from the ceiling.

“Pretty creations! Powerful creations. Holy pieces of revered beings.”

The Lamb’s eyes went wide.

(Narinder’s eyes went wide, too, despite himself, and he suddenly found it much harder to not glance at the person-shaped sacks around them, or the substance staining each and every one of them.)

– a hand stretching in the darkness–

“Wait, this was from– a God?” the Lamb asked, regarding the tooth before them much more warily now.

“Proud Ala, smite the weak. Birthed from pain, survival. Maw of the monster, swallow them whole,” Chemach suddenly spoke; short, brief snippets that sounded like they came from someone (something) else, voice suddenly not the high-pitched squeak she’d been addressing them with.

The Lamb looked at Narinder with wide eyes.

Narinder met their gaze for a moment, acutely aware his own eyes were also wide and that his fur was standing on end.

Godly beast. That’s what she called the Lamb, the moment she laid eyes on them.

(– pieces of revered beings–)

No wonder she was fixated on them.

“They hunger, yes? Crave the power that was once theirs, yes? Feed them, yes? They are hungry, hungry for miscreant flesh, let them feed,” the blue owl chirped, suddenly back to normal.

After a moment, the Lamb reluctantly stepped forward and lifted the tooth– half their own height– from the pedestal. They looked as though they expected it to be quite heavy, and staggered a bit when it ended up being far lighter than anticipated.

Chemach bounced in the air, apparently pleased with this. “Little God will come again! Chemach will give Relic. Chemach will make Relic.” Her bulbous red eyes didn’t leave the Lamb. “Chemach will make Relic out of you one day.

“You wretched–” Narinder started forward– he didn’t even know why, but he didn’t get far before the Lamb suddenly grabbed his sleeve.

“Bye-bye!” The grabbing of his sleeve, and the brief instance where his eyes snapped to the Lamb, was enough time for the owl to go flying back upwards with a creak of the ropes holding her up.

He turned to glare at the Lamb. “What?” he snarled.

The Lamb was holding the tooth, which had shrunk to a much more reasonably sized thing; something that could easily be attached to their axe– the weapon of choice they had decided upon for this crusade.

“It’s fine,” they said softly, brow half-furrowed. “I don’t think she’d actually attack us. It kind of looks more like these things were… scavenged.”

Holy pieces of revered beings.

What will you give in turn?

Narinder glowered at the spot where the owl had been.

“… we should move on,” he growled, without giving a proper response.

“Okay, Narinder.”

Valephar was not hard to beat, either.

If anything, the Lamb had had a much easier time with this one the first time they’d fought Valephar. Both learned from mastery of their weapons, clumsy as they were, but also just because there was nothing else they had to worry about– no extra worms sneaking up behind them.

It was almost insultingly easy, honestly.

Narinder watched, this time at a safe distance, as the Lamb pulled out the God Tear and immediately shoved it into Tia while barely looking at it.

The glow spread light across the clearing for the brief moment it was visible, even though his eyes could not focus on it; just enough to make Narinder’s eyes start to prickle.

“You are becoming a mediocre combatant, Lamb,” he said begrudgingly when they came back over, God Tear safely stored away where neither of them would start to tear up.

Beyond the occasional mishap such as the arrow to the arm and their absolutely abysmal habit of using their own blood as a tool, there was a clear difference in how they moved compared to when they had first begun– they no longer bumbled about the rooms or got lost in the grass or completely missed a whole chain of hits; now they hit much harder, much faster, much more efficiently.

The Lamb actually perked up very slightly at that, although their face remained mostly blank. “Really?”

He glared at them when he saw Tia’s smug eye. “Yes. You went from utterly abysmal to passable.”

The Lamb considered his words, then gave a nod. “I’m alright with that.”

Foolish heretic.

The journey back was easy. Simply standing in the teleport circle with the Lamb was enough for him to be considered part of the travelling ‘group’, so he just awkwardly shuffled until he was on the edge of the circle.

Tia gave him a deadpan look that he glared back at. The last thing he wanted was the Lamb to think he was being affectionate towards them.

Once back at the cult, the Lamb told him to get some sleep (though there was no command laced into their words, simply a tilt of their head and a toneless, “you look exhausted. Get some rest”) before departing to trade the God Tear with Eon with a raising of the hand that Narinder supposed was their version of a wave.

They didn’t need to tell him twice. Crusading was certainly more entertaining than kitchen duty, but was significantly more exhausting– especially since he had nothing except his claws to fight with.

So Narinder slogged down the steps and into his hut (the nice thing about basically living right next to the teleportation circle), slammed the door behind him, and promptly collapsed onto the bed.

It was, he had to admit reluctantly, extremely nice to feel the softness of the bed after a few consecutive days of crusading, even if his mortal body was sore in a way it had never been as a God.

And it was plenty dark with the curtains, which were black and blocked out much more of the light than the usual white curtains that decorated the windows of the other buildings.

(That, he thought, was odd. None of the other ‘grand’ huts had black cloth for their curtains. What did it mean that only his had this kind of cloth?)

(That was a thought he would reserve for the headache corner.)

He was already half-drifting into oblivion when he heard a knock on the door.

He ignored it; he knew it couldn’t be the Lamb (there was no way their dealing with Eon took less than two minutes), and most others had the sense to not approach his house now that he didn’t have to have the meals delivered.

Even Tyan rarely visited, citing ‘I can just catch ya at work’. A rare moment of common sense from the blue monkey.

And if it was Kimar or Brekoyen, Narinder certainly was not dealing with that, especially not right this instant.

He was half-drifted again when another knock came, more urgent and insistent this time– more like a small flurry of knocks.

Narinder debated simply not opening the door, but then whoever-it-was kept just hammering on his door (hammering, perhaps, was too severe; it wasn’t nearly as heavy or harsh, just persistent), so it was only a few moments later that he reluctantly dragged himself back out of bed and cracked the door open to see who in the fresh hell it was.

Noon was standing in front of the door with Yarlennor beside him, the duck’s arm comically half-raised to continue knocking on the door.

He stared at the two children silently for a good five seconds, trying to comprehend what he was seeing in front of him.

“What on earth are you two doing here?” he asked, finally, acutely aware of the grogginess in his voice. Wonderful. He was on the cusp of collapsing onto the ground in a heap, and he had two children on his doorstep.

He would’ve been much angrier about this, but his bones ached (god, mortal bodies were horrendously frail) and he just couldn’t muster up anything except minor irritation.

“Lenny’s mom is crypt-keeping today so she can’t watch us,” Noon said immediately as if Narinder had opened the floodgates to a child’s babbling (which he kind of did), “and my mom’s helping out with Fikomar’s work, and said she didn’t want me to get hit on the head by a tree, and said also to ask an adult if they could keep an eye on us. So could you Hermit? Please?”

Narinder stared some more.

He was really far too tired for this.

Which also meant he was too tired to slam the door in their face; or even demand to know why two children wanted him to watch them, because there was no way either of their mothers had actually expected them to ask him.

Damn it all.

“… no. I’m tired,” he growled, at last, when he realized he’d been silently staring at the two children for a good minute and Yarlennor gave a very loud sniffle.

“It’s okay, so are we,” Noon responded, as if this was a no-brainer.

Narinder grunted and left the door, opting to climb back into bed instead of arguing with two bratty children.

The brief rest a night ago (warm wool pressed to his chest) had helped with the exhaustion, but even that wasn’t quite enough to keep his head from feeling tight and foggy and his eyes to feel like he’d rubbed entire handfuls of sand into them.

Mortal bodies were annoying as all hell. He didn’t know how anyone could tolerate this.

“If you must be a nuisance, fine, then, come in. Just be quiet,” he growled, face half-pressed to the pillow already. He’d half-curled up so his feet didn’t hang completely off the bed– a position he was becoming uncomfortably used to at this point.

(He didn’t want to be accustomed to mortality, to be comfortable when he’d once been a God.)

He was pretty sure letting the children in, as long as they didn’t make a lot of noise, would be harmless. The children didn’t seem malicious enough to try to attack him (if anything, he was pretty sure they were too stupid to know what malice was, unlike a certain horse and tapir he was thinking of), and even if they did he could easily beat both of them.

None of the followers seem particularly malevolent– but the last thing Narinder wanted on his (conscience? No, he was the God of Death, he razed lives, his sense of morality didn’t matter) plate was for two children to go missing shortly after visiting his house.

He was too exhausted to properly fend off children at this point. How pathetic.

He heard the door shut, surprisingly gently, leaving his room appropriately dark– at least considering it was mid-afternoon.

“Thank you,” Noon said, whispering (rather loudly, all things considered, but children were stupid) his thanks.

Narinder grunted as a reply. He was already slipping into sleep, even as a part of him wondered how long another crusade would take, and what he should try to bring with him next time.

Would the Lamb be willing to bring some kind of shelter or sleeping bag on the next one? Maybe he could bribe the Crown into storing one for him, somehow. How does one even bribe a Crown…?

For once, Narinder’s dreams were not of Lambs near impossible streams, or his siblings (ichor and flowers and laughter and screams).

Actually, it was nearly impossible to make sense of anything in his dreams, so that he was left with merely a warm, incoherent blur of something that wasn’t necessarily good, but not sending him bolting upright, as he began to ease awake again.

Well, ease awake was perhaps being too generous. Having light sear through his eyelids just enough to startle him out of his slumber was perhaps more accurate.

Great. It was sunset. There was just enough of a crack in-between his curtains and the windowsill on the west side of his house, just enough that when the light set just right, it would glare right into his eyes.

(He was not particularly fond of the fact that he knew the quirks of this house, at this point. That meant he was getting used to it.)

(He didn’t want that.)

There was warmth against his chest–

– soft wool and a red fleece, pressed to his chest, leaning back against him–

His eyes bolted fully open and darted around as he lurched to a half-propped up position, having to physically restrain himself from throwing whatever (whoever) was on his chest across the room.

No Lamb that he could see.

(Were they still dealing with Eon? It seemed to be taking far longer than the previous time.)

Narinder’s eyes scanned the room, before lowering to his chest– he promptly went fully rigid.

If anything, this sight was arguably much stranger than if the Lamb had come in and was leaning against him again.

(And it had probably been a good thing that he’d violently repressed his first instinct to hurl the thing on him at the wall.)

Noon had fallen asleep in an open space on the bed, but was forced to press into the former God’s side to avoid being knocked off onto the floor; while Yarlennor had apparently just forgone that and crawled right onto Narinder’s chest, hence the warmth he was feeling on his chest. Both children were fast asleep.

(Apparently, Noon had not been joking when he’d said that both of them were also tired.)

Narinder’s ears were half-pulled back and half-straight-up as he stared down at them, utterly baffled.

Neither child seemed perturbed, even in their sleep, that they were cuddling against arguably the most dangerous person in the cult. Let alone a former God, let alone–

– five becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one–

He didn’t move, stiffly half-propped up on one elbow and staring at the two children cuddling into him, totally unsure of what to do. He’d dealt with children before– Heket and Leshy had been children.

Once.

A very, very long time ago.

Surely, surely he must know how to deal with this sort of thing.

(Leshy had been more of the cuddler. He supposed it came with the territory of a burrowing worm; always scaring him or Kallamar half-to-death in the middle of the night by something stirring under the blanket. Heket liked climbing onto his head like a weird growth and clinging on for dear life–)

He banished those thoughts. It didn’t matter.

Yarlennor mumbled in her sleep, pressing closer to Narinder. He scowled at them, but remained still.

What was with these idiots? He’d been the God of Death. When their families had passed (because that was how many of these followers had come to be followers, because that was how the Lamb had found them), it had been him who they had been killed for.

The Lamb, he could sort of understand. Fear became so much duller, when death was your own domain, when you could resurrect people with a snap of the fingers–

– death is beautiful–

Hell, the amount of parents who’d usher their frightened children away from him when he was a Bishop was enough for him to know that it was natural for children to be afraid of death.

Of course I was afraid.

But he couldn’t understand these children. Their first introduction to him was him trying to claw Yarlennor’s face open. Hell, it had been only a few days since Narinder had openly snarled at someone in front of the toddler.

And yet, now the two children were pressed against him like it was comforting.

How one could feel comfortable with someone who had done their damndest to kill them…

(– smiling and soft and wool pressed to his chest–)

He watched the two of them silently for a few moments, before his groggy brain remembered– right. Sunset.

The children’s mothers would probably be finishing up their work, if they hadn’t already, and he was fairly certain both Noon and Yarlennor hadn’t actually informed their mothers they were intending to stay with him.

He reached up a paw and prodded Noon, careful not to scratch the child. The last thing he wanted was another awkward confrontation by the kitchens. “Get out. It’s sunset.”

Noon grumbled and pressed his face to Narinder’s leg. “’ive more minutes.”

He prodded harder, wondering how on earth he’d ended up in this bizarre situation where he had to insist that a child wake up from napping next to him. “No. It’s sunset,” he growled. “Your mother will be looking for you.”

Noon blinked his eyes open as Narinder turned his attention to Yarlennor. He prodded her side and gave a startled grunt as she squirmed, giggling a bit.

“She’s ticklish,” Noon offered, still a bit sleepy, before poking Yarlennor’s head. “Lenny, we gotta go. Is sunset.”

She clung onto Narinder, who just went even tenser at the extra contact. “Noo.”

Noon tugged at her, at which Narinder promptly sat up and carefully pried Yarlennor’s hands from his robe, which had left large wrinkles in the front. Children weren’t easily injured, but knocking them both onto the floor was probably also not the greatest idea.

“Your mothers will be searching for you,” he growled, a little sharper this time. “And I do not want to be accused of abduction.”

Noon stared blankly up at Narinder, clearly not recognizing the word. “What’s ab-duck-shion?”

(Leshy, frowning when Shamura let them leave the library with an absent ‘don’t get yourself abducted’, loudly whispering to the other siblings what that was and getting mocked by Heket–)

(Gods, children were stupid.)

“Kidnapping,” he grunted.

“Well, we’re kids and we were napping.”

(Narinder decided to have some choice words with the Lamb about what exactly these children were learning.)

“Never mind. Go home,” he muttered, herding the children to his door.

Noon rubbed his eyes with a small yawn. “Thanks for watching us, Hermit.”

“’ank,” Yarlennor offered, obviously still half-asleep.

“Don’t make a habit of this,” was Narinder’s response as he groggily (and very reluctantly) followed them outside of his house. “Where do you live?”

Granted… he didn’t actually think the children were in any danger of getting lost or injured. All of the adults seemed to be good people (well, he immensely disliked Brekoyen and Kimar, but even they didn’t seem to bear any malice towards the children), and there was simply no way the children could really leave the cult grounds– there was always an adult nearby, or a wall of too-thick foliage– but better to make sure they actually got home, or else he’d be dealing with even more trouble.

The last thing he wanted was for the children to go missing and then have some nosy busybody point fingers at him.

“Umm, this way…” Noon yawned and began to bumble off towards the main bulk of the houses, Yarlennor following and rubbing her eyes.

Narinder was aware of several eyes going to him as he trailed behind the children, following them.

He probably looked horribly suspicious, now that he thought about it, and he debated simply leaving– there were adults around now that would keep an eye on the two– but that would probably look more suspicious? Right?

(He was way too tired for this crap.)

“Oh! There you are, Lenny,” the capybara (she was a darker shade of green, almost blending into the foliage of Darkwood) said, in what sounded like an immense amount of relief, and scooped up her sleepy toddler. “Where did you wander off to?”

“We hung out with the Hermit,” Noon said, when Yarlennor just promptly conked out in her mother’s arms again.

Great. All eyes had turned back to him instantly. He could see Fikomar in the back, carving a chair (at sunset? Was the gorilla a workaholic??), eyes flickering between the children and Narinder.

“We took a nap,” Noon added, when the general vicinity remained perfectly silent.

Narinder scowled when everyone kept staring at him in total silence.

Great. He should’ve just let the children wander back out into the cult by themselves. This was just painfully awkward.

“Is Noon’s mother here?” he growled, breaking the very long, still awkward silence.

Just return the child, and he could go back to bed.

“We live next door to them,” the capybara said, hesitantly, holding Yarlennor carefully.

Good enough.

“Alright.” Narinder turned away to go home, still acutely aware of several gazes on him. He’d spotted Kimar glowering at him, Fikomar was still looking between the kids and the former God, and he thought he saw the anxious possum priest somewhere in the crowd of people milling around on their way home.

“Thanks Hermit! Bye!” Noon called after him, though it cut off at the end with another yawn.

He gave a non-committal grunt and quickened his pace, still feeling several stares boring into him. His chest felt a little odd where Yarlennor had been lying earlier–

(– where the Lamb had leaned into him–)

– almost warm, like something was still pressing into him.

With his luck, it was probably a symptom of some kind of contagious disease, with how much the toddler constantly had a drippy nose and sniffled.

What else would it be?

Everyone is a little afraid of death, I think.

He growled and mentally shooed the Lamb’s words back into a dark recess of his mind. The more he thought about them calling death beautiful (what a ridiculous notion, what a strange vessel, what an idiot), the more that corner he kept shoving thoughts into threatened to give him the migraine of his life.

He could only hope, as he slipped back into the hut, that he was lucky and he could simply slip back into a dreamless sleep.

Of course, Narinder was never that lucky.

When he became ‘conscious’, though, it was not with the Lamb at the stream, nor was it in Shamura’s library, familiar sights and the echoes of memories.

Instead, he sat in a strange graveyard, alone.

There was a hissing sound. He looked down to see a black snake slithering from one of the graves he was kneeling in front of, which drew his attention to the pentagram drawn in blood that he was kneeling on.

Somehow, the snake didn’t bother him. Or the bloody pentagram. Or the fact that the snake had apparently just come out of a grave.

(He was used to much worse, at this point.)

It opened its eyes.

Or, rather, its eye.

It rose to meet his gaze, no forked tongue or mouth, simply a singular red eye on an unnaturally round skull.

“Narinder.”

Somehow (perhaps because it was a dream?), the serpent speaking also didn’t bother Narinder. Its voice was as sinuously smooth as the scales on its body, yet somehow there was no voice at all– he just instinctively knew what it was saying.

It felt strangely familiar…

His eyes flickered over it silently, before he spoke, terse but a tiny bit hesitant at the same time. “… Crown.”

The snake hissed, as if finding it amusing. “Good. That was quick.”

“… you’re a snake.”

Its singular eye rolled. The movement was so reminiscent of the Crown’s usual eye-rolling at him that it just felt even more familiar. “Your powers of observation are unparalleled.”

“You’re a Crown.”

“You should see what the other Bishop’s Crowns looked like. I’m pretty sure Kallamar’s was a crab or something.”

… Tia sounded strangely like the Lamb did. Informal and blunt, if somewhat more sarcastic than the Lamb’s typical blankness. Perhaps something else it had picked up from the Lamb.

That annoyed him a bit.

“… why are you a snake?” he asked, finally.

The Crown rolled its eye again. “Not really important. Don’t worry about it. The Lamb doesn’t ask such ridiculous questions.”

Narinder scowled at that.

What was with its blatant favoritism of the Lamb? It had never taken to any of his vessels so well, especially not enough for a vessel to attempt to usurp him.

It looked back at him for a bit. He couldn’t read its expression.

“The reason is because of what you did,” it said, after a moment, apparently taking pity on him (he didn’t need pity).

Narinder felt his hackles rise at that, ears pulling back. “You know as well as I do that–”

“Oh yes. You were led astray, spoken to with candied words that hid venom, like a snake luring an unsuspecting into a trap.” Tia sounded bored, as if covering something they’d talked about extensively. “Not so amusing, when the predator becomes the prey, is it? Or when what you sought consumes you whole?”

He snarled, even though he knew he couldn’t intimidate the Crown. “Then do you know why I seem to still possess shreds of your power?”

“Goodness, no.” The Crown didn’t laugh, but it did tilt to one side slightly with a soft sound. “My, you are fond of the Lamb. You recognized they were fake right away, and yet you still can’t recognize other figments of your imagination.”

“Don’t act as though I am fond of that traitor,” he growled, even as his fur stood on end. “What is it, then? What oh-so-important piece of this idiotic prophecy do you wish to dump upon me?”

“Oh good, you’re accepting it.”

“You–”

Tia began to climb one of the graves, constructed of crooked sticks, apparently still bored of the conversation. “You have no idea just how much work Shamura did for these, do you? Actually, considering I’m having this conversation with you, you do, at least a bit.”

The Crown jabbed him in the forehead with its tail, making him hiss (both in anger and in pain) and grabbing the spot. “Prophecies aren’t coherent, Narinder. The only reason there have been prophecies with words accompanying them before now is that the God or prophet took the time to create a coherent message.”

Tia slithered to the top of the grave and perched there, lazily. “And obviously, the God who used to weave such eloquent messages can’t, anymore.”

He glowered at the serpent.

“Mayhaps you could ask that owl for help? Or his sister. She certainly might know something as well.”

“Die.”

The serpent turned its red eye onto him, staring evenly. “Death’s Door, hm?”

“If you recall, I also picked the Lover’s. They were random,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

Maybe if he said it enough times, it would become true.

Tia gave another hiss of laughter, red eye boring into Narinder.

“Oh, be more honest with yourself, Narinder.” It was suddenly closer– much closer, eye a mere few inches away from his.

“You know as well as I do, by now, that it wasn’t random.”

Narinder jolted awake at the sound of his lock unclicking– or, perhaps, he willingly took the strange sound to pull himself out of his dream.

His third eye was definitely open, judging by how he could see detailed patterning on the wood, the way the wood stretched with rings and knots and the grain of the wood, even after being smoothed.

Through magic, the Lamb had managed to create a system where each follower assigned to their home was the only person (besides the Lamb) who could lock and unlock the door to that hut. He certainly wasn’t the one currently unlocking his door, so he growled when he heard several soft, quick footsteps on the floorboards and the gentle shutting of the door.

That could quite literally only be one other person.

“Get out of my house, Lamb.”

“Sorry.” They sounded a little out of breath, almost strained. “I need a minute. I’ll be out of your hair in a bit.”

Narinder huffed but let his eyes drift shut again.

– reaching for him–

The Lamb didn’t speak, though he could hear their breathing, even from across the room. It was louder than usual, and almost ragged, as if they were having trouble keeping it even. Had they run all the way here or something?

There was a scent in the air that made his nose wrinkle. Sickly sweet, like festering, like–

His three eyes shot open.

Rot.

Black ichor.

Narinder sat bolt upright, and twisted in the blankets, narrowly avoiding tumbling to the floor altogether, and fumbled for the lantern on the table. He could see the figure of the Lamb, half-illuminated in the bits of silvery glow that peeked through his curtains in his doorway.

“Narinder–?”

The lantern whooshed on, powered by residual magic.

The Lamb was half-leaning against his doorframe, one hand holding their face as if in a feeble attempt to hide it from sight– which clearly didn’t work, because black ichor covered the entire half of their face that their hand was pressed to, staining their wool, dripping down over their mouth. It was staining their fleece and their wool– darkening wool– and forming a puddle on the floorboards, drenching the hand that was pressed against the wound, in some dim thought that applying pressure to wounds was good.

Tia, for their part, was glued to their head, and with how the Crown was practically vibrating atop their head, he could tell the Crown was working overtime to fix the damage.

– a serpent with one eye–

“Your eye,” the Lamb said.

Narinder crossed the room in two steps– not hard when it really only took two steps to cover the span of your home in general, to be honest– and jerked their hand down away from their face without responding, the Lamb giving a startled (pained) hiss of shock, their eyes–

No, eye.

Their entire right eye was gone, leaving nothing but an empty socket that was gushing black ichor from their skull. He caught glimpses of scrapes around the socket, as if a weapon had sloppily been working there, and the former God for once didn’t grimace at the thick consistency of the black ichor, because that thick oily blackness was covering up the sight of whatever horrific wound was undoubtedly lurking under that.

He hissed an eldritch curse that made something electric zip up his spine and a strong taste of iron and a fine ash fill his mouth, because how else do you react to a sight like that?

“It’s fine,” the Lamb responded– he supposed his tone in itself implied a swear, because there should have been no way that they knew what he’d just said.

(It was centuries old, after all, and the being that had taught it to him was even older.)

“What the f*ck.”

Because how else do you respond to someone with their entire eye missing saying ‘it’s fine’?

“I can, uh, I can feel it growing back,” the Lamb said, glancing up at Tia squashing into their skull with full concentration on re-growing the Lamb’s literal eye, “so it should be–”

The large cat’s grip tightened on their arm, and he was dragging them to the singular chair in his house and forcing them into it.

Grabbing the remains of his shredded pillowcase and finding a mostly-intact section, he shoved it into their (ichor-covered) hand and forced them to press the cloth to the area.

It immediately started soaking black, but it was better than their hand at absorbing some of the sludge-like liquid. Godly wounds didn’t get infected.

There was so much black ichor.

“Stay here,” he growled.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” they mumbled, grimacing. “Where are you–”

He shut the door behind him, cutting their voice off, and immediately began to walk to the healing hut.

It was past the main cluster of houses, so Narinder just stormed straight through. Everyone should be asleep, anyway, and it was better to be quick.

A lone yellow cat, half-asleep (night shift was never a fun task, but it made sense, given that an emergency wouldn’t wait until morning), startled awake and looked up when Narinder half-flung the curtains aside.

They were clothed in the green clothes that the Lamb had recently given to the newly-appointed healers. Enough of their followers got sick or banged their thumbs while building things that it had been deemed necessary, and the Lamb was obviously not constantly present at the cult.

“Oh! Um–” the cat started, stammering.

“Bandages.”

They stared at Narinder. Apparently this was a baffling thing for him to ask for.

Actually, it kind of was.

“Huh?”

He growled, sharp teeth peeking out from beneath his lips. “Bandages.”

“Uh… okay…” They reached into a box and pulled out a half-used roll of bandages, which he allowed them to drop into his hand before turning to leave–

“Merlenryn.”

Narinder paused, glaring over his shoulder at them. “What?”

“… my name’s Merlenryn. You can call me Ryn, though, everyone does. Uh, in case you need to explain who gave you those. We’re not supposed to hand them out,” Merlenryn (Ryn?) said, voice growing meeker and meeker with every word.

Narinder stared at them for a moment, before turning away. “Understood.”

He could distantly hear the cat go “um, okay, good talk!” as he stalked back outside, gripping the bandages in his hand tightly.

It was, thankfully, not a long walk back to his hut; but it felt like it took a little too long anyway, like with every step more black ichor was oozing out of their face and over their lips and down their whole front.

The Lamb startled in the chair when he practically kicked the door open, then dragged it shut behind him with one foot. They looked like they’d zoned out, but even when startled, he met their gaze to find surprising blankness.

He glared at Tia. “Move.”

The Crown squinted its eye open to glare at him, but upon its singular eye falling upon the bandages in his paws, it shifted enough for him to begin wrapping bandages around their head, albeit probably more roughly than he probably should have.

To keep their head still, he gripped one of their slightly-stubby horns, perhaps tighter than necessary.

– were the horns longer?–

The Lamb didn’t seem to feel much pain at that, so the two sat in silence for a minute as he continued to bandage their head.

“Narinder, it’s fine,” the Lamb said after a moment, quietly. “Really.”

His response was curt and immediate. “Shut up.”

“It–”

“Cease your babbling immediately.”

The Lamb fell quiet. Narinder tried to ignore their one intact eye watching him as he focused.

He’d never been great at this; after all, as the God of Death, you weren’t exactly taking the time to learn how to fix wounds. And it had been impossible to touch things without them immediately rotting to black mush.

Kallamar probably knew how to fix this, as the former God of Pestilence. That encompassed illness, sure, but it tended to also encompass infection, so many wounded would either seek Shamura or him out to–

“It’ll grow back,” the Lamb offered softly, before Narinder could mentally bully the thought out of his head.

He growled, not looking away from his slightly crooked wrapping of the bandage. “I told you to stop speaking, you imbecile.”

“Nice, three-syllable insult.” They gave a shaky chuckle, but there wasn’t any humor to it.

He turned his glare to their intact eye. “It may grow back, Lamb, but I do not want you bleeding blood that smells like rot all over my hut. Hold still.”

The Lamb did not point out the fact that he could just kick them out of his house.

(He did not point it out, either.)

They remained quiet and as still as they could, though at one point they made a sharp hiss of pain when he accidentally applied too much pressure. He didn’t say anything, no comforts or gentle words, but simply moved his hand slightly to alleviate the pressure he’d put on the area, focused on the task at hand.

After a moment, he spoke, voice an even lower growl than his usual one. “You will explain to me how your entire eye got gouged out. Now.”

For once, the Lamb did not attempt to argue, or joke that he’d just told them not to say anything, or ask if they could delay their answer.

“I went on another crusade in Darkwood. A heretic managed to get behind me and, uh… went for my eye. I guess as revenge, of some kind.”

Narinder’s grip on their horn tightened further. If it hurt, the Lamb didn’t say anything.

“I did try to stop them, but, um… I think, I think I went into shock briefly, when it, um, went in.” They gave a half-laugh sort of sound, but it sounded shaky and more like they were trying to comfort him more than themselves.

(What a ridiculous notion.)

(He didn’t care.)

(His grip tightened so much that he thought he might crack the Lamb’s horn by accident.)

They were shaking a little– that meant adrenaline, and a lot of it. That was probably the entire reason they’d gotten out at all and were still alive, even if it was with a horrific wound that would honestly have been easier to fix through resurrection.

(He nearly said this to the Lamb.)

(He didn’t.)

He silently turned their head to the side to continue wrapping, using his grip on their horn to steer their head.

They were still strangely blank, though with the occasional half-laugh or quirked half-smile that seemed more intended for comforting– themself or him, he didn’t know.

… though, why bother? They were always so bubbly and cheerful with their followers. Heck, they’d been unrelentingly positive whenever they came to his realm.

Why did they bother acting differently now?

“… why do you act differently around me?” he growled, at last deciding that it was better than sitting in silence or talking to them about how they got their eye gouged out of their skull. “You act like a moron to all the followers.”

“Thanks, Narinder.”

“And you insist on not letting them know you’re… ‘this’, whatever you mean by that,” he growled, ignoring the slightly-dry interruption. “But you didn’t let me see you like ‘this’ before.”

(He didn’t explain what he meant by ‘before’.)

(The Lamb didn’t need him to.)

“So why bother letting me see you like this now?”

The Lamb was quiet.

He half-expected them to ask if he could hold off on asking until some other time. They had yesterday, after all, for a question very similar to this one.

“I don’t know,” they said at last, though there was something thoughtful and soft in their voice. “I trust you.”

Narinder stared at them.

As of recent, he had thrown them headfirst into a tree (or at least attempted to), had several shouting matches or at least very one-sidedly loud arguments with them, been repeatedly complained about by several followers on what was probably several different offenses (well, at least he imagined so), and to top it all off like some kind of bizarre cherry on top of the whole thing, had repeatedly tried (and succeeded, several times) to kill them for betraying him.

"... why?"

The Lamb’s lips twitched a bit– his enhanced eyesight caught it, even amidst the wince they gave as he accidentally tugged their head a little too far to the side while wrapping the bandage around their head.

“… I don’t know. I just kind of do.”

“You are excellent at giving wholly unsatisfactory answers, Lamb.”

“Backhanded compliment. I’ll take it.” Their shoulders relaxed slightly, the pain in their face easing slightly as their mind was taken off of the wound. “I might need to think about my answer for a bit.”

Narinder growled, though he was annoyed to find there wasn’t much heat to it. “This is beginning feel rather like an unfair series of transactions for me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He grunted.

(A part of him was unsure of why he was so sure that this particular apology was rather sincere.)

He finally finished, leaving a slightly clumsy but firmly-wound bandage around their eye; without any tools he ended up having to roughly cut the bandage with a claw and tie a small knot in the whole thing.

It’d probably make Merlenryn’s lip curl in disgust as a healer, with how untidy it looked, but it would at least mostly keep the Lamb’s ichor inside of them, and not all over the floor.

“Well, you certainly don’t look any better, but at the very least, you won’t die from bleeding out.”

He wrinkled his nose– the room was starting to smell like rot. He reluctantly opened his curtains to let the room air out a bit, silvery light spilling into the room. He preferred them shut, but the smell would become overpowering if he didn’t.

The Lamb held out their hand; Tia glared at the Lamb harshly for a moment before reluctantly forming itself into a mop. The Lamb stood, trembling slightly on their feet, and began to sweep at the blood on the floor. “I’ll clean this up…”

“You utter dimwit. Sit down before you run out of adrenaline and the Crown kills me for exhausting you,” Narinder responded, pushing the Lamb back into the chair with ease.

He was used to the smell, after all.

The Lamb watched him with their uninjured eye as he wiped some of the black ichor that had gotten onto his fingers onto a small scrap of bandages. No wonder they’d appear in his realm so often after crusades…

Wait.

Narinder turned to look at the Lamb.

“A heretic gouged out your eye.” He paused. “You were in Darkwood.”

“Astute observation,” the Lamb murmured. He’d never really heard snark from them before.

“You were on a crusade. Alone.”

The Lamb didn’t respond, which just confirmed Narinder’s suspicion.

“… you’ve been insisting on dragging me along for the last two, even though it is far from necessary. Why the sudden change of pace?”

He glanced out the window, almost as if to re-confirm that it was dark out. “And why at night? You always start out during the day. Even back then.”

The Lamb didn’t duck from his gaze.

(Their blankness wasn’t exactly blankness, Narinder was realizing, but rather far more subdued expressions; subtle things that tugged at their lips or the corner of their eyes, things that from far away or without his enhanced sight were nearly invisible.)

(When had he started noticing these things? Why was he bothering to notice these things?)

Their lips pressed together slightly. “Your eye is bleeding again.”

He scowled at them, wiping blood from his forehead and rubbing it off onto his robe. They were red anyway, so nobody would notice. “Just give me a damned straightforward answer, Lamb.”

“I was worried you would get injured.”

… well. That was certainly straightforward.

“I don’t want your–”

“It’s not that,” they responded, cutting him off with their hand in the air. “You can handle yourself, I know.”

He growled. “Then why the sudden concern? We just fought to the death a month ago. Repeatedly. And didn’t you just tell me that, for some ungodly reason that I cannot fathom, you trust me?–”

They put their hand up without saying anything. He lapsed into silence, glowering at them.

“… you said prophecies are dreams that Gods have, from stimuli the world gives them. When we spoke to Clauneck.”

He grunted assent.

The Lamb sat there for a moment, lips pressed together slightly. Then it released in a huff, and they shook their head. “No. I’m being ridiculous.”

Tia shot the Lamb a look, but said nothing.

– red eyes, darkening wool, horns growing longer–

– a serpent with black scales and one red eye–

– “The world is trying to tell you something, Narinder”–

Narinder should have asked, then and there, what sort of dreams they’d been having. Should’ve demanded that they’d already ducked several of his questions when he had answered his, and that death was fair, he was fair, and they needed to be as well.

Death needs to be fair.

He didn’t.

“… I am going to continue coming on crusades.” He did not leave any room for argument with his voice. He did reluctantly enjoy them, as exhausted as they made him– they made something he hadn’t felt in a long time tingle in his blood.

Besides, perhaps he’d be able to convince them to let him kill Leshy, after all.

It was only fair.

The Lamb bowed their head after a moment, silently accepting this without any argument. He hadn’t entirely expected them to– they were blunt, but they usually seemed to take things without arguing– but it still surprised him, a little bit.

Something else occurred to him, and he glanced at the black ichor currently pooled on the floor, on his table where the Lamb had leaned against it briefly, smeared on his door. “Why was your first instinct to come to me and not the healers?”

They put their hand to the bandages. The ichor flow was thankfully slowing down, judging by the way it wasn’t stained totally black or dripping through. “There was no need. It will heal.”

Tia rolled its whole eye in irritation at the Lamb.

Narinder sat on his bed, a bit heavily. He suddenly felt ridiculously exhausted by the whole ordeal, as if he’d gone on a whole crusade alone.

It probably didn’t help that it was likely some ungodly time of night, and that he hadn’t really properly slept for a few days at this point. No matter. He’d already rested a great deal earlier…

Lambert watched Narinder.

He had drifted off while sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall with his head half-leaned onto his shoulder. He’d obviously been trying to stay awake (conscious), but mortal exhaustion had gotten the best of him.

They eased out of the seat and held out their hand, glancing up at Tia. Tia glowered, but shifted into a broom so they could begin to mop up the black ichor all over the floor.

“Sorry, Tia.” They kept their voice low.

The Crown continued glaring at them.

“… I thought he hated me.” They glanced over at Narinder, but he truly had fallen back asleep, judging by the rise and fall of his chest. His third eye had closed again, leaving nothing but bloodstains dripping down his face; and a surprisingly… well, not peaceful expression on his face, but neutral.

They didn’t know what peace looked like, not on The One Who Waits nor on just… Narinder.

(Maybe they never would.)

“… actually, maybe he still does. I don’t know,” they amended. There was any number of reasons why he’d wrap up the wound (which still ached and stung, despite no longer being able to contract infections– not from anything that would kill a mortal, at least), including just not wanting them to bleed on his floor.

That was probably it, right?

Tia gave Lambert the flattest stare of all time.

“… sometimes I wish you could talk. I can’t read your expressions very well when you’re just one eye.”

They continued mopping up black ichor from the floor. The one nice thing about Tia turning into a mop was that the Crown would absorb the black ichor back into Lambert’s system for them.

Narinder’s breathing was soft when he slept. It was normal to hear the former god snarling or growling or (occasionally) breathing out extremely long, angry huffs of air when he was obviously trying not to explode with frustration.

Most followers, even Tyan– who, honestly, seemed to have a soft spot for Narinder at this point, which surprised Lambert until they remembered what she’d been like when they first found her– would probably have been surprised to hear how soft his breathing was.

Softness was, after all, not something many associated with death.

Lambert treaded over, reaching up and holding the bell to keep it from jingling and waking him up– they were surprised, honestly, that he hadn’t asked for another rest yesterday while crusading. He’d been clearly tired, even after the brief nap.

(They did have to wonder why he’d thrown them at the tree. He’d seemed almost flustered, which was a bit funny.)

After a moment of hesitation (and also checking their palms to make sure they weren’t covered in black ichor, which thankfully they no longer were), they reached up and pulled the blanket over his lap.

Tia was watching from where they’d set the Crown-broom when they turned back around.

“Just so he doesn’t catch a cold,” Lambert whispered.

Tia rolled their eye, but floated back into their palm.

The Crown had always been strangely alive. Not necessarily when it had first been given to them, but Lambert would feel it shuffle on their head when they were still for a little too long, or vibrate briefly like it was repressing a laugh if they did something particularly strange or stupid.

Eventually, while they were pretty sure it already knew what they were thinking, they’d started talking to it. Asking its opinion (“I mean, the hammer does a lot of damage, but it’s so slow, right?”), if it was okay (“sorry I bent your tip while stabbing that big crab”)… it grew more and more animated, the more Lambert talked to it.

Now, it was like talking to a good friend. Granted, one that could offer no advice or verbal comfort, but a good friend nonetheless.

“… I wish I could ask you for real advice about those dreams.”

Tia stared at them.

“… is it a prophecy?”

Tia kept staring.

“… yeah, I figured you wouldn’t be able to answer.”

Tia vibrated, as if it wanted to say something, but remained silent.

The dreams were getting ridiculous, though. Every time they let themself close their eyes, without fail, Narinder would be dead somewhere.

A hard knot formed in their throat.

It would’ve almost been better to have variation. At least then Lambert could wave it off as their own fear (because they’d made the choice to spare him, because they had stood over him after his defeat and gazed at him and realized that they didn’t want him dead).

But it was the same. Always. Deep gouges (claws) in his chest, on his throat, glassy eyes, all three, open in a dead stare.

No matter where they were (Darkwood, Midas’ cavern of gold; a strange, dim room overrun with massive webs and the remains of books scattered everywhere that they had never seen before), they’d inevitably find him, no matter how hard they tried to run or simply not to look.

(And they’d tried running, once. Found themself standing next to a stream that was full to the brim with stagnant water and bolted through rooms, endless and repeating, until they literally tripped and fell over the corpse of a large, three-eyed cat.)

– prophecies are the world’s warning–

Tia tremored, which made Lambert realize they’d started gripping the broom a little too tightly. They immediately loosened their grip with a shaky breath. “Sorry.”

Tia gave another tremor, but this felt more comforting, like it was the best way the Crown could reassure them.

Lambert took a deep breath and began to clean the black ichor again.

That wasn’t the only thing that scared them about the dream, though.

– looking down at their hands and seeing black, bony claws, tipped with black ichor and blood, matching the gashes on his chest–

Tia had listened to Lambert babble on about Narinder’s phantom dream-deaths, about how they were all the same, wonder aloud if it was some kind of prophecy or it was just their mind playing sick, twisted tricks on them.

What Lambert had not brought up to Tia was the surge of power they’d feel when they look at their hands and find unfamiliar claws.

And Lambert was very afraid that Tia might already know that–

– a surge of electricity up their spine, foreign magic through their blood, something swelling in them like a tide rises to meet the hypnotic pull of the moon–

– their quickened heartbeat was not just from the fear of losing Narinder.

Chapter 10: Moments of Chance

Chapter Text

Narinder woke up with his blanket over his lap and his house scrubbed clean of black ichor (actually, it smelled a bit like lemons) and a small scrap of paper on his table.

Be back in a bit.

He scowled at their handwriting, wide and round letters that took up far more space than necessary on the paper so that ‘bit’ got squashed into the bottom corner because they misjudged how much space everything else took. They were terrible at judging space.

Foolish Lamb.

Even if their eye would grow back, even if the Crown fixed the damage, even if infection was not possible for a God, there was a chance they’d collapse in exhaustion and blood loss if they didn’t rest.

Which was fine. They could inflict that upon themself if they truly wanted to. It just irked him that that they apparently hadn’t sought out Godhood and were still reaping the benefits.

(That’s all there was to it.)

The door squeaked open, just enough for the Lamb to slip inside.

They’d taken off the bandages by now– which made sense, because he’d remembered they’d been soaked through with black ichor– but the gaping empty socket was now gone (thank Gods) and the copious amounts of black ichor had been scrubbed off of their fur somehow; leaving an orb of black ichor in the socket that Narinder knew was the eye, regenerating itself in a thick protective layer.

(That, he supposed, was a benefit of having thick, rotting ichor instead of a regular God’s. When death and resurrection was your bread and butter, the flesh could grow back and even missing limbs would re-form.)

“What exactly were you doing, Lamb?” he growled from where he was sitting on the bed.

He chose to ignore the fact that he was half-tangled in a blanket and his back was very sore– probably from leaning against the wall all night– and he probably looked as sore as he felt; and thus wholly unintimidating.

“Good morning to you too, Narinder,” they responded, setting something down on his table. “I’m not going to bleed on your floor anymore, don’t worry.”

“I do not care.”

“Sure, Narinder.”

He glared down at the thing– or, rather, the two things the Lamb had just set on his table.

Necklaces. The Lamb gave these out occasionally as gifts, blessed with minor boons. Some made the followers a little more motivated to work harder, faster. Some made it so that their touch created a slightly better harvest, or made it so that a follower never had to sleep, or extended their lifespan to an unnatural length.

And some just made the follower walk a little faster, which Narinder found mildly (okay, incredibly) useless, but the Lamb tended to have a surplus of these to give out if they ran low on other gifts.

(Probably because of their abject uselessness, now that he thought about it.)

But these two were different.

For one, he’d never once seen either of these necklaces. One bore a black cord with red thread decorating it, and a crescent moon carved out of bone as a pendant; the other had a pure white cord with gray thread weaved through, and a small red-and-black sun on the pendant. Wire kept the thin, spindly pieces together.

“Do you know what either of these do?” the Lamb asked; he became aware they were watching his face. He fixed them with a sharp glare.

“No.”

They shrugged, unperturbed as usual. “Worth a shot.”

He regarded the two necklaces.

He supposed he could see the connection between them– they were inverted versions of each other, after all– but besides the moon, which reminded him of the necklaces that forced followers to never sleep, he had no clue what boon either of them may have been blessed with.

The pendants, however… they did feel vaguely familiar.

“What are these for?” he asked, after a few moments of staring at them in slight befuddlement and looking up to the Lamb for an answer.

“Myst says they do nothing.”

Ah. So this was what they were getting from the Mystic Seller in exchange for the God Tears. Strange necklaces, apparently.

He glanced back up a second later, realizing what the Lamb had just said. “… it said they do nothing?”

The Lamb climbed back into his chair and stared at the two necklaces. “Well, it said ‘knowledge is oft gained through sacrifice’ afterwards, but yes, it did preface the whole thing with the necklaces having no effect.”

Narinder glanced up at the Lamb. Besides the black orb where their eyeball usually was, they looked about as impassive as normal; if a little thoughtful– he could see where their lips were pressing slightly togther.

They did that a lot when they were thinking.

“… are you planning to sacrifice some followers to find out, then?”

The Lamb leaned their cheek onto their hand with a huff. Their brow creased. “I think we have to.”

Narinder blinked.

He had really not expected them to come to a conclusion about the necklaces so quickly, let alone one of that nature.

Granted, they didn’t seem particularly pleased by the idea, but he’d still expected them to waffle about in their own thoughts for a while while debating whether it was alright to or not. This was a very swift decision.

“… I thought you cared about your followers,” he said, after a moment of struggling to mentally justify their strangely quick decision.

The Lamb shot him a look, a bit sharper than normal, even with their mostly-blank expression. “Of course I do.”

Ah. That was a sore spot. Narinder filed that thought away for later.

They turned their attention back to the two necklaces on the table. “But if these do what I’m thinking they might, then we might just have to go through with it,” they muttered, rubbing their eyebrow.

Narinder shot them another bewildered look. “What do you think they do?” he asked, slightly disgruntled at how vague they were being.

Sure, they dodged questions or just fully asked to not answer them sometimes (questions about their parents, mostly, and tough questions that seemed to make them have to think long and hard about it); but they were very rarely ever so vague.

At least with asking not to answer questions, they were direct about saying so.

They shook their head slightly, already shaking their head and swiping up the two necklaces in one fell swoop.

(Had they gotten more dexterous? He swore they’d used to fumble their weapons on crusades half the time and drop things on their foot.)

“We can talk about that later. For now, I need to go get fish for tomorrow.”

Narinder blinked, again. He didn’t really know which statement to address first, so he ended up asking a rather befuddled, “what’s tomorrow?”

“You eating. We ran out of fish, so I need to get more if we want to be able to keep making your meals,” was their reply.

He glared at them, regaining his composure. “I do not require special treatment. Especially not from you, you traitorous wretch.”

Tell your Lamb that one. They’ll get a hoot out of it.

(His back teeth clenched, at the thought of red eyes and darkening wool and sweet poison and hands on his face–)

The Lamb huffed slightly as they began to turn towards the door, but he caught the faint crinkle of their eyes and the twitch of their lips. Apparently they did actually find that one amusing. “That’s a new one. Say hi to Tyan for me, she’s got your meal for today.”

“Get out.”

They lifted their hand in a brief wave before they’d slipped out the door, leaving him glaring at the door of his hut.

Once again, they’d managed to confuse him enough that it had entirely slipped his mind to push further on the necklaces, and inquire what they thought the things were meant for.

Damned Lamb. Even now, as he was growing accustomed to the blankness and their flatness and the strange level of tolerance they had for him, they still caught him off-guard too often for his liking.

He growled and stood, a bit unsteadily as bloodflow returned to his legs. He ought to go get something to eat.

There was a line outside of the kitchens– so it was the regular mealtime rush today.

(He never knew what damn time it ever was. It seemed to change, from morning to noon to mid-afternoon, on the flip of a coin.)

He briefly debated leaving and returning later, but he had nothing better to do (the Lamb was obviously going to be fishing for the rest of the day, so there would be no crusading), so he finally grunted and got in line.

(Narinder did double-check that it would not be Brekoyen or Kimar standing in front of him; but thankfully it seemed they had already gotten their food and were chatting in the corner. He was not in the mood to deal with either of those idiots.)

(As idiotic as the Lamb was, at least they had the courtesy to be pleasant around him.)

The follower in front of him (actually, it seemed to be the anxious possum priest who Narinder had glared at– Yartharyn?) turned around to see who had gotten in line–

And squeaked loudly, jumping right into Fikomar in front of him, who turned to see what the matter was, barely impacted by being knocked into.

Narinder muttered an eldritch swear that reached deep into the back of his throat and made his teeth sting. Gods. Social interaction.

“O-oh, H-Hermit! I– um– apologies, Fikomar–”

“I am just here for food,” Narinder growled, to cut off any fumbling from the possum. He was tempted to ask the Lamb, when they returned, if they could have his food delivered again. He was tired of being dragged into whatever nonsense while he was getting food.

Fikomar was regarding Narinder; before Narinder could glare at him and ask him what he wanted, he patted the air with two hands twice.

Narinder stared uncomprehendingly.

“U-um,” Yartharyn licked his lips nervously, eyes darting between the two, before signing something anxiously at Fikomar, “Fikomar wanted to know… about the kids?”

Fikomar nodded and continued signing, Yartharyn hastening to translate, “Yesterday, when you brought them to Lenny’s mother–”

“They showed up at my door asking if I could watch them,” he grumbled, feeling a headache coming on. “I told them no, but they insisted, so I just allowed them inside. They took a nap. Then I walked them home.”

He shot them a glare. “I did not lure them in if that is what you are suggesting. Frankly, I would be more pleased if they left me alone.”

Yartharyn and Fikomar exchanged glances, and a small series of signs.

“W-we didn’t think you lured ‘em… Fiko already knew about Noon’s mam telling him to go find someone to watch them,” Yartharyn stuttered out. “We just… um…”

Gossips, all of them.

“Spit it out, then,” Narinder grumbled; the headache was stronger now.

(Why on earth did he not just disengage before these headache inducing scenarios happened?)

“… why did you walk them home?”

Narinder kneaded his brow. “I was taught to ensure children safely reach their destinations,” he grumbled.

(– taking the hand of a child, the world around them white, ripples spreading beneath their feet.)

(“Come, little one. Let us reunite you with your parents.”)

Fikomar gave another series of signs, Yartharyn biting his bottom lip. “Are you sure, Fiko?”

Narinder shot them a glare. Gods, of course they had other questions. He should’ve known followers of the Lamb would be the nosiest gossips he’d ever met. At least Yartharyn was polite.

(Even if that politeness was borne entirely out of pure terror of Narinder. He would’ve felt glad– at least he could still inspire fear– but it was terribly annoying to be asked questions by someone who constantly looked like they would faint if he so much as raised his hand.)

“… well… Noon said they took a nap with you.” Yartharyn fidgeted, before tentatively asking, “how did you manage that?”

“I don’t know. I was asleep,” Narinder growled. “Why does that matter?”

Fikomar signed, and Yartharyn translated, “Noon isn’t comfortable sleeping around many people.”

Narinder stared.

“… what?”

“Lenny and Noon were basically raised together,” Yartharyn elaborated, “so he sleeps fine when he’s with her, but it usually has to be with one of their mothers before he’ll fully fall asleep. That’s partially why a lot of people were so surprised.”

Narinder kept staring. If he’d had a slight headache before, his head was outright pounding now.

Noon had definitely been asleep against his side yesterday. In fact, it had been a pain to get him to wake up and go back home.

What did that mean?

“Heya, Fiko, Yartharyn! And look who it is! Long time no see, Hermit,” Tyan said cheerfully, slinging the bowls at them with ease and forcing them all to half-dive to catch their meals, before Narinder could suffer a migraine completely unrelated to the one he would inevitably one day have about the Lamb.

“… it’s only been a few days.”

Tyan grinned, swinging herself to sit on the countertop. It seemed Narinder had been at the very end of the line, and there was nobody else coming.

Small mercies, at least.

“How’s crusading treating ya? Leader taking good care of you?”

He scowled at her wording. “I do not need to be taken care of.”

“Sure, Hermit.” Tyan seemed rather smug for some reason.

Lover’s spat.

Narinder was grateful that his fur disguised the flush that had undoubtedly just crossed his face at the thought. The wound on his hand, which had healed remarkably quickly with a dab of camellia paste, felt like it ached a little.

He really should have just left when he’d seen the line earlier.

Fishing was relaxing.

Lambert always enjoyed fishing with Tia; there was something very fun about something snagging the end of the line and their fishing rod jumping in their hands with excitement briefly before they could start to reel in their catch, about discovering what was at the other end of the line; even when they had to sit there for quite a while before something tugged at the line.

It was, occasionally, also very disappointing to fish up some soaking wet grass; but overall fishing with Tia was very fun.

The Fisherman was there as usual, silent.

He only ever spoke to the Lamb if they went to talk to him or buy fish, but they’d both exchange friendly nods of acknowledgement when they came to fish. And he didn’t look at them oddly if they talked to Tia.

Or at least, if he did, they hadn’t noticed.

Today, though, it was a bit hard to focus.

For one, their healing (re-growing) eyeball was immensely itchy, and Tia kept buzzing like a very angry hornet if they absentmindedly reached up to scratch it. Probably to keep the Lamb from injuring the very delicate ball that was literally regrowing in their skull.

For another, they were preoccupied with the two necklaces burning holes in their pocket.

Narinder had probably gathered that they were connected. It was obvious; the colors and symbols of the necklace were inverses of each other. Sun and moon; red, black and white.

(He had not, however, seemed to realize the colors and symbols matched the robes and weapons of two cats who’d flanked his side for a few of those long centuries, chained and bloody and filled with hatred towards fellow Gods.)

(They wondered how he hadn’t noticed the connection.)

They sighed, a long breath that puffed a little white in the chilly night air.

Tia blinked up at them; thankfully the itching was lessening and they were starting to see smears of color on their right side again, so that meant the eye was probably almost fully healed.

“Narinder helped me.”

It sounded odd, even to them as someone who had watched him help them. Heck, as the person being helped.

It just felt strangely foreign to acknowledge that.

Tia blinked again.

“… sorry. I know this is the third time saying it.”

Tia bobbed a little in a nod. Lambert had to smile a bit. They’d said it once in Purgatory, after killing Leshy again (they were getting a lot better; he had gone down after only a few minutes of fighting this time. Narinder would hopefully be pleasantly surprised), standing and staring off into space, trying to process it; and another when they’d gotten out, and the sun was still mid-rise, and they were not covered in the blood and viscera of a burrowing worm God.

Narinder helped them.

Lambert squashed the feeling down. There was no sense in raising their hopes that he wasn’t still angry with them. Would ever stop being angry with them.

Traitorous wretch.

The jab had made Lambert laugh a little– after all, how often did you get called a ‘wretch’– but now, sitting and listening to the waves lap at sand and feeling cold water occasionally wash over their ankles (and dancing back because they realized they’d started standing far too close) and left alone with their thoughts… how long would it take him before he forgave them; forgave them for putting Tia back on their head and drawing a weapon on him, for reasons that they still didn’t fully grasp themself?

(Would he ever forgive them?)

(– black tipped claws and gashes in his chest and a surge of magic in their veins–)

(The quiet was so loud.)

Their usual spot was starting to run ‘dry’– the fish got a bit wise to the whole ‘hey the floating thing in the water is dragging out everyone who goes near it in this specific area’ thing and would start avoiding it until Lambert let it sit for a few days– so they gave the Fisherman a goodbye wave from where he was silently fishing beside them and began to make their way to the end of the harbor. There would always be a few extra lurking there, far enough that they couldn’t throw their line that way but near enough that it only took a minute to walk there briskly.

A follower of the lighthouse waved jauntily at them from where they were on their way to the lighthouse. They were wearing a scarf. It was getting chilly out; never enough for snow but just enough to need to bundle up a little extra.

“Greetings, o mighty Lamb!”

“Heya!” Lambert replied, just as brightly (even though they did internally wish to grimace at being called the ‘mighty’ Lamb for basically giving the lighthouse keeper a few logs and some crystals for the lighthouse. It never felt deserved).

“Where may you be going?” the follower called out. “It’s a bit dark out, isn’t it?”

Lambert nodded, then realized it was a bit too dark and they were a bit too far away to be seen; and did a much more emphatic motion instead.

“I’m getting a few extra fish! Going to the end of the pier to try a different spot; my usual one’s empty again,” they said, raising their voice to be heard clearly over the water lapping at the shore.

The cloaked lighthouse follower nodded, a bit more nervously than before. “Alright… beware the Teeth in the Darkness!” they called back, before hurrying inside the lighthouse.

That was something that was said a lot here– beware the Teeth in the Darkness. It was said as a greeting or a goodbye, especially at night. It was a very paranoid sort of ‘goodbye’; rather than acheerful and warm ‘see you later!’ it was more of an ominous ‘watch out for monsters’ kind of sentiment.

Not that Lambert knew what it meant; nobody would tell them. They’d even asked the Lighthouse Keeper once, and the axolotl had fidgeted awkwardly, hesitant, before simply saying that one should not speak of the Teeth or they would be consumed once they sought it out, and that had been that.

The phrase sounded much like one of the ghost stories Flan would tell on Hallow’s Eves, of bogeymen and wolves and ghouls that went bump in the night; always standing carefully above a torch and trying not to let himself catch on fire while trying to spook Lacey and Lambert for a scared giggle.

(He was always so careful not to really scare them though, always ever-so-careful to pull back if real fear crossed their faces.)

A tiny lump formed in Lambert’s throat, the way it always did when Flan or Lacey crossed their minds.

(But, blissfully, without the cold knot in their stomach that would form in tandem when they thought about their parents.)

It had frightened them, when they realized they had let themself slip and mention Flan to Narinder. And it continued to make their fists clench and their shoulders tense if they brought Flan and Lacey up to him, even though it was easier than thinking of–

– the floor of the shed that became their bedroom before long, trying to figure out where to hide at gatherings, why can’t you just be–

(They supposed it made sense that it scared them.)

(They’d never once mustered up the courage to ask if he’d seen them.)

“Lambert, you okay?”

A nod, a grabbing of the hand extended to them. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” A brief pause; their brother’s hand didn’t leave theirs and they did not move to pull away.

“We’re gonna play Tag. Do you want to come?”

Another pause, longer this time, contemplating.

“Okay.”

Nobody had called them ‘Lambert’ in some time now. It was always some variant of Lamb, or Leader, or ‘beast’ from Kudaai. Even Narinder either used ‘Lamb’, or just a bunch of various insults on their intelligence (which Lambert was curious how many variants of ‘idiot’ he knew, and how many of them he’d use before he inevitably ran out).

Not that he actually knew their name.

Actually, nobody knew their name. Not anymore.

They only called themself it still, mentally, because… what else were they supposed to use? They certainly weren’t going to call themself ‘Leader’.

And ‘Lamb’ just was too much of a reminder (too much of a reminder that they wouldn’t be mixed up with Flan or Lacey or their neighbor who shared their name, never again).

Tia vibrated comfortingly in their hand, making them realize they’d stopped mid-step and started staring off into the middle distance again. It was something they did a lot, when their endless chores dwindled at night and their thoughts grew just a little too loud.

The Crown was growing more flexible with each passing day– Tia had started to feel more like an amorphous shape most of the time, more like a living thing, than a sentient object. Like it was getting close to something new, like a baby bird chipping through the eggshell.

Lambert patted it gently. “Sorry. Was I gripping you too tight?” they asked, softly.

Tia rotated in their grip back and forth– a no.

“Good.”

They settled into a seated position, feet dangling off of the edge of the pier over the murky black waves, leaning back slightly, before casting the line out into the water with a satisfying plunk.

It was very quiet, this late at night and this far out on the pier. That, combined with the fact that it was just dark enough to almost lull Lambert into sleep, with only the tug of the rod and Tia’s jumping to let them know that a fish was on the line.

Maybe Narinder would like it out here. He always seemed to be terribly sensitive to the sun, and it was nice here at night. Pleasantly dark, quiet and cool with a nice breeze that smelled faintly like salt water and (very, very faintly) fish.

They’d ask him next time they saw him.

Which could be a few days from now, if they were too busy.

(Will he ever forgive you?)

Tia suddenly tensed, but not in the way it did when a fish got snagged on the hook– more like the way it did when there was danger nearby.

Lambert looked around automatically, confused (because they weren’t on a crusade, what danger could await them here, where there was none?)– and their eyes fell on a massive, cloaked figure.

They hadn’t noticed it at first, because the end of the pier was dim and without the moon (currently a half-moon, when Lambert glanced up at it) would’ve been pitch black with the distance from the lighthouse and its beam of light that reached into the distance; but a large creature stood there, practically emerging from the inky waves, gazing silently at the Lamb sitting with a cast fishing rod.

Lambert didn’t move, but they were pretty sure the fox(? it certainly looked like one, but it was hard to tell in the shadows) had seen them already anyway, the two regarding each other curiously.

They weren’t particularly afraid– just curious as to what it was, and slightly wary, because… well, let’s face it, massive creatures standing ominously in the darkness without letting you know they were there didn’t inspire all that much trust. Tia was tense under their hand, but not enough for it to really be a threat where they needed to draw a blade.

It certainly was not one of their followers trying to pull a silly prank on them (far too tall, taller than even Narinder, and none of them would leave the cult of their own accord), but at the same time, Lambert was almost certain the red-furred creature wouldn’t attack them.

(They didn’t know why they were so certain.)

Lambert casually began to reel their line back in, without breaking eye contact. They had a strange feeling that there wouldn’t be any more fish here tonight.

(Why were they so sure about it?)

(Why weren’t they afraid? Should they be?)

The creature didn’t move any closer, but it spoke a moment later, voice surprisingly deep and resonant in the night.

“A little Lamb, all alone… careful. You never know what lurks in the night.”

Lambert stood back up, holding Tia carefully and replacing the Crown (who shifted in mid-motion, settling back upon their head and hunkering down into their tuft) upon their head. “Thanks for the warning, I suppose,” they said, cheerfully turning to face the stranger.

(Despite their mask, which nobody had seemed to be able to see through (not even Narinder, not until they dropped it altogether while in front of him), Lambert was certain that the Fox knew they were faking the cheer.)

(They weren’t sure why they were so sure, nor why Tia was so tense upon their head, nor why their own shoulders had tensed slightly.)

(They did not drop the mask.)

The Fox gave a low chuckle. Genuine amusem*nt, or something to try to scare Lambert… they didn’t know. “I smell no fear on you. Caution, yes… but not fear. Curious.”

Lambert maintained their pleasant smile, but they found themself tilting their head to the side a bit in befuddlement. “Should I be afraid?” they asked.

Should they?

The Fox did not respond, eyes landing upon Tia upon Lambert’s head.

Despite not actually being able to see Tia, just from the way the Crown tensed, Lambert instinctively knew Tia was glaring at the fox.

Odd. Tia usually only glared at Narinder. And even then, this glare felt more pointed than how Tia would gaze at the former God.

“I see. You wear the Red Crown.” The Fox gave another low chuckle, ignoring Tia’s glare or Lambert’s blink of surprise. “I knew your predecessor. He was a weak and cowering thing. Not like you, I should think.”

“You knew Narinder?” Lambert asked, deciding in a split second to put the outright insult of their friend (they certainly trusted him enough for them to consider the former God their friend, even if Narinder himself did not return the sentiment) aside, in favor of this new information.

They knew so little about Narinder. And learning anything new directly from him was like pulling teeth. It was probably easier to pull teeth, actually. At least the teeth wouldn’t glare at you while you pulled them.

They would’ve asked Aym and Baal– after all, they too had spent centuries with The One Who Waits in the void of white– but, well, the last time they’d interacted was… certainly not on the best of terms.

(– chains erupting from the earth and fire slicing the air around them, too close to their wool for comfort, and apoplectic rage that hung heavy and thick in the air, as if Narinder’s anger was controlling the world around them–)

The Fox tilted his head, blinking red-pupiled eyes at them.

“I did,” he replied, after a moment’s pause. “We were business partners, one might say. He made a deal with me, as you made a deal with him.”

It smiled, showing off pointed fangs.

“Why not another one?”

Lambert must’ve made a strange face at that (distaste? distrust? confusion in general?), because the Fox chuckled again, low and soft. “Oh, fear not, little Lamb. I don’t seek anything as dramatic as eternal servitude. In fact, what I would like is something quite small; especially for an esteemed God such as yourself.”

Lambert resisted the urge to make another face. Esteemed God. They’d barely been a God for a month, and that entire time the most ‘God-like’ thing they had done was trade with Myst.

“… what is it, then?”

“I’m hungry. Starving. Ravenous.” His voice deepened, darkened for a moment, like the shadows the Fox had risen from, but it changed back before Lambert could really think to listen closer. “I would like a fish. A big one, if possible. And I will give you something in return. Do we have a deal?”

… well, Lambert had caught a surplus of salmon today, which was great except that it was not useful for the meals they made for Narinder. And they’d definitely caught a few particularly large, juicy ones.

They could spare a salmon for this Fox.

“… sure, if that’s all.”

Tia floated off their head, obviously reluctant to do so, still glowering at the Fox; and let Lambert pull out one of the largest salmon they’d caught that evening.

They mouthed a soft ‘it’s okay’ at Tia, before turning to face the Fox fully again and extending the fish in his direction. “How’s this?”

“Excellent. Clever creature,” the Fox replied; and Lambert laid the fish carefully on the boards of the dock. He did seem pleased. “Take this and look away, won’t you? I’m afraid I’m a bit of a messy eater.”

Lambert nearly fumbled the thing that came soaring to them out of the dark– a large shard of a talisman.

(How had he thrown that? They hadn’t seen him move to toss anything. Actually, it was too dark to see much, so maybe they were overthinking it.)

“Oh– ah– thank you!” they said, a little bewildered. “For a fish?”

(And not even a rare fish, at that. At least the talismans had felt deserved coming from the Fisherman, where the Lamb spent literal days getting annoyed at the surplus of literally-everything-except-a-lobster that they were catching, and had literally cheered aloud when they’d finally caught one of the damned things.)

“I certainly have no use of it.” The Fox had taken the fish and must have eaten it at some point while they were looking over the talisman piece– Lambert hadn’t noticed.

He was licking its lips now, apparently satisfied. “Excellent. Truly excellent. Thank you, little Lamb.”

“Sure,” Lambert chirped.

(Gods, it was so exhausting maintaining a cheery facade all the time.)

“You shan’t find me here again, but our paths will cross elsewhere,” the Fox said, with another toothy smile. “In moments of chance, in cover of night.”

Lambert blinked. “What do you–”

They cut themself off. The Fox had vanished in an instant, which they supposed was easy to do in this permeating darkness, leaving nothing but Lambert clutching a talisman piece in their hands and Tia floating half-beside them.

They looked to Tia, who was glaring at the space where he’d been.

“Is he gone?”

Tia ‘nodded’, turning to face them. Lambert couldn’t quite read the Crown’s expression.

It shivered– the surface almost becoming malleable, like it was mid-shift– before floating back onto Lambert’s head, hunkering down in the soft wool.

They reached up and patted it, stowing the talisman piece away and taking one last look at inky water.

“Let’s get back home, Tia,” they murmured.

Narinder almost wished he’d said no this morning, when the Lamb had knocked on his door and asked if he’d like to come on a crusade with them.

They were strangely talkative today, musing about new buildings for the cult. He had no idea what spurred the thought on, but despite their lack of cheer, today they were very chatty as they sliced grass and sawed through bone and crushed rocks to dust.

“– so I figured a new building might raise some morale for the followers. We already having a mating tent, and some hatcheries, near the healer’s, since the eggs need to be taken care of–”

Narinder grimaced. Great, another reminder of that. “I truly did not need to know the details of where it is, Lamb–” he growled.

“– but I was thinking that maybe I should think about other things,” the Lamb continued, ignoring his growl as per usual. “Like a drum circle, for festivals. I know most of the cult likes music, but it’s difficult to find intact instruments these days; especially on crusades.”

Narinder shot them a disgruntled look. They may not have been as bubbly and excited as they pretended to be in front of their followers, but they were certainly talking up a storm, and would have been making piercing, uncomfortably long eye contact with him if he’d been looking in their direction.

“It would likely help if you didn’t smash everything in every clearing to pieces every time,” he grumbled, when their eyes inevitably met.

“Maybe, but the heretics don’t usually have instruments either,” the Lamb responded, unperturbed. “Drums are good, since the materials are easy to fetch… and I don’t have to try to carve a guitar or something by hand either.”

Tia’s eye scrunched up, as if the very idea of the Lamb trying to carve a guitar was disastrous and should be avoided at all costs.

Narinder thought about one time when the Lamb had dropped their bane dagger whilst on a crusade, fumbled to catch it instinctively, and managed to send it straight into their own foot after slicing open their hand. He didn’t even understand how they’d managed that, considering it would’ve missed them entirely if they’d just stayed still.

He privately agreed with the Crown’s sentiment.

“Oh. Or maybe we could build a drinkhouse. I know some of the elders talk about alcohols they liked to drink a long time ago,” the Lamb said, thoughtfully, “before they started…”

They faltered a bit, eyes lowering briefly. “… you know,” they finished, a bit lamely, before turning around to face him.

“What do you think, Narinder?”

“I think this entire conversation is idiotic.”

This got a soft laugh out of the Lamb, brief but simultaneously unsurprised and strangely soft, fond (no, that was a silly notion; he was surely just imagining it.) “Sure, Narinder.”

– hands on his face and venom on their tongue and a soft laugh and red eyes, boring through him–

“What would you even make drinks with?” he muttered, as they kept slicing at the grass with careful swings of the sword. “You could hardly make beet alcohol.”

“I mean, it’s technically possible to.”

Narinder glared at the Lamb. For a semi-straightforward God, they had a very irritating habit of being quite contrary at the same time. “Allow me to rectify that statement. Nobody would drink beet alcohol.”

“True. Well, we just got a bunch of grapes and hops and cotton,” they pointed out, turning back to their task of killing all of the grass in Darkwood. “I think those are new. I’ve never seen those on a crusade before.”

“I sincerely hope you don’t plan to make a drink out of cotton.”

They tossed a bit of grass in his direction, though whether it was an attempt at playfully telling him to shut up or just discarding bad grass, Narinder couldn’t tell. “Of course not. But I know grapes and hops are meant for stronger beverages.”

They paused briefly, and he thought they discovered something in the tall grass, until they corrected themself, “I mean, I suppose you can also just make plain grape juice with grapes. It doesn’t have to be alcoholic.”

He scowled, rolling his eyes. “Why are you discussing this with me, Lamb? Surely you have architects to help you with these things.”

“Not really.”

(That certainly explained the absolute chaotic mess that the layout of the cult was.)

“Besides, I want to get an idea of what might be more popular.”

He shot them another disgruntled look, brows raising. “You chose to ask me about this? I despise noise in general, and mortal alcohol is disgusting.”

The Lamb glanced at him briefly. “As opposed to what?”

“Ambrosia,” he responded instantly. “Liquor for gods. The taste makes mortal alcohols taste like pure swill.”

He paused for a moment, before adding, “And mortal alcohols do not have an effect on Gods, so if we did drink it it would be an act of pure masochism.”

“Strong praise, coming from you.” The Lamb severed a particularly stubborn knot of grass that was sticking out of the ground. “What would happen if a mortal drank it?”

“Their blood would boil from within and they would die a very swift death.”

“Ah, so not a pleasant experience.”

Gods, they were ridiculously talkative today. He hadn’t had a chance to ask them a single question in return.

(He was keeping a mental tally, though, and they certainly owed him many answers at this point.)

It was strange, though. Usually, they only asked him a few, and were too preoccupied with fighting or harvesting to ask him much.

It was almost as if they were trying to keep the silences from stretching too long.

“What if you drank it? Right now, I mean,” the Lamb asked, turning to look at him and breaking his train of thought.

“Do you think we had many former Gods who only possessed tiny shreds of their former capabilities to do experiments with?” he growled.

They gave him a small shrug of the shoulders. “Worth a shot. Do you drink?”

Narinder rolled his eyes a little at this question. “Like I just said, Gods are not affected by mortal alcohols, Lamb. And I certainly did not have a recipe for ambrosia on hand while being imprisoned for several hundred years.”

“Probably would’ve made it a lot easier to tolerate,” the Lamb muttered, which made Narinder half-snort in surprise and a half-laugh. He rarely ever saw the Lamb being sarcastic.

(Then again, they had been putting on a face for so long. How much did it hide?)

(Narinder was still finding out.)

“… did you drink?” they asked, at length.

He scowled at them. Gods, they were persistent today. It was annoying.

“… I did,” he said, finally.

It was just easier to get them off his back at this point. Otherwise he suspected they would just ask again, at a far less convenient time than in a spacious clearing with them chopping at the grass.

“At celebrations, when I was invited,” he elaborated, when the Lamb paused in cutting grass, clearly waiting for more.

(Damned thing. The next time he asked for a rain check, he’d hit them with the metaphorical bill of questions they were building up.)

The Lamb gave him a sidelong look at the specification. “… was that very often?”

“What celebration would want the God of Death there?” he replied, glaring at the gargantuan flowers that surrounded this particular clearing and would get lost in the trees when they moved forward. “As far as I know, Lamb, you are the only one with a ridiculous notion of death being beautiful.”

The Lamb didn’t make a rebuttal, or try to sway him to their view again– just gave a confirming ‘hmm’ sound.

The massive flowers had eyes, large and wide and staring down at the two of them in the clearing. He wanted to punch one of the damn things in the eye; but of course leaving the established paths and clearings would result in them both being hopelessly lost (because he knew for a fact the Lamb would probably thoughtlessly plunge in after him without a plan).

The Lamb had done that once.

It had been a particularly painful death, since it was before they could teleport themself back to the cult. They had wandered for a day, totally and utterly lost; before simply taking out their sword and stabbing themself so that they could just have him teleport them back to the cult.

It had surprised him immensely at the time, to see such a cheerful creature do such a thing.

(“Why did you do that?” The One Who Waits had asked, while the Lamb’s wounds filled with black ichor and sealed and they patiently waited for him to send them back.

(“It was a lot quicker than starving to death slowly,” was their cheerful reply.)

(Perhaps even back then, the signs of their bluntness, their lack of cheer in their eyes and their tongue had been showing the signs.)

“But I did oversee funeral rites for the Bishops, sometimes,” he found himself saying.

It had been a long time since he’d had to oversee a funeral as the God of Death.

“So I was asked to oversee those. Occasionally they would request a feast afterward, and I would stay for that as well, as a part of the rites.” He shot the Lamb a sharp look from where they were still harvesting grass. “Are you nearly done, Lamb–?”

“I don’t think I ever drank.”

They were still harvesting grass at a fairly decent rate, but their gaze was faraway and their grip on the sword (not one of their preferred weapons; they said it lacked the speed of the dagger and the strength of the axe, but Kudaai had also sent up a hammer and the Lamb had immediately grabbed the previously-discarded sword, citing that they were just too terrible with the hammer to get far in the crusade).

(Considering the Lamb had once managed to break their entire foot by dropping the hammer on it by accident, he certainly believed that statement.)

“… I was supposed to have some, when I came of age,” they said, at length.

Ah. Right. He remembered, a long-forgotten piece of information that he’d totally shoved out of his mental space until just now.

Lambs (sheep?) had a ‘coming of age’ ceremony, back when there were far more than the one standing in front of him and chopping at all the grass in the room. The ceremony was meant to mark their ascent to adulthood, a symbol of moving forward in one’s life and the opening of the world towards the young ones.

He had attended one of those ceremonies once, when he was still young and his blood wasn’t thick, poisonous sludge and his siblings all were intact and whole. It hadn’t been anything particularly grand or lavish– they’d place a garland of flowers around the lamb’s neck, say a few warm words and platitudes that blended together now, in his memories, with Meran’s blessings at funerals, and then a feast that lasted into the wee hours of the night.

A comically simple affair, compared to the rituals and rites the Bishops had held with gold and jewels and pomp; but one that had been full of a warmth that he could still vaguely picture as a dim, golden glow in the middle of the night, the moon casting the faintest of silvery light over the gold.

Lambs had been such a warm kind of folk, with affectionate words for even people outside of their own families and a generous nature.

(And he was watching the very last one harvest swathes of grass from a room, littered with bits of bones and the viscera and blood of their enemies.)

“… so I presume you did not,” he said, half-drawling.

The Lamb looked over their shoulder at him, meeting his eyes. “I came of age hiding from hunters in an abandoned house in Darkwood,” they replied plainly, and the sarcasm oozing in his voice dried up entirely at the not-quite-an-answer.

They sounded quite matter-of-fact, as if they hadn’t lost a part of their childhood, their life– hell, as if they hadn’t lost their literal life. The ceremony was something that all sheep, prior to the Lamb, had experienced; a symbolic step ‘forward’ in life.

A celebration of life.

Death is beautiful.

They had never had it. And yet, even with such a blunt statement, he felt no sense of loss, of sorrow from the Lamb.

“… you don’t sound particularly upset about that,” he said, at last, after a long mental fight with himself on what he could possibly say next.

“It doesn’t feel like the moment I came of age,” was their absent reply, as they cut the last piece of grass in the clearing (finally) and Tia happily swept up back onto their head, full of grass and whatever other things they’d stuffed inside. “There, we can move on now.”

Narinder didn’t stand up quite yet, still perched on the rock he’d sat down on earlier to watch them decimate this entire clearing of tall foliage; he was staring, ears half-folded back in confusion at the statement. “What do you mean by that, Lamb?”

“Um… I’m done with the–”

“The coming of age, you moron,” he growled, which got a brief quirk of the lips from them.

Were they smiling at him insulting them?

(They did that a lot. Maybe he should stop, if they derived amusem*nt from it rather than frustration.)

“Ah. It’s the technical correct date of when I did, but… I didn’t feel like I’d come of age. Not then,” they said, with a slight shrug of the shoulders that made their fleece flutter in the breeze briefly.

Narinder struggled briefly.

Did he press more?

Curiosity killed the cat.

Apparently, today, he decided to press even further.

“What is the moment you feel like you came of age, then?”

The Lamb looked at him for a long moment– not upset or blank (not blank, simply toned down and muted), or thoughtful, for once– before holding their palm out.

The sword– not any of the more creative, more destructive variants Kudaai had spent time on, but a plain sword with a black hilt and a gleaming blade– dropped back into their hand, Tia blinking up at the Lamb from where they were now gripping the sword.

“The moment I was given the power to fight back.”

(For a moment, Narinder thought they were about to say something else after that– their lips parted, very slightly, with an intake of breath– and then they closed their mouth again, and the moment passed.)

He was staring at them.

I still have need of you.

(They betrayed him.)

“We should move on,” the Lamb finished, turning half-away and beginning to make their way into the next clearing, Tia sweeping back out of their hand and onto their head.

“I think I’ll focus on getting the drinkhouse built first. We won’t have a festival until mid-winter, and that’s another month from now.”

Narinder didn’t move for a long moment, feeling the stare of huge flowers on his back, before he followed them out of the clearing, Tia watching him the whole while.

“… I will not test any of your concoctions, Lamb.”

“I didn’t think you would…”

Narinder grimaced. They had been crusading, as per usual, and as they were traveling down the path to a new clearing, he felt the moment his paws met cobblestone brick again.

Great. This could possibly mean that they would meet Chemach again.

Chemach will make a Relic out of you one day.

He glanced at the Lamb, who seemed wholly unperturbed and was in fact walking slightly ahead of him at a decent trot.

One day implied far in the future. Perhaps she was a scavenger… but still.

Holy pieces of revered beings.

His fists clenched.

Although, now that he thought about it, it was much hotter than he’d been expecting. Where Chemach’s room had felt cold and sterile, much like a morgue (it was a morgue); the physical heat that grew with each step made Narinder tug irritably at the veil he was wearing to block out the sun.

The Lamb perked up and almost skipped ahead.

“Hi, Kudaai!” they called out, and the swap between silently (comfortably) walking beside Narinder, face devoid of emotion, to the bubbly mask they put on in front of people briefly stunned him enough that he didn’t quite recognize the name.

Ah. Kudaai, the blacksmith. That explained the waves of heat rolling over him.

The blacksmith owl was bowing his head in greeting as the Lamb hurried up to him and the wares he’d laid out. “Hello, beast.”

The owl was clothed in a cloak much like Clauneck’s, but unlike his brother’s, his cloak was gold and clinked when he moved, like chainmail. Whenever he turned to the forge beside him, or tilted his head, or twisted his body, Narinder could see swords jutting from his back, permanently embedded in his flesh and yet never harming him.

He recalled the owl. Similar to Clauneck (in fact, they appeared identical to one another, and if it weren’t for the constant squint Kudaai bore from staring into a forge filled with flames, the two could’ve swapped cloaks and been utterly indistinguishable from one another), it wasn’t abnormal to encounter the owl periodically whilst out in the wilds.

“What’s this?” the Lamb was asking as Narinder drew even with them, pointing at one of the weapons the owl had set out for them.

Narinder looked down at it as well.

This one was definitely new. A black grip that led to a smooth, cylindrical chamber that flared out much like a trumpet.

“Ah. A new creation from the forge. I believe it is called a blunderbuss.”

The former God scowled at the gold-cloaked blacksmith. “Didn’t you make the weapon?” he growled.

Kudaai lifted his head to meet Narinder’s eyes. “Hello, One Who Waits Below,” he replied, totally unperturbed. “It is good to see that the Liberator freed you.”

He glowered at the owl. “If by ‘freed’ you mean ‘trapped in a mortal flesh prison’, then yes, they freed me,” he gritted out.

(He thought, briefly, that he could see the Lamb flinch out of the corner of his eye, but when he glanced back at them they were busy examining the blunderbuss, careful not to touch it yet.)

“As for the weapon,” Kudaai said, either choosing not to acknowledge what Narinder had just said or just not caring (which Narinder couldn’t tell which it could be), “my forge and the hammer are the ones who dictate their form; not I. I am simply the being who is able to wield the hammer and to tame the everlasting flame enough to produce the form they choose.”

He may not have been nearly as cryptic as Clauneck, but Narinder was starting to suspect he would find all of the owl siblings slightly annoying. In their own ways, they all spoke in riddles.

After another few moments of debate, the Lamb touched the blunderbuss.

Tia snaked down (a one-eyed serpent) and examined the weapon, before the Crown shifted and morphed into the new shape, jumping into the Lamb’s hand with practiced ease.

“Point the weapon at what you wish to wield it against, and pull the trigger,” Kudaai said helpfully, when the Lamb curiously began turning the thing round-and-round to get a better look at it.

The Lamb turned to one of the dummies across the stone room, awkwardly steadying the barrel of the blunderbuss with their other hand, and pulled at a little object that Narinder presumed was the trigger. “Like… thi–”

A loud bang! echoed through the clearing as a spray of bullets pierced through the dummy’s wooden ‘skull’, the projectiles dissipating into unsubstantial black smoke moments later. The nearest dummy had been blasted to splinters, while a few that had been hit with the excess bullets still bore smoking wounds.

“Oh, wow!” The Lamb released their hold on Tia, letting the Crown return to their head (which was probably significantly safer, as well, since the last thing Narinder wanted was for the Lamb to accidentally pull the little trigger and literally shoot themself in the foot in the middle of a fairly successful crusade so far) and beaming at Kudaai. “That’s incredible! I’ve never had a ranged weapon before. It goes so far!”

“You throw your axe, do you not?”

The Lamb looked to Narinder at his remark. “That’s not really a ranged weapon, though, is it?” Immediately, their attention focused back on Kudaai. “This is incredible, Kudaai!”

“You said that already.”

The Lamb ignored his sarcastic grumble in favor giving Kudaai a very brief hug. The owl didn’t really seem to care, allowing the Lamb to give him a squeeze before hopping back.

(It made Narinder wonder how often they actually did it to Kudaai. Which made him wonder if the Lamb had ever hugged Clauneck before.)

(Now he was wondering why he was wondering at all.)

“I might have a new favorite weapon!” they chirped.

“Excellent. I am glad to hear the flames were able to provide something to your satisfaction, beast,” Kudaai responded.

Narinder was pretty sure it was a sincere thanks, but the way Kudaai squinted constantly and the way his hood fell over his face meant that it was very difficult to tell.

“Oh, uh, Kudaai, could I ask a favor?” the Lamb asked, suddenly, making Narinder’s eyes snap to them. They looked curious now, totally distracted from the excitement of a shiny new weapon in an instant.

“You may speak, beast,” Kudaai responded, which Narinder supposed meant ‘yes’ from the blacksmith.

The Lamb gestured at Narinder. “Could you make him a weapon, too?”

Narinder raised a brow at that, torn between vague confusion and a scowl.

“I don’t need a weapon, Lamb. Besides, I don’t believe I could even touch a weapon that he made in this state. I didn’t know if you’d noticed, but the owl only makes weapons for Gods.”

The Lamb turned to face him. “It’s worth a shot.”

Narinder growled at them. “I have been fighting perfectly well without a weapon for two crusades now. Need I remind you that you got your eye gouged out on the last one, and I have not?”

He distantly noticed Kudaai turning to the forge. Probably trying to tune out what was shaping up to be another argument.

“I know you don’t need it, but… I don’t know. We’re facing your brother–”

Narinder snarled.

“– Leshy,” the Lamb corrected themself, “after Barbatos. I know you’re fully capable of fighting with your claws, but I don’t like your odds up against other Gods.”

Other Gods. He noticed they lumped him into that group, as if he still was a God.

It was getting rather warm in the room. It had already been uncomfortably warm, verging on hot, but now Narinder could actively feel himself sweating, which was making his fur damp.

Gods. Mortal bodies were the worst.

“Please.”

Narinder blinked, shaken out of his thoughts. The Lamb had clasped their hands together in front of them, head half lowered so he could no longer meet their eyes. His sight was not enhanced by any means, but he swore he could see a faint tremble to their fingers.

“Just… just in case.” The bell jingled as they swallowed silently. “Isn’t it better to have something just in case?”

… this was no act. The cheer and the absent friendliness had dropped totally, leaving them staring blankly downwards.

The Lamb was afraid.

Why?

He would have followed this train of thought, but a sudden CLANG rang out and made the both of them jump in surprise.

Turning, they could see Kudaai wielding a blacksmith’s hammer. There was a molten piece of iron on the anvil now, being worked into a shape.

“It is true, One Below” Kudaai said, sending a shower of sparks up as he struck the molten metal again with another clang, “that I typically bestow only Godly instruments. However–” another clang– “my brother–” clang– “and my sister have both spoken to me.”

The Lamb blinked, their eyes wide and curious again, as if nothing had just happened. “You talk to each other?”

“Does family not speak to one another?” Clang.

Narinder scowled at that, darker than before.

“I was kinda under the impression you were all aware of each other’s existences, but didn’t talk to each other,” the Lamb responded, quite bluntly.

Narinder thought, briefly, he saw Kudaai’s beak curve slightly in a grin, but then it was eclipsed by another spray of sparks. The metal was shaping itself with each hit of the hammer, long and curved and forming magic sigils on its own, bubbling up from the molten iron.

“Clauneck bore a warning, and Chemach spoke of something curious.”

Kudaai used a pair of thin, long tongs and plunged the molten metal into a bucket of what looked suspiciously like blood, sending up a thick cloud of black smoke and gold steam bellowing up through the ruined ceiling. The Lamb seemed to be watching this smoke and steam billow upwards.

“First, the curiosity. Chemach spoke of you, beast, but then spoke of another who was neither God nor mortal.”

Narinder felt the Lamb turn to look at him.

He ignored it, and also chose to ignore the fact that his ears had definitely perked up without his permission. He glowered at the forge.

Chemach will make Relic out of you one day.

Eyes fixed upon the Lamb.

The steel came out black, dark as obsidian, with blood-soaked sigils engraved in the blade.

“And second, the warning.”

Kudaai selected a long, cragged branch that had been trimmed and carved into a mostly-straight shape.

Anyone who didn’t know Kudaai would have assumed it was laziness that made it so crooked, but Narinder could recognize the areas where the weight would best fall and where it would make it easier to wield the weapon.

Cryptic though Kudaai may have been, he was certainly also a master blacksmith.

“Beast.” Kudaai fixed the Lamb with a stare as he began to work on attaching blade to branch. “Clauneck says, ‘the moon continues to wane. Beware the teeth.’”

Narinder thought something vaguely uncomfortable crossed the Lamb’s face, but it was gone before he could turn to look at it in time.

Kudaai extended the weapon towards Narinder, making his head snap back around. A jet-black scythe with red engravings on the blade was being held out towards him, Kudaai having to heft the thing with both hands in order to hold it up at all. It was around Narinder’s height, he could tell; and the long, curved blade was nearly the same length.

“… I am not a God. I cannot wield a godly weapon,” Narinder said, even though he was itching to grab the handle of the scythe. His eyes were fixed upon it; the sigils seemed to glow dimly against the jet black iron. He half-knew, instinctively (somehow) that the scythe would be perfectly weighted for him.

It was literally made for him, after all.

“The weapons I craft for the beast are no more Godly than I am,” Kudaai replied. “The beast’s Crown fashions itself from my creations, but a Creation without a Crown is not a God’s weapon. You may take it without fear that it will scorch your fur or melt your bones.”

Narinder hesitated for only about two more seconds before he reached out and took it.

True to Kudaai’s word, he did not instantly burst into flames or feel his flesh melting; if anything, the only thing he felt was the satisfying heft of the scythe.

It was balanced perfectly, and fit perfectly into his paws.

The Lamb had been oddly silent so far. He’d been expecting they’d be clamoring to try to borrow it and excitedly hopping around him, at least in front of Kudaai as part of the face they would put on.

Narinder turned to see the Lamb gazing at him, any fear from before forgotten, eyes wide and large.

“What is it, Lamb?” he growled.

They blinked once, before the faintest of smiles touched their face; far softer than the brightness they’d spoken to Kudaai with.

“Nothing. I think it suits you.”

They turned to Kudaai and gave a deep bow while Narinder mentally tried to figure out what on earth he was supposed to think about that statement. “Thanks, Kudaai. What do I owe you for this?”

Kudaai thought about it for a moment. The forge’s flames had calmed slightly, leaving the room hot but not boiling.

“Camellias. That tea that you made was excellent. I should like to make more of it.”

The Lamb beamed. “Awesome. I’ll add in the beetroot leaves, too. They add a bit of sweetness without needing the sugar.”

Kudaai bowed his head in acknowledgement.

The Lamb turned back to Narinder and grabbed his sleeve, towing him out of the room. “Come on, let’s get some practice in with our new weapons!” they chirped.

“Unhand me, you moron!”

Kudaai watched the two depart, the former God’s ears folded back as he barked (which was ironic, since he was a cat) at the beast, cheerfully tugging him along with the excitement of a child at the midwinter festival.

“… you are lucky that the former God did not sense your presence, Chemach. He seemed agitated when you were mentioned.”

His oldest sister dropped from the ceiling without further ado, bouncing in her harness and splattering black blood on the floor from her mutilated legs.

A few drops fell into the forge, causing the flames to curl and turn bloodred for an instant before settling.

“Ah! Ah! Very funny. Godly Lamb and strange beast. Yes.” She gave a shrill hoot of a laugh. “Little Lamb saw Chemach? But said nothing. Ah! Yes.”

Kudaai had noticed the Lamb watching Chemach briefly, through black smoke and gold steam and with large eyes, before pulling their gaze away again.

Why they would not mention this to The One Who Waits, Kudaai could only assume from the glare he’d caught from beneath the veil at the very mention of her name.

“Relics. Better. Powerful.” Chemach looked at the wares he had set aside for the next time the beast stopped by. “Your things are pretty. Silly, pointy blades.”

He inclined his head, setting his tools aside. “It pleases me to hear that you still find my weapons beautiful, Chemach.”

There was no point in getting angry at her for her words; not any longer.

Her very nature was lost.

She giggled, before her bulging red eyes fixed upon her brother’s. “What think you of the beasts? The Little God and the creature?”

“I see why you and Clauneck have taken such vested interests in them,” Kudaai replied, shutting the little iron window to his forge.

He would take a brief break from crafting weapons; a new weapon altogether, a new form, especially for a mortal, took the flames’ energy; and now it required a rest.

“An infant God who does not understand Fate, but tries to listen regardless; and a former God who understands Fate, and chooses to shun the warnings.”

“Not mortal. Not Godly. Ah!” Chemach bounced a bit in her harness, apparently delighted at the concept of a demigod. A being who straddled the line.

A being that, until now, had not existed.

“No,” Kudaai agreed. “He bears no Crown.”

He glanced at his sister, knowing his next suggestion was fruitless, and simply more of an echo of the past.

“You could craft him one.”

Chemach tilted her head. Well, rather, she tilted her entire body, so that she was lopsided half-flopped in her harness, gazing at Kudaai with bulging red eyes.

“Silly brother. Ah! Funny.” She gave another shrill laugh, but there was no amusem*nt this time. When she spoke next, an echo of her former self seemed to resound, deep within her.

“Chemach no longer crafts pretty things. Ah! No.”

Chapter 11: See No Evil

Chapter Text

Every few days, Lambert would slip out (well, ‘slip out’ was an overexaggeration, literally everybody knew what they were up to, and they never made any attempt to hide it) to go play Knucklebones with Ratau.

The teleportation circle made what would have been a very long climb up a cliff, a very deteriorated path, and enough bushes to put Darkwood to shame an easy two-minute stroll, so they went as often as they could.

At first, it had just been the two of them; a former vessel and the current, with the former being baffled at how slowly Lambert grasped the strategy of Knucklebones; but eventually a small group of Ratau’s friends had joined in– Flinky, Klunko and Bop, and Shrumy (who really seemed to hold a grudge against Lambert, for some reason; it wasn’t like they’d done anything to the old turtle except become the new cult leader).

(And that hadn’t even been by choice.)

Now, Knucklebones nights were getting to be pretty lively, with snacks and drinks (Lambert refused these. Like Narinder said, mortal alcohol was disgusting, and the only thing it really did for them was make them eat more of the snacks that Flinky brought to try to drown out the sharp bitterness that lingered on their tongue) and arguing over ‘that dice fell off the table, that does not count’.

Of course, as per usual, the others would leave at around midnight. Ratau would joke about his old, aching bones, and Shrumy would bid him goodbye and give Lambert the stink-eye on the way out, Klunko and Bop would head out after helping clear the table; and Flinky would depart after tossing the wooden cups into the washbucket (they had been pottery, at one point, and Ratau had immediately remedied that mistake after a single accident); which just left Lambert and Ratau together to clean up what little mess remained.

It was nice, hanging out with Ratau one-on-one.

It reminded Lambert of quieter times, of times before they had former Gods and Godly merchants and strange owls speaking in tongues to them on the daily.

“I got the plates,” Lambert said, hastily picking up the last one before Ratau could snag it and insist they hand over the rest. They’d learned their lesson about that after the first few times where he’d insisted on taking the entire pile. “Washbucket?”

The old rat smiled at them, wrinkles forming at the corner of his eyes. “Yes, please. Thank you, Lamb.”

(He was getting older, day by day, more and more gray and white furs forming at his temples and his chin; Lambert didn’t know how they felt about knowing that he, too, would be gone one day.)

(Especially when he still did not know their name; nor did he know about their mask; perpetual cheer from Lambert was something the entire group was familiar with and had come to expect from them.)

(They wondered if he’d ever know. If they’d ever feel comfortable telling anyone, except maybe Narinder.)

Lambert shifted the wooden plates into one hand, dusting some leftover crumbs off the table onto the used plates. “Maybe one day you should swing by the cult. We got some little Knucklebones enthusiasts, now,” they suggested, knowing full well he’d come up with some excuse to not leave his house.

He was strangely averse to leaving this place, despite how far away from everything and reclusive it was.

Still, that was part of the reason they liked it. It was quiet, and cozy.

He’d chuckled and joked about it being a lonely little shack in the woods and that if they weren’t a good cult leader, they might end up in a place such as this; but Lambert sometimes really wondered if they would mind a fate like that.

“You could teach ‘em how to play.”

Ratau chuckled, leaning on his staff slightly as he began to scoop the dice into their respective bags. “Oh, I taught you everything I know.”

Everyone left their dice at his house (there was no point in carrying their own, when the only place they ever went to play was at his), so it was up to him to organize and store everybody’s dice.

He complained often about it (“Klunko, why are there shiny pebbles in your dice bag where they can chip your dice?”), but Lambert always caught him smiling quietly when he put the bags away, including their own woolly bag they’d made for him as a gift.

Lambert’s knitting skills, when they’d made the bag, had left a lot to be desired. It was very lumpy, and more of a misshapen blob than a bag.

They’d offered to replace it, after Shrumy had made some nasty comment or another about it, with a much better one from a silkworm named Berith they’d run into on one crusade or another. Ratau had come up with some excuse or another to keep it each time they mentioned it.

(And, they noticed, Shrumy was much more pleasant about the appearance of the bag from there on out. The old rat had probably had had a word with his friend.)

They still weren’t the best at sewing or knitting or weaving, but they were getting much better at the task. Maybe they could start making clothes.

Though, they’d practice a bit more before they did anything like that. And maybe ask Berith for ideas.

They definitely didn’t want a fervent follower to throw on the worst thing Lambert could make and claim that they loved it. They had too much experience with their followers to hope that nobody would be that blindly faithful.

“Are you sure you want to say that you taught me everything I know when I constantly lose?” Lambert joked back. “What if I create the world’s worst Knucklebones players and they parrot that I taught them everything they know, and so on?”

Ratau shot them a smirk. “Then you can bring them around here, and I can claim the credit for teaching them instead.”

(The mask the Lamb wore was a little less forced, around Ratau.)

(Maybe, short of dropping it altogether for Narinder, that was why Lambert liked Ratau’s company so much.)

“How is the One Who Waits?” the old rat asked, setting aside Shrumy’s bag of worn dice.

The dots had started to wear off again; Lambert’s sharp eyesight meant they’d have to repaint them with Shrumy breathing down their neck and complaining that they’d made one of the dots way too big, and to redo the entire dice.

As for the main bulk of the question, Lambert had mentioned Narinder to Ratau last time they came to play (there was no point in not mentioning it, after all, and it was nice to receive some advice).

(Or at least some comfort that they had done the right thing, even if it was a lie.)

They’d asked him to keep it a secret– just so Narinder could feel more comfortable– and the old rat had agreed, though he’d asked the Lamb to bring the former God over for a game of Knucklebones sometime.

(Lambert wondered if it was so Ratau could tell people he’d once trounced The One Who Waits at Knucklebones.)

(Actually, that was almost definitely it.)

They hadn’t told him Narinder’s real name, though. Narinder seemed satisfied (well, as satisfied as he could be) being referred to as ‘Hermit’ by the other cult members, and he had given no indication that he wished to be known by anything else yet.

“He’s coming on crusades now,” Lambert replied cheerfully, carefully carrying the wooden dishes across the floor. “But I think he’s getting used to mortality.”

Ratau raised an eyebrow at that, obviously not really believing Lambert.

“… very slowly.”

Ratau chuckled, setting aside his own bag of dice. “It’ll take time, I’m sure. Though, I believe you’ll help.” Ratau shot them a wry grin. “After all, you’ve already achieved the impossible of defeating Gods five times now.”

Lambert smiled back, trying not to let the strain show on their face.

(Traitorous wretch.)

“Any other interesting news?” Ratau asked, turning back to the dice.

“Nothing, really, unless you want to hear about the drinkhouse plans. Some follower suggested a poop drink, which… really, I don’t understand some of them… oh, I actually met someone weird the other day,” Lambert mentioned, putting the dishes in the washbucket– Ratau was picky about how they were cleaned, and fussed over it whenever Lambert tried.

“Oh?”

Lambert nodded while they began to fill the washbucket with water, to let the plates soak a bit. “It was a… fox? I think. It was too dark to see him properly.”

Silence.

Lambert turned to see Ratau frozen mid-cleanup, holding a handful of dice.

The old rat turned to look at them, suddenly stiff and wide-eyed. “… did you say a fox?”

“Yeah, he was kind of weird,” Lambert said, more hesitantly now.

Ratau rarely looked so alarmed. A former vessel of the Red Crown, he was genuinely unphased by a lot of battle-related things Lambert would casually mention (they once brought up a particularly nasty death whilst on a crusade where they were impaled on some spikes, and his response had been ‘oh, those have always been dreadful to deal with’).

So for him to look openly alarmed like this… it didn’t sit right.

Lambert slowly turned the faucet off.

“He had black robes on, and he seemed to know The One Who Waits–”

Ratau dropped the dice.

“Ratau–?”

“You didn’t tell him about this place, did you?”

Lambert blinked. Ratau’s intact eye was wide open now. His grip on his staff had tightened, and he was almost leaning on the table to stay upright.

They could see him trembling.

“No– no, I didn’t,” Lambert said, immediately, abandoning the dishes in the washbucket and hurrying over, grabbing his elbow and forcing him to sit down.

If him looking alarmed didn’t sit right, Ratau being afraid actively scared Lambert a bit. And they didn’t want the rat to fall.

Ratau didn’t scare. Not really. So for him to be trembling at the very mention of the Fox was alarming in and of itself.

“He didn’t bring you up by name– you know him–?”

“Good. Good.” Ratau settled slightly at the reassurance, but he was still shaking a bit.

He didn’t bother answering the question, and the perpetually-curious Lambert didn’t even think to push further.

“Don’t tell him. Don’t even mention me.”

“Of course,” was the automatic reply, followed by, “but who is he?”

Ratau shook his head, almost knocking the paper crown off of his head from the force. “I– we can’t– we shouldn’t speak of him.” he said. The tremble had reached the old rat’s voice now, too. “It’s best if you simply never bring it up.”

Something was ringing a small bell at the back of Lambert’s head, but they ignored it in favor of giving a nod.

They’d started rubbing Ratau’s back at some point; they hadn’t noticed starting and Ratau didn’t make them stop.

“Okay. Just…” They realized there wasn’t anything they could really say, and their voice trailed off before they gave another nod, not knowing what else to do. “Okay.”

The two stayed there for a while, until Ratau had stopped trembling so visibly and Lambert’s entire arm got rather sore from the repetitive motion.

The topic was forgotten, slowly, when Lambert (forcedly cheerfully) asked him if they should bring him something Tyan had made for the next game night, and he pointed out that they’d have immense difficulty carrying all of it if they told her what it was for; which led to a tangent about how Narinder cooked on days when they didn’t go on crusades (as long as he got up early enough), and how much better he was at it as of late (at the very least, the dishes now resembled what Lambert made, if not the impeccable quality of Tyan’s; and eventually all thoughts of foxes and uncharacteristic fear had been pushed to the back of their head.

In fact, they forgot it wholly until they were back at the cult, shrouded in darkness and on their way to go conk out in the field outside– it was a pleasant night, unusually warm for autumn– when the thought occurred to them.

We shouldn’t speak of him.

One should not speak of him.

One should not speak of the Teeth.

Lambert looked up at Tia, who always took a nap during Knucklebones– it deserved breaks just as much as they did, and so they’d told Tia that unless they somehow needed to draw a weapon in the middle of a game, it should take a nap or something.

Apparently, Tia had taken that to heart.

Tia was certainly not napping now, staring at Lambert with its solitary red eye.

“… is that why you were so tense last time? When we met the Fox?” they asked, quietly.

Tia shivered, the motion more fluid than usual, and looked back at them, silent as always.

Beware the Teeth in the darkness.

Lambert glanced at the shadows around them.

They suddenly seemed darker than before, like at any moment a set of pointed teeth and glinting red eyes would peer forth.

In moments of chance, in covers of night.

They took larger steps than usual, half-skipping across the cult grounds in their haste to find a spot to doze for the night, in a patch of moonlight.

Perhaps they should avoid going out while it was dark for a while.

Darkwood was eerily quiet.

Well, not in terms of the fighting. It was still full of the heretics and the burrowing worms and the bats.

But the air itself felt strangely still, almost stiflingly so.

It was perpetually spring in Darkwood (just as it was perpetually autumn in Anura, or summer in Anchordeep, and a strange, snowless winter in Silk Cradle); but today the weather was windless and the slightly-damp, dewy air felt stale, stagnant.

Waiting.

But even so, even with the flowers with eyes staring down upon them, even with every leaf not so much as stirring in the breeze; here was the Lamb, harvesting grass. Again.

“You cannot tell me you are out of fertilizer again,” Narinder growled, gripping the scythe’s handle tightly and tapping his claw against it impatiently.

He couldn’t wait to kill Leshy.

(– a burrowing worm under the silk blanket besides him, and he shifted slightly for the fifth time that week to give him more space on the bed–)

“No, but no sense in waiting until I am out of fertilizer to gather grass,” the Lamb responded. “Besides, it’ll just take longer on future crusades if I am out of fertilizer and grass.”

He let out another long, explosive sigh, but sat back and watched them slice through tall grass and camellias that were nearly their height.

(A few offerings of bouquets of camellias on Narinder’s shrine, whenever he visited.)

(He didn’t know when Leshy had stopped leaving them.)

(He didn’t want to, either.)

Kudaai had sent them the blunderbuss today, so they’d told Narinder to get higher up so they didn’t accidentally shoot him while harvesting grass.

(From the way their eyes widened slightly, they hadn’t expected him to actively scale a tree in less than twenty seconds to do that; but they’d only stared for a moment before turning to the task at hand.)

Darkwood had always been rather pretty, in a ‘wild-woods-in-the-spring’ sort of way. The damp soil was fertile, and made it a place where an abundant variety of flora would grow; while the everlasting spring meant that the weather was always mild, even when it was hailing and pouring rain back at the cult.

(Leshy liked the rain immensely, always splashing Narinder or Shamura by launching himself into puddles. He did complain about the way any tunnels he made would fill with water when it rained, though.)

Narinder scanned the clearing, trying to keep his thoughts occupied with something else. Most of the grass was gone by now. The Lamb was able to clear a lot of it at a more significant distance with each blast of the blunderbuss, leaving a sound much like paper tearing each time they sheared through the grass.

Abruptly, there was a strange sound, a kind of tock! of a bullet bouncing off of something.

Both Narinder and the Lamb perked up. He scanned the area, trying to figure out the source of the sound, but it seemed the Lamb was a bit quicker on the draw and was already inspecting something in the corner of the clearing.

“Narinder? Do you know what this is?”

He leapt down from the tree, using the scythe to steady his landing and straighten to his full height.

The Lamb was standing beside a strange, wooden thing in the ground, just about their height. It looked like a stake, driven into the earth, but atop a small round knob was a carved Crown with a closed eye. Not the Red Crown, with its two points, but three.

He could feel the Lamb’s eyes on him, and shot them a scowl. “No.”

“Worth a shot.”

They were knocking on it, as if checking to see if it were hollow. From what Narinder could hear (and Narinder’s hearing, while not nearly as sharp as it had been as a God (or when his third eye opened), was very good), it was solid.

It was on the Lamb’s third or fourth knock when the eye on the Crown flew open and shot out a beam of red light, making them step back in a start. The light was shining off into the forest– connecting to, Narinder realized, a totem that was barely visible, with the shadows of the canopy above and dappled light drawing their attention elsewhere.

After a moment, they approached the spot the beam of light was shining at, prodding carefully at the bushes and foliage.

“… there’s a path here.”

“What?”

As if their words had triggered something, the little statue rumbled and sank into the earth, as if it had never been there.

The Lamb hesitated, then began to push through the bushes, disappearing into the foliage.

Narinder followed, having to duck his head as branches (and, shortly after, stone) created a cramped little tunnel.

He emerged, right on the Lamb’s fluffy tail, into a cavernous space. The walls were made of stone, with bits of light feebly shining through and strangely shaped stones all around, as well as fleshy… things on the ground.

The Lamb, however, was gazing up at the main source of light– a strange, gaping maw of something (strange, warped stone that seemed to have hundreds of eyes set into it), glowing with red light and illuminating a stone platform with four totems that resembled the one that had showed them the way in surrounding them.

Each totem’s crown’s eye was wide open.

Tia was looking up, leading Narinder’s eye to the very top of the structure.

Carved into the stone, too far up for them to see clearly, was a three-pointed crown with a missing eye.

The Lamb took a small step forward– Narinder swept out the scythe, blocking their path and making them take two steps back to avoid running straight into it

They turned to look at him, one brow arching by the tiniest amount, as if asking ‘what gives?’

Imbecile.

“Do you lack brain cells?” he growled. “What exactly do you plan to do here?”

“Give some blood.”

Narinder shot a significantly sharper glare at that.

They didn’t even flinch, simply stepping around the scythe. “It’s better to know what it does now, rather than later. I’ll have the chance to get the blood back.”

“Lamb–”

They stepped onto the platform.

Immediately, whispering began. Narinder tried to listen, but it was like trying to read minds as a whatever-the-hells-he-was– disjointed, strange words that blended together and thousands of voices all at once.

The Lamb touched their chest.

Their eyes flooded with red–

– red eyes–

– and red liquid, condensed power, began to drip down their cheeks.

Narinder watched as veins dully began to shine through their thin gray fur, casting strange little lights in their wool and condensing at their chest, in their fingers, until the glow was painful to look at.

A moment later, they pulled their hand away. A glowing, pulsating thing the size of their heart lay in their palm.

“You’re giving them an entire–”

“It’s what it asked for,” they replied, not taking their focus off of the fist-sized object in their palm.

(Was that what the whispering was saying?)

Gods could manifest their ichor into false ‘objects’ outside of their body, usually as hearts– it was easy to do something like that with a mental visualization. This was usually how he and his siblings had referred to units of blood, as beings who all had very vastly different amounts of it– it was quicker than blundering and trying to explain how one cup of Shamura’s blood compared to about a liter of Leshy’s (and Narinder was fairly certain that wasn’t even correct), or other confusing units of measurement.

They held it up to the gaping maw, and Narinder could see something strangely liquid roiling within, red and black and seething.

The red glow became more intense, dissipating the Lamb’s ‘heart’ and sending a glowing tendril of smoke into the gaping, cavernous maw before them.

The colorful light that burst forth was bright, almost painful. Narinder growled, ears folded back, as something began to materialize from the cavern before them, in the form of a hazy hand. The Lamb stepped forward (giving a momentary stumble, drained) and reached up for it.

A stone tablet dropped into their hands.

Narinder’s fur stood on end as the whispering suddenly snapped into focus.

“I await one who values truth over all else.”

Then the cavern dimmed again, the red glow remaining faint but not nearly as bright as before. The whispering ceased altogether, like an entire congregation had simply departed.

The Lamb was examining the tablet in their hands, gently wiping their hand across the surface; as if to get rid of any dust that might linger on it.

“’I meant only to survive, and yet she, feathered hand of Great Ones gone, has seen me to be worthy… First Gods… devote myself to you, wholly, body and soul… strike down dissent, cull doubt… in blood, I swear,’” they mumbled.

Narinder shot them a rather unimpressed look. “You skipped reading half of the text on that.”

Tia settled upon the tablet, the words burning red before the stone disentegrated– apparently, absorbing the knowledge that had been on it.

“I can write it down if you’re curious,” the Lamb offered, though their brow was creased with thought. “… do you know who wrote this?”

“Why are you insistent on asking me for answers when it is clear I do not have them?” Narinder grumbled, fixing the Lamb with a sharp look.

A soft smile touched the corner of their mouth, followed by an answer he’d come to expect from them.

“Worth a shot.”

It was always annoying working their way through the underbrush. Some areas were much clearer than others, while others you ended up having to walk through bushes and branches to get back to the clear parts of the path.

The Lamb got their wool tangled in it often, but they seemed fairly indifferent, yanking their wool free if they really got knotted up.

“… did you watch me kill Leshy?” they asked, suddenly.

Narinder didn’t glance back at the Lamb, who he could hear squirming and rustling and jingling in an attempt to yank their yet-again-tangled wool off of a branch.

“Yes.”

He was reluctantly glad they didn’t meet his eyes here.

Otherwise, they would’ve caught him in the lie.

Narinder had watched the battles, the hundreds of times the Lamb was knocked into wooden spears that pierced their heart, the dozens Leshy’s skull split their own against the stone floor, the times they were buried under the sheer force and numbers of burrowing worms.

The final time they’d fought Leshy, however, he’d found himself listening to instead, red eyes fixed upon the white ground and the ripples that periodically formed when some particle drifted onto the floor. The sound of a burrowing worm being struck with a dagger, a final roar, and then a fleshy burst.

He’d looked up to see Leshy’s skull burst open and a massive corpse, half-buried in the earth.

(Leshy, launching himself straight into the damp dirt with ease and leaving not a trace behind, giving Kallamar a fright by bursting out of the earth right behind him.)

Narinder gritted his teeth, gripping the handle of his scythe even tighter.

It would be satisfying, to kill him now.

The Lamb gave a brief ‘hmm’ sound, acknowledging the statement. “Are we almost through?”

Narinder shoved aside the last of the underbrush. “How did you get through these passages when I didn’t accompany you?” he snarled, annoyed at his own thoughts.

“Slowly.”

Narinder might’ve responded with some level of snark (because he was pretty sure the Lamb was saying this as a joke, but he couldn’t really be that sure), but his eyes fell upon the clearing in front of them, and he felt every fur on his neck stand on end.

It was the graveyard from his dream (a serpent with a single red eye, curling around the wooden stakes). Crude wooden markers stabbed into mounds of dirt on the ground, the ruins of buildings surrounding them, long exposed to the elements and little more than rotting beams and the crumbled remains of bricks.

The Lamb followed him into the clearing, picking a few leaves and snapped-off-twigs out of their wool absently as they surveyed the clearing. It was dim, and not very well lit.

“Are you alright?”

He didn’t quite process the question immediately, eyes flicking to the Lamb a moment later. “What?”

“Are you okay, Narinder?” They were looking up at him, though he thought he could see the faintest crease in their brow.

Worry.

He growled at them, jerking his head around to scowl off into space. “I am fine, whelp. Destroy the clearing as you are wont to do and we should get a move on.”

Tia shot him a look. He avoided its gaze, glowering into the space.

The Lamb watched him for a moment longer, before giving a single nod. “Okay.”

They held out their palm, and Tia morphed into a shovel and dropped into their hands as they walked over to one of the graves. “You know, whelp is a term that is used to refer to dogs, not sheep.”

“A pup. An infant dog.”

“Yes, but I’m still not an infant.” The Lamb unearthed one grave, finding nothing but a collection of bones. They seemed happy with that result anyway, letting Tia store them away.

“You may as well be, compared to me.” He sat down on a nearby stone, watching them use their foot to push the shovel in deeper (and resisting the urge to smirk as they proceeded to actually jump on the shovel when their foot didn’t suffice). “… tell me more about your siblings.”

The Lamb put their hand on their heart, in a mock-touched gesture. “Are you taking an interest in me?”

He shot them a glare, knowing that their lips were undoubtedly twitched up the faintest amount into a smirk despite their bland tone. “Don’t flatter yourself, wretched beast.”

The Lamb resumed digging, tossing dirt off to the side. He noticed they were careful not to throw any of their shovelfuls of dirt at him. “Ask some more specific questions. It’s difficult to pinpoint something to talk about with such an open-ended question.”

He leaned on his scythe, watching them work. “… how old were they?”

“When they died?” The Lamb was surprisingly blunt about it. “Flan… had just come of age. Lacey was only a few years old.”

They were being surprisingly forthcoming about the information. Usually they’d meander in their thoughts for a while.

Then again, that was usually when he pried for information about their parents, rather than their siblings.

“What was your family home like?”

He didn’t really know if he or the Bishops had had a family home. It had been merely staying in Silk Cradle’s vast library, until they could take over their respective realms.

(It was very easy, however, for Narinder to think of the library and immediately smell paper, to remember the shelves where some of his favorite books had been, the webs Shamura had left around the library to climb to the top shelves and the way Leshy had given them all a tremendous fright when he’d fallen from the very top onto the floor–)

He gritted his teeth so hard he heard them squeak as the Lamb answered, “it was one of the larger houses, I think, in the village. We had a garden, so a lot of the children in the village would come to play at our house; that was how Flan had so many friends.”

They considered the thought for a moment, mulling it over silently. “Though, I think Flan would have had a lot of friends regardless. He was just that sort of person.”

“And you were not?” Narinder grumbled. They were certainly friendly and approachable, when their mask was on, and it was such a flawless face that they’d fall into that he’d never questioned it, not until the moment it fell for the first time.

The Lamb didn’t look at him, staring into the hole they’d just dug.

“… well, I certainly was expected to be that kind of person.”

Interesting. That was the briefest insight into that mask that they put on around everyone else– the bright, cheery thing that spoke to everyone with kind words and warmth and a laught like bells, rather than the stone-faced Lamb he’d become accustomed to.

Their shoulders were tense. They’d been standing still for a few moments, just gazing silently into the hole. He wondered if it was worth pressing more about the subject.

“Anything else?” they asked, breaking out of their own reverie.

Perhaps not.

“… what was their favorite food?”

Gods above. Why had he picked up Kallamar’s damned small talk tendency?

Unaware of Narinder internally being incredibly annoyed at himself, the Lamb’s shoulders relaxed again, and they resumed digging. “Flan liked beetroot leaves.”

(– Heket picking out her beetroot leaves and pushing them at Leshy–)

“Lacey… was in the phase where she really hated eating at all. But she’d always give in and eat if we gave her anything with pumpkin, or carrots. Even if it was pumpkin seeds on top of something else.”

“Did that leave you with cauliflower?”

He asked the question half-automatically, which he cursed himself about a half-second later as he realized the Lamb might count that as one of the ‘questions’ he could ask.

He didn’t expect to see their brow crease and their hands tighten on the shovel.

“I hate cauliflower.”

Their reaction– and comment– was so unexpected that Narinder couldn’t have hoped to suppress the bark of laughter he let out. “Lamb, I’ve watched you eat meat before. Yet you choose to dislike cauliflower?”

“I ate the meat meals because they’d spoil otherwise,” was their plain reply. They were tense now– not terribly, but he could see their grip on the shovel had tightened again as they kept digging. “And sometimes, some of the followers would ask to share a meal with me, and I didn’t want to inconvenience them by forcing them to get a half-vegetables-only meal. Once I’d eaten enough of them, it just became another option.”

(They did not meet his eyes.)

(It wasn’t until later that he realized they had dodged his second question, as well.)

Tia had turned to shoot him a glare.

– a red, one-eyed serpent lazily climbing the grave markers–

– red eyes–

He watched them for a moment longer, tense and staring blankly at their task of grave robbing, before reluctantly changing tack. “Where did you live?”

“Before the Slaughter–?”

The next shovelful of dirt that the Lamb dug up had something sticking out of it.

The two of them stared at it, before the Lamb set the shovel down and knelt down, plucking it from the mound of dirt. It was a torn piece of paper, the kind that Narinder recognized that the Old Faith had used to send letters. There was the remnants of green wax in the corner– a letter in correspondence to his youngest brother, no doubt.

Tia shook off all the dirt (Narinder gave a ugly eldritch swear when it flicked dirt at his head, something that made his eyes itch and his mouth fill with the taste of old blood) and settled onto the Lamb’s head.

The Lamb brushed damp soil off of the scrap of paper, scanning it– silently, unlike the tablet.

Narinder leaned over their shoulder to inspect its contents when they remained silent, for a few seconds too long.

The paper was stained with long-dried blood, handwriting narrow and spiky, unlike the Lamb’s round and rather wide letters.

Found a herd. Taken care of. Let the Worm know I seek the next.

The paper wrinkled. Narinder’s eyes travelled from the words themselves to the Lamb’s hands, gripping the paper with ever-increasing force.

“Lamb–?”

“We lived in Darkwood.”

They were staring almost emptily at the paper. Their blankness wasn’t truly blankness– just subtle touches, to their brow, the creases of their eye, the corner of their mouth; rather than the exuberance they expressed in public.

But in this case, their face was fully empty.

“Our village– our herd– was… in Darkwood. I don’t know where it was anymore.”

Narinder did not reply. He provided no comfort, no “I see”, simply gazing at the Lamb, staring emptily at the paper in their hands.

(Death, after all, was not kind.)

Their fingers tightened on the note further. Long-since-dry wax flaked off of the paper. He half expected it to tear, but the Lamb’s restraint seemed to go a long way.

– Leshy’s eye, in Narinder’s right fist, giving way as his fists clenched–

“… they’re all gone now,” they said, finally, as if confirming something. “It’s just me.”

After a while, they allowed their fists to relax, and held the letter up to Tia.

Narinder’s brows raised, nudging his third eye somewhat uncomfortably upwards on his forehead. “You plan to keep it?”

The Lamb looked up at him, as if suddenly remembering he was there.

The smile that touched their face a moment later was not soft like the others they’d directed at him (which he couldn’t fathom), nor the bright one that perpetually remained on their face on crusades.

No, he couldn’t read this smile.

“Of course.”

(Vengeful? Pained?)

“It is a reminder.”

Narinder did not ask what it was a reminder of, and the Lamb did not tell him.

It was sundown when they arrived at the doorway leading to Leshy’s temple, at last.

Despite the Lamb’s insistence to stop and gather grass, they had decided to take this particular crusade at a quicker pace, and so they were here within one day, instead of two and a half.

Narinder resolved to ‘strongly suggest’ that the Lamb only gather grass in one clearing per crusade from now on, if this was how much faster they were.

The Lamb looked at the open doorway, then back at Narinder. “Are you ready?”

He shot them a disgruntled look. “I am not a child reuniting with a long-lost sibling. I don’t need your sympathies.”

(He ignored the very small voice inside his head, that reminded him suspiciously of the False Lamb’s sweet venom, that said that was exactly what he was.)

They looked at him blankly.

“… I meant for the fight itself. Leshy is the easiest to defeat among your siblings, but he is… was… holds the power of a God,” they finished, clearly unsure of how to classify him anymore.

Narinder ignored the flush of embarrassment he could feel under his fur.

“… yes.”

The Lamb nodded. “Then let’s go.”

The two began to walk down the long, dark hall. He glanced at the Lamb out of the corner of his eye. Having discovered the note earlier, he half-expected them to be boiling with rage.

(It would’ve been easier if they were. He could’ve convinced them to kill Leshy on the spot.)

But their countenance was remarkably calm.

“… how do you feel about facing Leshy again?” he asked, when the silence stretched a bit too long. “It’s been a while since you’ve faced him.”

For some reason, Tia rolled their eye at that.

The Lamb turned to meet his eyes, careful with their steps. “After fighting Shamura, I think this fight will be over before the sun rises.”

Narinder met their gaze.

“… are you ready?”

“You asked me that already.”

“Well, this time it’s the meaning you said the first time around.”

Leshy, burrowing into the blankets and startling Narinder awake at the dead of night.

Leshy, snickering when Kallamar came storming into the room in a huff about the several holes he’d purposefully left behind to make Kallamar trip, just a little bit.

Leshy, the youngest of the five.

Leshy, with his eyes gouged from his head, screaming in pain on the floor as blood stained the green foliage that covered him, Narinder standing above him, one eye in each hand.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He did not explain further.

The Lamb did not pry.

The clearing was devoid of cultists, this time.

His brother was a ghastly sight. The mix of foliage and fur that covered his body was half-gone and had a massive chunk gone from it, leaving the bandage around his face nothing to cling to. A hint of his toothy, round mouth peeped from behind the bandage, while a long-healed hole where his eye would’ve been gazed unseeingly. Shaking hands clutched at the robe of the Old Faith, like a child would hold a security blanket around themselves.

Pathetic.

(Leshy, the youngest of the five.)

Tia lifted from the Lamb’s head and shifted into the blunderbuss, the Lamb already lifting it in preparation.

Leshy’s voice was raspy, strangely weak compared to what Narinder knew (protesting loudly when Heket poked fun at her younger brother). “Time to put an end to this… frivolous masquerade… time to put an end…”

The burrowing worm began to shift, bones and joints cracking grotesquely.

“End… this…”

The fights in Darkwood had been challenging, with just Narinder’s claws.

The scythe made it much easier. Even without curses, having a weapon that ranged farther than just his arms meant he didn’t need to get right up in an enemy’s face to slash their throats or gut them.

And, reluctantly, he had to admit that the Lamb was at least decently competent at combat now, enough that he could handle some of the enemies and feel confident that the majority of the remainder would be dead if he turned back around.

Even so, even with two decent fighters, even with a scythe and a long-distance weapon, the fight against Leshy was difficult.

A part of it was that Narinder had hardwired his brain to recognize certain attack patterns, back when they used to spar and he’d thoroughly trounce the burrowing worm–

– Leshy, grabbing the top of his head in pain from where he’d headbutted the stone floor at full force, rather than the much softer cat–

– except, of course, it had been hundreds of years, and now all of the patterns had changed.

The Lamb, however, seemed to have no such trouble. They’d fought Leshy much more recently than he had; so of course they would be more familiar with his attacks.

(Though, truly, their aptitude at guessing just where or when Leshy would attack was better than he would have expected. It was as if they had fought him yesterday, rather than weeks and months and years ago.)

He could occasionally get in close and deal a sweeping blow to Leshy’s side–

(– Leshy making a disgruntled sound as Narinder managed to get a hit on him with the wooden practice stick, since Shamura worried that they’d actually severely wound each other–)

– but his main contribution to the battle, so far, was making sure the Lamb’s gunshots flew true and weren’t interrupted by the dozens of burrowing worms that Leshy spawned. With every swing of the scythe, blood splattered and heads rolled.

The Lamb’s motions were sharp, surprisingly fluid for someone he had learned to expect clumsiness and bumbling accidents from; they darted in close to Leshy and would deliver a rapid-fire of bullets before the magic in the blunderbuss ran out and they would dodge back to avoid a wave of wooden stakes erupting from the ground.

Before long, his brother gave an agonized roar that shook the whole room, slumping to the stones and making the earth tremble.

Narinder had not watched Leshy die the first time.

A spray of ichor, an agonized cry.

He did not look this time, either.

A glowing object seemed to appear from within the corpse.

The Lamb (ignoring the fact that they’d just gotten doused in a shower of ichor from Leshy’s head exploding) clambered im to grab the God Tear.

“I know I said we’d be finished before sunrise, but I didn’t think it would be this before sunrise,” they said, unceremoniously shoving the Tear into Tia’s storage again as they hopped out of Leshy’s corpse and wiping uselessly at their ichor-covered face. They were practically soaking in ichor.

Narinder stared at the huge, towering worm, slumped against the stone and leaking ichor everywhere from the gaping chasm that had become his head.

It was dark at night, with only some lanterns that illuminated the huge room and a few patches of bioluminescent moss. It didn’t help that the waning moon was providing less and less light.

“… it was remarkably quick.”

Too quick.

He would have liked Leshy to suffer.

“… yeah.”

The two, former God and infant God, stared at the giant corpse for a while in silence. Narinder thought he’d feel satisfied, finally confronting his brother after what they’d done.

He felt nothing at all.

“… let’s get back.”

“… alright–”

There was a violent motion from inside the giant worm’s corpse; the Lamb’s head snapped up. Narinder’s head had turned to face the source of the movement, too.

A hand thrust out of the bloody remains of the skull, followed by a blood-soaked figure that tumbled from the gaping, shattered maw of the beast and onto the stone floor with a splat from the blood that saturated the fur and leaves–

Narinder felt a small jolt of electricity shoot through his fur at the sight of a much-smaller Leshy– not nearly as tall as Narinder, but still taller than the Lamb– coughing and retching up ichor, on his hands and knees, trying not to choke on it.

Kill him.

He betrayed you.

He chained you.

KILL HIM.

Narinder was frozen to the spot, unable to move, staring at the worm currently hacking up a lung on the floor in front of him.

“Lamb! Damned Lamb!” the burrowing worm snarled between wet coughs; apparently the ichor and blood wasn’t just covering the worm but in his lungs as well. “I know you are there. I can smell you.”

He was blindly looking around, the bandage wrapped around his head stained black with ichor and blood; he clearly knew they were there but couldn’t see.

See no evil.

Narinder had never seen the Lamb move so quickly before.

They were already across the room, hands lifting into the air as they moved–

He recognized the gesture they held over the coughing worm–

Narinder unfroze.

Leshy vanished through the floor, a summoning circle glowing briefly beneath him, just before the scythe sliced the air where his skull had been.

Leshy, eyes gouged from the skull–

“Narinder–”

Now he felt something.

He did not stop his motion and instead changed the trajectory of his swing, wild and wide; they barely dodged back before it scraped open their cheek, spilling black ichor down their fur. If they hadn’t moved, it would probably have taken out their eye again.

His voice came out in a guttural snarl, loud and furious. “Lamb–”

The Lamb’s voice did not come out loud, but it came out firm. “I already said you couldn’t kill him when Myst–”

“He is my brother!” he snarled at them, off-balance from the scythe mostly missing its target and having to slam the handle into the floor to keep himself from falling over; his fury boiled too hot for him to allow something that stupid to happen. The stone he slammed the scythe handle into cracked beneath the force he used; it was a testament to Kudaai’s weaponsmith expertise that the handle itself did not split. “He imprisoned me–”

“He and your siblings hunted my species to near-extinction,” the Lamb responded. They were infuriatingly calm in this moment, watching him stagger to regain his balance.

It was times like this that Narinder wished them to scream, shout, rage so he could feel justified in his own.

Was he even angry at the Lamb, in this moment?

He steadied himself enough to take another swing; there was a clang as the Lamb summoned their blunderbuss into hand to block the scythe’s blade, a step closer to Narinder. Metal shrieked on metal and spit little sparks off to the side. “Which I saved your damned life from–”

They didn’t attack. They could– their finger was next to the trigger– but they didn’t.

Tia was vibrating in their hand. Clearly angry, clearly frothing at the bit to protect the Lamb, and yet the Lamb must have been commanding it to not leap from their hands.

That just infuriated him more.

He drew back and did a wild overhand swing at them; they shifted the blunderbuss to block it too, which made him stagger back when it was easily parried. “And you repaid me by stripping me of what I had left–”

He was not doing anything elegant, anything precise, anything he had learned of the art of war-making from Shamura; he was simply swinging with all of his might with the scythe now.

“– of anything, of everything!”

“Narinder,” the Lamb said.

“And now you are removing them from Purgatory, where I saw fit to place them, where they deserved to rot–”

“Narinder,” they said again, louder.

He swung the scythe, they blocked. They were hardly even moving now, simply shifting the blunderbuss to parry his rapidly clumsier (but forceful, but powerful) swings.

“– and you strip me of even that–”

The Lamb moved (when had they been so fast) and he found himself being rammed in the chest; he was already off-balance from the wild swing and he toppled backwards, giving a brief uhf! as the breath was knocked cleanly from his lungs.

The scythe clattered out of his hands, across the stones, just out of reach.

“Right,” the Lamb said, as if they were now not pinning him to the stone floor and kneeling on his chest, “as I was trying to say, I would like to enact a Godly Debate.”

Thunder rumbled above them, even though there was not a single dark cloud in the sky.

Narinder’s eyes widened, startling him out of the haze of fury he’d fallen into.

Godly Debate was a very clumsy (very mortal) term, but it was an accurate one. Once a Godly Debate was enacted by a God (self-explanatory), each participant would take turns speaking and making their arguments, and remain silent while the other participant gave theirs.

The proceeding was overseen by the nearest third-party God; or in the case of one not being nearby, the Fates.

(The sky rumbled softly.)

(They were listening.)

Both participants were bound, by the Fates, to speak truthfully; meaning that one could not lie during one of these debates.

The most important– and, at this exact moment, the most downright infuriating– part of the situation, was that neither participant was allowed to attack the other.

“Who told you about that rite?” he growled, ears pinned back.

“Clauneck mentioned it once during a chat, and Myst explained the rules when I asked.”

He glowered at them, but began to sit up silently.

The Lamb, seeing that he’d reluctantly accepted the terms he’d just been forced into, slid off of him and let him ease into a sitting position. His back was sore where it had smacked, hard, into the stone. It would probably bruise now.

“… you may speak first,” he growled.

He wanted nothing more than to scream at the Lamb, but seeing as when the Lamb had enacted the Godly Debate, he had been raging at them, he suspected the Fates would prefer the Lamb to go first.

(The sky rumbled, as if confirming that particular notion.)

Narinder felt his fur standing on end now, slowly rising as the air around them hummed with electricity.

“… Leshy has already suffered.”

Not nearly enough, Narinder wanted to snarl, but he held his tongue.

“And I know you don’t believe that he has suffered enough.”

… well. The Lamb could be a little shrewd, at least.

“… you said that you spared me from his and the other Bishop’s intended fate for me. And you did.”

Then what the f*ck is the problem? Narinder wished he could retort, but he clenched his jaw and stared at the Lamb, waiting for them to finish their argument.

“… you spared me. That’s the key word.” The Lamb’s hands tightened on their cloak. “However, you did not–”

They cut themself off, something flickering in their eyes (red). “… no, that’s not fair of me.”

Narinder’s ears perked up slightly. He could feel his face crumpling slightly in confusion.

“… Lacey liked pumpkin and carrots, but she hated broccoli. She was always laughing, and she and Flan traded food all the time at the table. She was three– no, she’d just turned four– years old. She had a doll that she called Dolly and would cry if you so much as nudged the doll with a finger. She pulled my hair.”

The Lamb met his eyes.

“One of Leshy’s followers bashed her head in with a club.”

Narinder remained still.

“You could not save her.”

“That…”

It was not a rebuttal, but the skies still rumbled softly, and there was a little flash of light in the clouds. A warning to not speak out of turn.

“Flan always made his friends let me play with them, even when they were all adults and I was still not of age yet. He liked beetroot leaves and broccoli, and dancing at ceremonies. He would make me salad on my birthday and told scary stories on Hallow’s Eve.”

He could see their throat bob as they swallowed, the faint jingling of their bell.

“He tried to save Lacey. They slit his throat before they killed her, and let him watch her final moments. Then they finished him off when he tried to warn me.”

The Lamb’s face was difficult to read. It wasn’t exactly sorrow– no, it was a hint of that strange look from earlier, that he didn’t know how to identify.

“You could not save him, either.”

Narinder remained frozen, staring at the Lamb calmly stating the way their brother and sister died.

“Those are only two people. There were countless others who I loved who died at the hands of the Bishops. My entire species.”

The Lamb’s tone was remarkably unaccusing, remarkably calm, considering the words they were speaking.

“You did not save any of them. Though, it is more accurate to say that you could not save any of them.”

Their eyes flickered to the sky, briefly.

“After all, it is what was foretold.”

(The sky rumbled again.)

Tia was hunkered down in the Lamb’s wool, watching them with its red eye.

They lowered their eyes back to Narinder and continued to speak. “I have no right to choose what to do with Leshy as a form of revenge for what he did to me.”

Narinder’s face must have shown confusion, because the Lamb tilted their head in a nod towards him. “Like you said, you saved me from that fate. So I concede that you have a say in it. But I feel as though I have the right to choose his, based on what his followers did, at his command. He slaughtered my entire species.”

They gazed at him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Your turn.”

(Another rumbling at the sky, but in acknowledgement, and Narinder nearly gave a half-laugh of surprise at how quickly the Lamb went from grave formality to a simple ‘your turn’.)

“I…”

Damn it. The Lamb had thoroughly uprooted a primary argument of his; the fact that he saved their life. It was true that he had done nothing to save the other sheep (he couldn’t have, after all, the prophecy only mentioned the Lamb sitting before him), and that the sole survivor of that flock had the right to say something in the matter.

“… I wished for him to rot. All of them. For what they did to me.”

He expected the Lamb to let slip some look of contempt, at how very simplistic his reasoning was, but when he met their eyes, they were clearly listening attentively.

“He is my brother,” Narinder said, but even this sounded a little weak.

Damn it. He shouldn’t have let them go first.

… no, their argument would have been as thoroughly crushing as it was now if they had gone second.

He hated that Godly Debates always resulted in him having to grudgingly parse through the information provided and think logically. It was much easier to just attack them with a scythe in a blind fury.

(Heket had always looked smug when she enacted a Godly Debate. Besides Shamura, she’d been the best at them and would win dozens of arguments against her brothers.)

(None of them had ever won against Shamura.)

(Heket, throat torn asunder.)

He growled in frustration. The Lamb didn’t even look smug at his fumbling; just waited for him to continue.

Damned thing. Why couldn’t they just let him be angry?

“… why are you so insistent on sparing him? Speak.”

A rumble of thunder.

The Lamb shifted position, so they were cross-legged. Then they uncrossed their legs. They were clearly attempting to find a more comfortable position on the stone floor. “I think you should talk to each other. Your turn.”

Narinder gave a slightly derisive laugh the moment they spoke (and the skies rumbled). “You are more of a fool than I would have thought, if you think we can resolve hundreds of years of conflict by talking. Speak.”

“I’m not saying you need to get along. Your turn.”

“Then what the f*ck is the point of sparing him?” Narinder growled. “Speak.”

The sky was practically rumbling every other second, now, trying to keep up with the pace of the conversation.

The Lamb hugged their knees, this time maintaining the position.

They looked oddly small, like that, as if they hadn’t just defeated the massive corpse behind them for a second time.

“… you’ve said multiple times how much you hate being mortal. Then wouldn’t he find the punishment similarly upsetting? Your turn.”

“He does not deserve a second chance at life. Besides, he and I will eventually die as well. Why postpone that fate?” Narinder growled. “Speak.”

Death is cruel, death is painful, death is just.

Would that not be a fitting punishment?

(Narinder told that part of his brain to shut the hell up.)

“Well, he will, you won’t–” The Lamb’s eyes widened and they touched their mouth, as if belatedly trying to push the words back in.

“What?”

(Lightning flickered in the clouds at Narinder’s outburst, not that he could have helped it. A second warning.)

The Lamb grimaced briefly, closing their eyes, as if internally cursing what they’d just said– only for an instant, before they were meeting his eyes again. “… do you remember when you gave me the ability to read the follower’s minds?”

He glared at them, but nodded silently. They’d said they couldn’t read his, but he wasn’t sure if he trusted that.

“I can’t use it on you.”

He snarled, ears folding back. His patience was running thin. “You’ve mentioned this.”

A tiny zip of static electricity shot up his spine, and he had to clench his jaw tightly to resist yelping. Narinder glowered at the Lamb, who had fallen silent at his comment, but fell silent himself.

The next time he interrupted, he suspected the shock would not be so minor.

They were watching him, lips set in a thin but stubborn line.

“… I can’t read your mind,” they repeated, when he did not interrupt again, “but I can see… traits. Like, Tyan is industrious and has a strong constitution. Yarlennor is into fashion– well, maybe that’s weird, since she’s young, but she always likes to look at different materials. Kimar is… kind of gullible, actually…”

(Had Narinder been in the mood to, he may have laughed at that.)

(As it was, he glared at the Lamb silently.)

“… I’m not sure how to describe being able to see the traits, except that it’s… summed up in a word most of the time, I suppose,” they said, after a moment of thought. “One of yours is ‘immortal’.”

Narinder froze.

His fur began to stand on end, and it was not from the electricity.

“You will never grow old. Consequently, you cannot die from that.” The Lamb hesitated, the words hanging in the air awkwardly. “… your turn.”

“Why,” Narinder gritted out, the electricity lessening, “did you not mention this to me before? Speak.”

“I said you will not die from old age. The trait itself, however… doesn’t seem to touch on anything beyond that. I don’t know if that means you can die from illness, or injury. I wanted to avoid a situation where you might bite off more than you could chew. Your turn.”

Narinder didn’t respond right away.

It was… what was the sentiment behind that? They wanted him to stay alive?

How strange.

(Foolish.)

“… I concede the argument.”

The Lamb blinked in surprise. The overwhelming feeling of electricity, just out of reach, seemed to dissipate. The sky quieted.

“… I won’t kill Leshy. Yet.” He shot the Lamb a glare. “But I will not be kind to him. Or promise that I will never kill him. If he displeases me one day, he may find himself lacking his head.”

“… it’s a start.” The Lamb stood up, dusting themself off. “Well, let’s go back to the cult. I need to get Leshy to the healer’s. It sounded like he had ichor in his lungs. Quick question, is that deadly for mortals?”

Just like that, any sense of formality from the Lamb had practically evaporated.

Narinder scowled and grabbed his scythe from where it had been lying out of reach for a few minutes, deciding not to acknowledge their comment of ‘it’s a start’.

If he had any say in the matter, it would be an end as well.

“Godly blood has no effect on mortals. Only black ichor does, due to its unique qualities.”

“Oh, good. That means I don’t have to worry about him spontaneously erupting into flames or whatnot.”

He watched them make their way towards the teleportation circle, but didn’t follow them quite yet.

“… Lamb.”

“Yeah?”

They’d turned to face him, still covered in ichor and blood, illuminated dimly by lanterns and the few patches of bioluminescent moss.

“… you said you felt the right to decide on Leshy’s fate because he eliminated your whole species. But you also have a strange habit of finding… nonexistent positives in death.”

Death is beautiful.

Crushed skulls, slit throats.

“… then why…” Narinder couldn’t quite find the words he wanted to say.

Why do you still find death beautiful?

(He didn’t say those words, letting them hang in the air.)

The Lamb stared at him, before shaking their head.

“I don’t seek revenge for the fact that they’re gone. That would’ve happened eventually, regardless of if the Bishops slaughtered the sheep or if time had simply taken its toll.”

They plucked Tia off of their head, holding it in their hands. It was almost as if they wanted to grip something while they thought, though Tia obviously didn’t mind.

“… and besides, I’ve had so many years to come to terms with all of their deaths.”

Have you? Narinder wanted to ask.

He had had centuries to ‘come to terms’ with what his siblings had done to him.

Had they really accepted it?

He didn’t know.

They turned to meet his eyes, that strange smile on their face, softness and that strangeness that he couldn’t identify tangling together.

(He thought it was vengeance.)

(But with the mix of that softness… guilt?)

“If I wanted revenge, it would be for the pain they had to suffer.”

Tia, for once, was not shooting Narinder any strange looks; but simply watching the Lamb from where it was being held.

After another moment of thought, the Lamb gave a soft hum. “What I want is more important than revenge, I think.”

“… what is it that you want?”

The Lamb met his eyes again, the strange smile lingering on their face.

“Closure.”

Chapter 12: Order

Chapter Text

Merlenryn– who enjoyed the name the Lamb had given them, but still preferred the shorter and punchier Ryn– liked the night shift.

Despite constantly being exhausted during (or outright sleeping through) the day, and not really interacting with the other staff at all (which led to a lot of rumors about the yellow cat being snobby or standoffish), Ryn actually preferred the graveyard shift.

(Which was a little bit of a funny name, since the healing bay was next to the garden-graveyard.)

It was always quiet unless the Lamb came back with a particularly injured new follower, and they could spend most of their time making notes in their medical journal in candlelight. Considering their insomnia, that worked just great for them.

There were footsteps and voices outside the healer’s bay that shook Ryn out of their current note-taking, actually.

They turned to the curtain that hung in the doorway. It never got cold enough to require a door, even on the chillier nights.

The Lamb must have indoctrinated someone new.

“You–” Wet coughs and a grotesque retching, as if trying to expel something foul from the lungs or the chest, reached Ryn’s ears.

The yellow cat stood immediately.

That was definitely a new follower. Nobody in the cult sounded like that. And certainly nobody had gone falling into the pond as of recently.

(At least, Ryn certainly hoped someone hadn’t fallen into the pond, hadn’t told anybody, and was just walking around with a lung full of liquid.)

Dusting at the green robe they wore absently, Ryn pushed aside the curtain. “Hi, Leader– oh my Lamb.”

The exclamation came from the fact that the Lamb was absolutely drenched in a strange, dark substance (that seemed to have a shimmer of gold to it, but it was too dark to see).

Flanking them was the Hermit, towering above them and glaring at everything as per usual; and on the Lamb’s other side, a similarly soaked and semi-tall worm, with green fur and foliage covering his body and a (drenched in dark liquid) bandage over the face, practically hacking up a lung beside them.

“That’s me,” the Lamb said cheerfully, as if both of them weren’t totally soaked and dripping something dark on the grass with a coughing worm half-leaning against them.

When Ryn continued to half-gape at the situation, the Lamb continued, “We’re back. He–” They jerked their head at the worm. “– needs a change of bandages and an exam.”

“Do not–” the worm was cut off by another series of coughs, wet and guttural.

The Lamb gave Ryn a slightly sheepish smile at that and gestured at the dark substance now staining the grass beneath them both. “You can probably see why I want him to undergo the exam.”

Ryn snapped out of their open-mouthed stare. “O-oh– right. Um, you can get clean in the back quickly while I get everything ready.”

“Cool,” the Lamb chirped. “C’mon, Leshy, let’s hose you down.”

Ryn felt their eyes widen, despite themself.

Leshy?

Ryn watched the Lamb help the simultaneously coughing and cursing worm inside, and leave two sets of (bloody?) footprints behind them, eyes wide; then looked back up at the Hermit.

He loomed over Ryn, glaring after the Lamb (who was helping the taller worm, who had to half-slump over them, inside the healer’s bay); before turning his baleful gaze onto the much-shorter yellow cat.

(They did wonder what he’d needed that entire roll of bandages for. The Lamb had dropped off what remained of it a few days ago, with a cheerful “thanks for letting the Hermit borrow this” and no explanation.)

“… could you give me a hand with setting up the exam?” they asked, timidly, when all he did was continue staring down at them.

He glowered down at Ryn silently, but when they turned on their heel and stepped back into the healing bay, he followed; ducking his head to avoid smacking his head on the low doorway.

The healing bay had been expanded recently– there were a few extra beds, with their own little dividers (as the Lamb pointed out quite a while ago, having only one or two examination beds wasn’t a viable solution with so many followers at this point), and now had a shower area at the back (for any followers who got covered in mud, blood, or something else that had to be washed off lest it contaminate the wounds).

Ryn could hear the Lamb blasting the water over both them and the furry green worm, and what sounded suspiciously like a cursing worm getting a blast of water to the face.

As cheerful and generally amiable as the Leader was, only a fool would underestimate how forceful they could be. They hadn’t been joking when they said they were going to hose him down.

“I’ll grab the camellia oils and some of the main tools for the exam. Could you cover the bed in a fresh leaf?” Ryn asked, pointing helpfully at the box near the Hermit’s feet filled with curled leaves for this exact purpose.

The Hermit glared, but turned to do as they asked.

The two cats moved in relative silence, listening to the Lamb’s slightly muffled voice (“seriously, we have to take off the bandage, it’s sopping wet”).

Perhaps they should try to be more talkative. Like Tyan. Tyan certainly didn’t have a problem speaking her mind.

(Ryn admired the monkey for that.)

“… successful crusade?”

No response from the Hermit.

A quick glance at him proved Ryn’s suspicion that he was practically glaring a hole into the examination bed and the leaf he’d just replaced the old one with. They were a bit surprised he’d done the task at all, honestly.

“I’ll wipe up the blood on the floor really quick. Put these on the table next to the bed, please?”

Ryn still received no response, but he silently took the items he was handed and turned to set them on the table.

Everyone was… very split on the Hermit, to say the least.

Brekoyen and Kimar were two very loud voices in a decently-sized group who whispered that he was suspicious– after all, he had been indoctrinated into the cult while trying to slash Yarlennor across the face, and he had remained quite grumpy and rude, even a month after indoctrination.

Then there was the very small group of people who were rather fond of the Hermit. Which was to say, Tyan, Lenny, and Noon; who all were openly quite friendly to him. A few people, after seeing Noon and Lenny’s fondness of the giant black cat, had become cautiously optimistic about him, Ryn included.

And lastly, there was the main bulk of the cult, who weren’t willing to make a judgement on him either way as of yet. Noon and Yarlennor were only children, after all, some reasoned; and it hadn’t been that long ago where some of them had run into him shouting at the Lamb, even though the Lamb had laughed the incident off. At the same time, besides his initial incident upon being indoctrinated and the fact that he seemed to snap at the Lamb fairly often, he hadn’t done anything outright harmful.

And, several cult members pointed out, many followers hadn’t exactly acted on their best behavior when they’d initially joined the cult, either.

The silence was getting to be too long again, especially now that the Lamb’s voice was no longer audible and it was just filled with the white noise of running water and an occasional cough.

“Um… Leader just called the worm Leshy.”

The Hermit turned to meet Ryn’s eyes, which made the yellow cat falter.

The much taller black cat’s expression was a constant glower already, but tonight’s felt especially menacing. It sent a chill up their spine.

“Is it…”

The real one.

The Bishop of the Old Faith.

The youngest Bishop, the youngest God.

Ryn’s question couldn’t make it past their lips; the Hermit’s gaze made the remark shrivel on their tongue.

The scar on the Hermit’s forehead was especially pale in the flickering candlelight, like a waning crescent moon that had been knocked onto its side.

Not for the first time, Ryn wondered about that day, weeks ago whilst he glared at everyone and served food, where he’d told Yarlennor it had been an eye.

Everyone had waved it off as delusion, or just something he’d said in a lame attempt to frighten the small child, but there was a quiet, wriggling worm of doubt in the pit of Ryn’s stomach.

Had he actually been telling the truth?

If so… what did that mean?

“Damned heretic–”

The Hermit’s gaze shifted off of Ryn; Ryn turned to see the Lamb helping (though, actually, it looked more like the Lamb was forcefully towing) the burrowing worm onto the examination bed.

Both of them were no longer covered in blood(? The gold shimmer made Ryn feel uncertain as to what the substance actually was), but both of them were certainly still damp– there was only so much you could do to dry yourself off. Still, it was an improvement.

Ryn looked directly at the worm, and felt air evaporate from their lungs.

The bandage that had been covering the worm’s (Leshy’s?) face had been removed, revealing a wide mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth. Not only that, but beside the mouth were two sunken sockets, muscle and skin having filled the space but not healed, not restored.

It was the space where two eyes may have been.

Leshy, the youngest of the five, eyes lost.

“… Leader, is this…?”

“Yeah. He’s mortal now,” the Lamb said breezily, as easily as one might say ‘it’s going to rain a bit tomorrow afternoon’. “He might’ve swallowed some ichor– um, God’s blood earlier.”

– a dark substance with a golden shimmer to it–

“Could you take a look at him? You’re a lot better at the exams than me.”

Ryn’s eyes flicked between the glaring Hermit, who looked as if he wanted to set the worm on fire, the violently-swearing worm, and the still-smiling Lamb.

“Um… is it safe to…?” Ryn trailed off, unsure of how to phrase it without being immensely rude to the God (ex-God? Was he still a God?) sitting on the exam bed.

The Lamb casually reached up and smacked the still-cursing Leshy on the back, so hard that the worm choked and some dark liquid came out of his open mouth. Ryn thought the Hermit might’ve winced slightly at that, but he was still glaring when they glanced at him.

“Should be. Ryn, this is Leshy. Leshy, this is Merlenryn, but they go by Ryn. They’ll be taking a look at you,” they said cheerfully, as if they hadn’t just knocked ichor out of the now-hacking worm.

“Damned Lamb,” he wheezed at them, but was overtaken by more coughing– too wet to be normal.

“Uh… yes.” Ryn licked their dry lips, and stepped forward. “Um… hi. I’m Ryn… and the Leader just said that.”

The Lamb gave a little laugh, bright as bells, which soothed Ryn’s nerves.

The Lamb wouldn’t let them get hurt; and if even if Ryn did get hurt they’d definitely make sure Ryn was okay after.

Emboldened by that, they shuffled closer to Leshy.

“Uh… I’m going to take a look at your throat, first, since that’s the biggest worry. Could you open your mouth?”

(Well, it wasn’t like they had to ask, but since Ryn was ninety-percent sure he couldn’t see, they certainly didn’t want to startle him by just poking something into his mouth and getting several rows of teeth in their arm.)

The worm fell silent, but Ryn could almost feel him fuming.

They felt two pairs of eyes on them as they cautiously began to inspect his throat, using a small magic lantern to make the area brighter. His rows of teeth were pointy and thin, almost like little needles more than teeth, but he was staying remarkably still.

Probably because Ryn had a small lantern near the back of his throat, and could jab him in the throat by accident at any point in time.

“… I think a bit made its way into his lungs, but not a significant amount. He seems to have coughed most of it up by now, at least…” Ryn frowned, still trying to get a good look at the worm’s windpipe. “Still, it’s probably better to keep him here overnight…”

The Lamb hummed at that, turning to the Hermit while Ryn continued silently examining Leshy. “In that case, you should head home.”

He shot them a disgruntled look. “Excuse me?”

Ryn did their best to maintain focus while also keeping their ears perked. They were pretty sure the worm’s antennae were pricked up as well– was he also paying attention to their conversation?

“It’s late. You ought to get some rest,” the Lamb said cheerfully.

There were no wounds on the worm– which was good. That just meant it was the issue with the lungs that Ryn had to deal with, and rewrapping the area around his eyes. The eyes had ‘healed’, but it definitely seemed strangely recent, with very delicate skin and tissue.

(It shouldn’t have been recent.)

The Hermit glowered at them, but despite how acerbic the look was, the Lamb didn’t seem cowed by it at all. If anything, their smile seemed to get wider.

“You two should talk tomorrow. I know you’re exhausted; we were going at a good pace all day today– actually, technically it is tomorrow. Yesterday, then.”

Ryn had no idea if the blind worm was self-conscious about how his face looked looked. (Did he even know how he looked? Probably not. Did that mean he wasn’t self-conscious, though?)

“… fine,” the Hermit growled, and Ryn stiffened at the hint of a roar, rumbling deep in his throat. However, he didn’t unleash it or escalate any further; just continued to stare spitefully at the Leader. “You had better not chase me away tomorrow, Lamb.”

He made it sound like a terrible insult.

Ryn half-expected the Leader to get annoyed with him– even though Ryn had never actually seen them annoyed, even with dissenters– they’d just laugh, as if it was all a big joke– but they laughed, a bright (and surprisingly gentle) little sound; and gently started herding him out the door. “I won’t, I won’t. Promise. G’night.”

The black cat glared at them again, before giving a grunt that might have been an acknowledgement, turning, and practically vanishing into the night in a few steps.

The Lamb turned back to Ryn, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. “What do you think he needs?”

“Um– oh. Uhm, he doesn’t have any external wounds,” Ryn said, quickly returning their attention to Leshy, who had been strangely silent during the entire exchange. “So we don’t have to apply camellia paste. He doesn’t seem to be ill, either–”

Leshy broke into another series of very wet coughs. More ichor came up.

“– besides the ichor in his lungs,” Ryn finished with a small wince, pushing a handkerchief into Leshy’s hands so he had something to cough into. “I think the main treatment is putting some camellia oil on his chest, which will help him ventilate more and hopefully naturally get the rest out.”

The Lamb nodded at that, seeming a little relieved at that. “Okay. Could you grab a few waste bags from the janitor’s station? This way we can dispose of the ichor in one go and keep him clean.”

Ryn gave a nod, stepping back from Leshy. “Of course, Leader.”

They’d only taken a couple steps when the Lamb spoke up again, as if a thought had just occurred to them. “Ah, Ryn…”

The yellow cat paused, halfway out the door. “Uh– yes. Lamb. Leader.”

The Lamb gave a bright little laugh at Ryn’s fumbling, like the jingling of their own bell, before sobering up a bit. “If I could ask a favor… do you mind not telling any of the other healers Leshy’s name?”

Ryn blinked.

“I– oh. Huh?”

Ah, yes. Very eloquent. This was exactly why Ryn was so quiet around the other healers in the first place.

“I’m mostly worried about how the other followers will treat him, if they know who he is,” the Lamb explained. “Better to have that be something that’s discussed later on, after people get to know him and he’s acclimated. Otherwise we’ll end up with a N– a Hermit situation again, where some people will view all of his actions in bad faith.”

Ryn’s thoughts instantly jumped to Brekoyen and Kimar.

… yeah, they could see why the Lamb was asking them to keep quiet now.

“Of… course, Leader.” They gave a resolute nod. “I’ll, um, go grab the bags now.”

The Lamb gave a polite hum, dismissing Ryn, and the yellow cat hurried to do exactly that.

Lambert watched Ryn go, then sighed and turned to the nearest shelf. Ryn was their best healer at this point; the others tended to mix stuff up on the shelves, leaving the poor yellow cat to deal with the aftermath during their shift.

Somehow, the organization had become even worse after the yellow cat had taken on the night shifts.

What was annoying was that if the other healers were bullying Ryn, they did things that were subtle enough that Lambert couldn’t tell if it was genuine incompetence or something malicious.

They would’ve hoped more of their followers were more mature than that, but the way they acted towards Narinder had kind of disproved that thought.

They were shuffling some things about on the shelves (really, who had the lack of sense to put bandages under the several notoriously leaky bottles of camellia oil; that had to be malicious. And yet, Lambert couldn’t really say that they didn’t know anybody who wouldn’t do that out of sheer lack of thought) when Leshy spoke; voice slightly raspy.

(Resurrection always left them a little parched, and Leshy had just spent the better part of an hour practically coughing up a lung. They should grab Leshy some water or something.)

“How did you tame The One Who Waits?”

“Narinder?” they replied automatically, ignoring the startled flinch Leshy had at the name, before the more important part of the sentence actually registered.

They turned to face him, still holding a bottle of camellia oil in their hands. It was a bit wet on the outside. Definitely leaking. “Wait. Tame?”

The worm glared at them. Without the bandage, Lambert could see the muscles where eyebrows had once been, contracting slightly.

(He was surprisingly accurate with where he was looking. His other senses must’ve been absolutely phenomenal.)

“Yes.”

They gave a little bemused laugh, like bells. “What on earth makes you think I’ve somehow gotten him to behave nicely, let alone ‘tame’ him?”

Leshy didn’t deign to answer that question.

(Perhaps he didn’t even know the answer, himself.)

Instead, he immediately launched into a follow-up question; accusing and sharp. If he wasn’t rasping and hoarse from practically hacking up his lungs, it likely would’ve been much more intimidating. “Did he promise you something, Lamb?”

“No.” They could tell he was nowhere near satisfied with that brief answer, so they added, “What would he even promise me at this point?”

Wealth. Power. Life. Cheating death. Cheating fate.

Lambert paused, mid-replacing another bottle.

Tia quivered on their head.

They had let themself start passively examining thoughts (it was why they’d trusted Ryn when they said they wouldn’t breathe Leshy’s name to another soul unless permitted, it was why they trusted Ryn with Leshy at all, the moment they saw the yellow cat’s eyes widen at the name).

Narinder’s thoughts, of course, remained utterly unreadable. Up until just now, they had just chalked it up to him being a former God, so of course they wouldn’t be able to check his thoughts.

But Leshy’s had just come through, completely clearly, like every single one of their other followers.

You will never grow old. Consequently, you will never die from that.

Leshy did not possess the same trait that Narinder did.

Did that mean something as to what he was?

Strange.

“A multitude of things. That cat would sell his soul if it would benefit him.”

Lambert let their cheery expression fall. After all, Leshy couldn’t see it, and they could maintain their bright tone well enough without it.

Even so, a bit of flatness, like an untuned trumpet, made its way through. “You clearly don’t know him very well, then.”

Constant glares, constant snipes and insults and epithets, even outright attacking them when his anger got the better of him.

“Traitorous wretch.”

Walking the children back to Yarlennor’s mother.

“I don’t need your sympathies.”

Showing up to the kitchen, when nobody expected him to, not even Lambert at first.

“Fine. Ask your question.”

Death is fair.

And yet, when his pride and honor was on the line, when he was tasked with something, when it mattered, he would play by the rules, even if it was incredibly unhappily.

Leshy gave a half-laugh. It was more like a scoff. “He is my brother. I certainly know him better than you do.”

“Clearly, you don’t,” was Lambert’s reply, turning back to the shelf.

Ugh. Their fingers were oily from the camellia oil. Maybe they should get new bottles, if these leaked so much.

Leshy kept speaking with a raspy chuckle. “Arrogant Lamb, do you truly think you know The One Who Waits? The time you’ve gotten to know him, mortal or God, is a speck in the sands of time. We were his siblings for longer than you could fathom to understand. Does an infant God truly think they can claim to know their predecessor?”

Lambert glanced over at Leshy.

The worm’s voice was still hoarse, he was still sat on an examination bed, he was still much, much smaller and much weaker than the gargantuan worm they’d had to defeat.

And yet, it would be a mistake to underestimate the former God of Chaos.

He’d had centuries to learn how to cause that chaos with just a few well-timed, well-placed words, after all.

One did not need Godly power to cause destruction.

“You talk so archaically when you’re not insulting me,” was the reply they actually decided to give.

Leshy continued, ignoring the upbeat remark. “Do you think he cares about you?”

“I know he doesn’t,” Lambert responded, instantly, ignoring the twinge in their chest at their own words.

Traitorous wretch.

“Then what makes you so confident that he can benefit you?”

Lambert put down the bottle a little harder than they meant to; it made a solid clink as it bumped the other bottles. “I think you’re mistaken about something,” they said, mild as ever.

It surprised even themself. They would’ve thought that a sharp flatness would’ve come through, with the (anger? stress?) they felt, but they sounded resoundingly cheery.

“I don’t want anything from him.”

Leshy gave another laugh at that. It was cruel, more like a cackle. “Then you had better kill him, before he takes what he wants from you–”

“Silence.”

Leshy’s jaw promptly clamped shut– not of his own will.

The Red Crown gave them (the cult leader, the God) the power to control their followers to some degree.

Lambert hadn’t even bothered trying to use it on Narinder (or wanted to; no matter how vicious the insult or scathing the remark or cruel the action)– but the steely command in their voice, slipping into their tone without them fully intending to, apparently affected Leshy.

They turned to stare at him, all manner of cheer gone from their face, letting the mask slip.

It was strange to do it around Leshy when they were angry, when it was usually only around Narinder.

(They trusted Narinder.)

Tia buzzed on their head, which spurred them into speaking again.

“If anything, at the moment, I owe him.”

Leshy may have given some kind of rebuttal, but he still could not pry open his toothy mouth, leaving him to stare in their direction.

Lambert felt a weird little jump of smugness at the confusion they could feel emanating from him.

“We’ve been trading. Questions and answers.” Their voice was totally toneless. “I ask a question, he gives his answer, and in turn he gets his own question to ask. I have quite the built up debt from the other day. So, at the moment, I owe him.”

I owe him for much more than that.

“I saved your damned life.”

They turned to face Leshy.

Something deep within them shifted.

Tia vibrated briefly at that, as if alarmed. They dismissed it with an apologetic incline of the head, feeling the surge of magic through their spine, their bloodstream.

The room itself seemed to tremble at it. The candlelight warped, the shadows growing red and distorted against the walls, casting everything around them in eerie red. Lambert took a cautious step forward towards Leshy.

Leshy was starting to tremble despite himself, at an eerily familiar power.

It was the overwhelming wave of fear, of sheer power that the Bishops had stricken Lambert with, time and time again.

Before, the Lamb was a vessel. Blessed with an unnaturally long lifespan, perhaps, but mortal. Leshy had been a God.

Oh, how the table turns.

“But you… you heard a prophecy. About a Lamb who would free The One Who Waits, about a ‘Promised Liberator’.” Lambert stepped closer, and Leshy gritted his teeth.

The pressure had grown much greater with one step, they knew. Tia had always shielded them from that, though they could still feel it pressing down on their skin and bones; but they suspected if they had been any frailer when the Bishops had used that power on them, Lambert would currently be Lambert soup.

“And you chose to try to fight fate.” They stopped, before shaking their head at that.

There was no derisive, cruel laughter like Narinder or Leshy; there was no sneering. Lambert was not that kind of deity.

(Not that kind of Lamb.)

“No. That is not accurate to say.” They turned their gaze to the shaking Bishop. Leshy was obviously still angry, but from experience, they knew every single fiber of his body, every bone, muscle, cell was screaming at him to flee.

“You chose to try to cheat Fate.”

(Thunder rumbled distantly.)

A step closer.

“It is not a fighting chance, after all, if everyone who could carry out the prophecy is dead.”

Lambert had not used this power before– but it was restricted, right now, to the healing bay, just to the space immediately around them.

Perhaps because they were an infant God; but perhaps, also, because they were restraining it from spreading any further.

No mere mortal could tolerate this, and the followers, sleeping peacefully in huts around them, did not deserve to be swept up in the quiet anger burning in their heart.

“At least Narinder,” and Lambert picked that name to use, and felt a strange twist of satisfaction at Leshy’s tiny flinch, “plays fair. You, on the other hand, chose to wipe out any chance of a fate succeeding by killing an entire species. I don’t think that you can comment on if he is fair.”

Blood was dribbling from the corner of Leshy’s mouth. The sheer pressure from the Godly power Lambert was exercising right now was simply too much for any mere mortal to bear for longer than a few minutes. They were dangerously close to that self-imposed time limit.

They let it ease, and Leshy half-slumped against a pillow, breathing hard.

He didn’t seek to speak, so his ragged breaths were clearly audible in the silence that followed.

Lambert regarded him in that silence for a few moments, before turning back to the shelf. “Besides. You locked him up to rot for a few centuries. If I’m a stranger to him, then so are you, at this point.”

There was silence after that, broken only by Leshy gasping for breath.

Lambert’s grip on the bottles were tighter than before, so tight that their knuckles had gone white.

Leshy gave a raspy laugh after a few moments; the command had been lifted. There was no humor in the chuckle; filled instead with bitterness and a sharp bite. “You should have killed me just now, Lamb.”

Lambert turned back to the shelf to keep shuffling bottles and vials around. Perhaps they’d start carving some labels for the shelf, so they wouldn’t have camellia-oil-drenched bandages that they’d have to throw out on the regular.

“… you’re his brother,” they replied after a moment.

The worm gave a sarcastic laugh. (Did sarcasm run in the family?)

“I’m certain you’ve noticed, Lamb, but my brother wants me dead. Besides, as you said, was I not one of the beings that annihilated your entire species?”

Lambert hummed, setting down one final bottle of camellia oil– half empty, so at the very front– with a small clink. “Well, we’ll call it an impulse then.”

There was a brief pause. Surprise, or perhaps disgruntlement.

Maybe both.

“You are sparing me on an impulse.”

“Yep.” Lambert turned to face him. It was strange, seeing a huge worm that they had once distantly revered, then feared, then fought, sitting on an examination bed in their cult.

“Do you want to hear a secret?”

Leshy stared at them, baffled at the sudden shift in tone. “Why would I–”

“Narinder lied once. So, technically, part of my debt is null, too.”

The burrowing worm continued to stare.

“I asked him whether he watched me kill you the first time.” Lambert watched Leshy’s face.

Leshy was not nearly as good at hiding his facial expressions as Lambert was; they watched the bandage scrunch in confusion, then understanding, then confusion again.

“That is where the impulse came from.”

With that, Lambert turned on their heel and left, refusing to look back at the expression they knew was waiting for them.

Maybe because Tia was half-hiding in their wool, for once too anxious to emerge.

They did not have their closure yet. But they were a step closer.

Leshy listened as the Lamb’s jingling bell grew fainter and fainter, footsteps in grass becoming less and less audible, and the intermingling smell of wool and lemons (for some reason) getting farther and farther away; until he was left with the silence and the faint sounds of crickets in the breeze.

“… I see.” Leshy licked the blood from his lips. It was incredibly unpleasant-tasting, sharp and metallic.

Incredibly mortal.

“Okay, so– oh, did the Leader leave?”

The cat. The other one, more accurately. They smelled like camellias (the entire hut smelled of them, actually), but the cat themself smelled like camellias and catnip– a strange but not entirely unpleasant combination.

Leshy growled at them in reply.

There was a pause; then soft footsteps, light pawpads (compared to Narinder’s heavier steps– The One Who Waits had always been taller than him, and even as mortals this seemed to not be an exception. How annoying) treading across the wood floor of the hut.

“I, um, got a new bandage. For you. Well, not like a gift for you, but for your eyes. Not that they’re injured, but, the scar tissue is still a bit delicate, so it’s better to keep them covered, so, um, yeah,” Ryn said, starting out fairly strong and devolving into a meek sort of mumble at the end, embarrassed at their own rambling.

Mortals were so funny.

He was mortal now too.

“Do what you want.”

There was another pause at that, before Ryn’s voice came, closer– right beside the bed he was sitting on. “I’m going to put it on, now, then.”

He grumbled but didn’t move.

There was a hesitation, then a soft paw pressed a cloth bandage to the side of his head and began to wind around, firm but not terribly tight.

“… so, um… do you know the Hermit?”

It took Leshy a moment to identify that the yellow cat must mean Narinder– after all, his brother (smelling of dusty old books and a strange, damp smell that wasn’t quite the sickening sweet rot of the black ichor or death itself; not anymore) had been the only other being present in this hut earlier.

Interesting. So the followers did not know his brother’s name, either.

Well, Leshy could see why. He certainly didn’t exactly want to publicize that a small sheep had torn his Godhood away from him.

He was almost glad the Lamb had decided not to publicize this fact either, except that he despised the Lamb and would’ve rather thrown them, preferably off a cliff and into the center of the earth.

“Yes.”

“Ah.” He felt one of his antennae get grazed as they carefully avoided squashing it with the bandage.

It flicked and smacked against the back of their hand, which made them start a bit in surprise. He snickered at that. It had always been funny when someone tried to poke his antennae and it would smack someone.

“… Cat.”

“Ryn,” the healer corrected. It didn’t seem to be entirely intentional, judging by the way their paw tensed as they said it.

“Whatever.”

They were tying a small knot now, careful not to make it too tight or apply too much pressure. The cat was quite skilled at this sort of task, it seemed.

“What is the relationship between the Lamb and the ‘Hermit’?”

The hands paused.

“Uh. What? Um. Hm. That’s.” Ryn was clearly taken aback by the question, stammering in complete confusion for a few moments. “Well, that’s… I don’t really know… the Lamb won’t tell us how they know the Hermit. The two of them have fought a few times, though.”

Ryn paused. “Well, but Tyan called it a lover’s spat–”

Leshy jolted in surprise, almost making Ryn’s firm grip on the bandages slip.

“What?”

Narinder did not sleep.

He caught brief snatches of sleep in the form of dozing off, but his mind was racing too much for him to actually sink into anything deeper.

On the one hand, it meant no nightmares (prophecies) forced their way into his consciousness, and he had peace from them for a single night.

On the other, his mortal body was absolutely abhorring staying awake for so long. It felt like he’d rubbed whole handfuls of sand into his eyes.

And yet, he stayed awake.

His mind wouldn’t let him sleep.

It was when the sun had just risen, and he heard the distant toll of the bell the Lamb used to summon the followers to sermon, that he got out of his bed and slipped out the door.

The followers were all making their way to the Temple. Nobody noticed, in the shadows cast by the sun, still crawling up the horizon, the large black cat making his way through vacant houses towards the healer’s bay.

He could see the infrastructure of the drinkhouse being set up, in the distance. He grimaced, realizing he was practically looking right into the sun, and turned his gaze away, blinking hard.

Ryn was not present when he ducked through the curtain– they had probably gone to bed themself, after the long night shift of dealing with his brother.

It took Narinder’s eyes a moment to adjust– he had forgotten the veil in his hut, and black spots swam in his eyes.

Leshy was sitting upright on the examination bed, resting his elbows on his knees and scrunched up a bit into a strange pretzel-like shape.

(He always sat in such strange positions, easily bored and opting to twist himself into odd configurations silently while bored.)

He could see the burrowing worm fidgeting, picking at threads on the blanket. Leshy had always tended to fidget, during long talks with Shamura and his older siblings. It had once gotten to a point where he’d unravelled a good several inches of his robe before any of them had actually noticed.

And they’d only noticed because Heket had felt something tickling her leg, looked down, and seen a giant pile of thread next to her.

Narinder gritted his teeth.

He didn’t say anything (he didn’t know what to say), but Leshy’s antennae perked up, vibrating a bit at his very presence. The worm’s head turned to face in his direction.

“… Brother.” Leshy’s voice sounded a little better– not the wet, rasping hacking he’d been doing yesterday; though he was still a bit hoarse and still sounded like he might break into a cough at any second.

Narinder supposed that made some modicum of sense. Repeatedly spewing out godly blood from your lungs would irritate anybody’s body, let alone one who had just fought to the death for the second time.

“Leshy.”

The healing bay was eerily empty, so he didn’t have to worry about someone overhearing his name.

(Narinder wondered, briefly, where the other healers were; then realized the Lamb was holding a sermon right now, so of course they would all be at the sermon. Except Ryn. The Lamb was quite forgiving about attending sermons after night shifts.)

(Fool.)

The two stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Well, Narinder stared. Leshy’s head faced in his direction.

Ryn must have applied a new bandage to his brother’s face at some point after Narinder had left. It was dry and unstained. Strangely, the lack of stains made Leshy feel younger, almost– like it was a period before any damage had been done.

“The Lamb knows your name,” Leshy said, finally, when the silence stretched long and the tension in the air grew thick.

“Shamura told them.”

His youngest brother gave a half-scoff, though clearly wasn’t willing to be cruel to their older sibling, even if Shamura wasn’t anywhere near here at the moment (and, even if they were sitting right beside them, was probably nowhere in the right frame of mind to care if Leshy was cruel to them). “Of course they did.”

Further silence.

Narinder took in the former God; the antennae on his head twitching here and there, as if picking up the faintest of vibrations in the air; the green fur-and-foliage overlapping and intertwining until to pick out a leaf would be to pick out flesh, the clean bandage that hid scar tissue.

“Why have you not killed me yet?”

Narinder blinked at Leshy’s remark, brain that had been mired in the desire to sleep taking a moment to process it, before giving a derisive snort. “Don’t mistake it as regret or forgiveness. The Lamb successfully argued for your life in a Godly Debate.”

Leshy scoffed at that. He was not willing to disrespect Shamura; he obviously had no such care for Narinder or the Lamb. “And you choose to listen?”

“If you haven’t noticed already, they are a God. We no longer are,” Narinder shot back.

(He ignored how his own remark stung a little.)

“As though an entity being a God ever stopped you,” Leshy sneered.

Narinder clenched his fists, feeling his claws dig into his palm. His ears had folded back against his skull at the words. “You know full well that I was tricked–”

“Oh? Were you tricked when you tore out my eyes, then?” Leshy’s tone was mocking, in a way that Narinder hadn’t heard since he was picking on Kallamar.

Even though the squid was older than both of them, his nervous nature made him a good target for pranks and teasing.

“Or when you–”

“May I remind you that you all attacked me,” Narinder snarled, a low rumble at the back of his throat. “You summoned me to discuss my punishment and set upon me like a pack of wild animals instead. So pardon me if I did not choose to be particularly gentle when I defended myself.”

Leshy gave a laugh that was markedly similar to Narinder’s in this moment; derisive and cruel.

(Leshy’s antler-like antennae, turning and twisting as if acting like a cat’s ears, to try to listen to their surroundings, the way Leshy would puff up like a frog around Heket, and tried to wield more than one weapon like Kallamar, before giving up on the idea of using weaponry in battle at all after a few gentle words from Shamura–)

(He had always looked up to his older siblings.)

“Oh, yes, that’s what you call self-defense. Tearing out my eyes and crushing one of them, while we put you in chains–”

“You pathetic worm,” Narinder spit back, louder than before. “Don’t pretend you were doing your duty. You knew what those chains did.”

Narinder had tolerated pain for years prior to that, with the flesh unable to heal on his skeletal arms and with black ichor constantly trying and failing to replace destroyed flesh and fur and tissue.

In fact, he tolerated it so much, it had become a dull hum in the back of his mind that he no longer fully processed until it was gone.

That agony was nothing compared to the touch of the shackles themselves.

He didn’t know what they’d been made out of, but whatever it was, its touch on what remained of his flesh burned. The first one being clamped on, without his noticing, had sent a shock of pure pain through his system, a wave of electricity through his spine that had had him doubling over and gripping a column for stability.

(What hurt worse?)

(The shackles, or the betrayal?)

“It was the only way–”

“Did Shamura tell you that?” Narinder snarled, taking a step forward.

(He thought he saw Leshy flinch briefly, antennae quivering, but he ignored it.)

“Or was it something you idiots scrounged up as an excuse to get rid of me?”

Leshy bared rows of needlepoint teeth. “You–”

“You attacked first!” Narinder barked, the roar deep in his voice cracking slightly. “I had no weapon because I assumed we were discussing punishment and instead you– you bound me like a wild animal.”

He was not referring to the collective whole of the Bishops with this ‘you’ anymore, and Leshy knew it.

Leshy, the youngest of the five.

The first to fall to the Lamb; the first to agree to the Slaughter.

The first to fix him in chains.

The worm’s antennae were violently vibrating; from anger or something else, Narinder couldn’t tell. Leshy’s mouth twisted in a strange shape, like he was trying to grit his teeth but couldn’t due to the shape and structure of his mouth. “You certainly acted like a wild animal after,” Leshy sneered.

Even without the power or force that he’d had as a God, he was the former God of Chaos.

He knew just what to say to stir someone into a frenzy.

“Are you saying we were wrong to continue binding you, after you tore out my eyes?”

Rage was building, colliding with pure exhaustion, causing a headache to pound all the way up the side of Narinder’s face. “You were the one who started it,” he snarled. “You were the one who snuck up behind me, like the pathetic–”

He’d taken a step forward, despite himself, his anger carrying his actions.

“– cowardly–”

He was close enough that if Leshy had reached out, the two could’ve bumped hands.

“–snivelling worm that you are–”

“You tore out my eyes!” Leshy shrieked back, Narinder close enough to grab Leshy by the front of the slightly ragged robe he’d been given for the healing bay and shake him like a doll.

He might have, would have, but he didn’t even want to accidentally touch the damned thing in front of him all of a sudden.

“You crushed one, and you are still angry about the rest of–”

Narinder gave a laugh, bitter and heavy with centuries of rage, bubbling out of him; the two were extremely loud. “Even now! Now, you still hide behind the face of the Bishops to dodge the blame! You called Kallamar cowardly, and yet you have the gall to use their actions as your shield, your weapon.”

He wasn’t even sure where he was going with this. Where he could go with this. His mind was scrambled, rage and exhaustion clashing awkwardly to mix his thoughts into a befuddled mess.

Leshy, trying to move his antennae the way Narinder’s ears would twitch.

A young burrowing worm, whispering to ask Narinder if he could climb the shelf to grab a treat.

His youngest brother, sending a shockwave of agony through him as he clamped shackles to his wrist from behind.

A surge of power.

Leshy’s screams.

Leshy’s head suddenly twitched to the side, as if focusing on something behind Narinder– the former God snarled at the interruption of his swirling thoughts and whirled around on the spot–

The Lamb walked over to the bedside table, passing him as if they hadn’t just walked in on two former Gods having a shouting match. “Good morning, Narinder. Leshy,” they said, casually cheery.

“What the hells do you want, Lamb?” Leshy sneered, while Narinder felt the pounding headache at the side of his head subside very slightly.

He was currently too full of rage to speak at all, merely glaring at the Lamb. It was far easier to look at them than at Leshy right now.

The Lamb let Tia float into their hand and rummaged about inside, bringing out a teapot and a few wooden cups.

Leshy and Narinder watched in angry, then increasingly baffled silence as the Lamb, quiet and smiling pleasantly, poured one, two, three cups of vaguely reddish tea. It smelled very floral; suspiciously like the camellias that the entire healing bay smelled of.

It was almost strange now, seeing the Lamb smiling that silly little grin. He saw it so rarely these days, on crusades that lasted days at a time and when they would allow their cheerful mask to drop.

“I made tea,” they said at last, when the last cup was full.

Narinder fixed the Lamb with a baleful stare at that; half of him was torn between a confused laugh at the oddity of the Lamb simply pouring them tea; and continuing to rage at Leshy.

Anger won out.

“I don’t want tea,” he growled.

The Lamb met his glare. Their own face was still fixed with a bright smile; there was no hatred, no anger in their gaze– but there was a steel there that he didn’t often see there.

The smile, suddenly, felt more like an iron sickle, held at the ready.

“Drink the tea.”

Atop their head, Tia was glowering at him like it would see him spontaneously combust if he didn’t comply.

Narinder and Leshy silently picked up their cups and drank the tea. It was definitely camellia tea, judging by the scent and the taste. It smoothed out an itch in Narinder’s throat that he hadn’t noticed was there until now.

The Lamb dragged a stool over and plopped down onto it, leaning on the table with their elbows. Their tail wagged cheerfully.

If Narinder hadn’t known what they were usually like, he would’ve been impressed by the sheer courage they showed in the face of two former Gods screaming at one another. In this case, he was more impressed at how impeccable the mask was.

They were not afraid of either of them, after all.

They were a God.

“Well, continue.”

“Excuse me?” Leshy spoke before Narinder could.

Unlike Narinder, who still possessed a hint of a God’s voice (a deep rumble in the bottom of his throat that could turn to a roar in an instant, like thunder during a clear day), Leshy had no such quality to his voice– it was hoarse and scratchy, especially because he’d just screeched at Narinder.

“Continue. Keep going. Carry on. I know there are other synonyms for ‘keep going’ but I can’t think of them right now,” the Lamb said, taking a sip of their tea.

When Leshy continued to stare at them in disbelief, and Narinder in a mix of growing, bewildered amusem*nt and irritation, they added, “none of the other healers will come in for a while. I asked them to help out with medicine restock in the fields.”

“That’s–” Leshy spluttered aimlessly, obviously flummoxed by the Lamb’s nonchalant behavior of walking in on the middle of a raging screaming fight, dragging a chair to sit down in, and telling the two former Gods to just keep going while pleasantly sipping on a cup of tea. “You can’t just– this is a private–”

“You’re not doing the best job of keeping it private. I had to scramble to see how to get everyone to do something nowhere near here.”

Narinder couldn’t help it, all of a sudden.

He laughed.

It was a surprisingly hoarse sound– he hadn’t genuinely laughed in a long time– but it was all just so ridiculous that he simply couldn’t help the sudden burst of mirth at the sight of his youngest brother spluttering and stammering in indignation at a very small Lamb (who was a God, which made it even more ridiculous) drinking tea and simply waiting for them to continue screaming at one another.

Leshy’s head had swivelled back to look at him. The Lamb was looking at him too, their cheery expression falling, just for an instant, while Leshy wasn’t looking– and then something strangely soft entered their eyes again; and Narinder was hastily trying to stifle the spurt of laughter that had just bubbled out of him.

Even so, the damage was done; the momentum of Narinder’s fury and the screaming fight had been utterly disrupted.

They could start again, but it would be quite difficult with the Lamb sitting next to them and watching them– for one, Narinder couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t find amusem*nt in Leshy’s bewilderment at the Lamb’s behavior.

(Yes. That was all the laughter stemmed from.)

“How about you two call a truce for now?” The Lamb offered, when an awkward silence stretched on, Narinder’s rage temporarily defused and Leshy’s anger having been replaced by utter confusion.

Leshy tilted his head to one side. His antennae twitched. “Truce?”

“You remain decently civil to one another and don’t kill each other–”

“No.” Leshy’s response was immediate.

“– I-wasn’t-finished,” the Lamb didn’t even skip a beat, “don’t kill each other, semi-civility or I guess minor bickering, for…” The Lamb ponderously tilted their head to one side, frowning up at the healing bay ceiling. “Two months?”

Narinder blinked at the very specific (and more importantly, surprisingly short) deadline the Lamb offered.

(Two months was the blink of an eye for a God, after all.)

(Beside him, Leshy’s antennae quivered as if to imitate a similar blink.)

“Why two months?”

“The midwinter feast will be over by then, and I won’t have to deal with event planning on top of all of the Bishops fighting each other.”

(Narinder’s amusem*nt bubbled to the surface again briefly at how bluntly casual their statement was.)

“The Bishops–?” Leshy’s voice was caught between several things, in a strange tug of war of confusion and surprise and concern.

Ah. Right. He had forgotten about that.

“Eon insisted that we ‘free’ all of you,” Narinder growled, the amusem*nt gone. It was a bitter reminder to receive.

– a wave of anger that made his knees buckle, more powerful than even the Lamb as a God–

– “it is no wonder that Godhood chose to replace–”

“E… oh, Veles.” Leshy was quicker on the draw to gather who it was, compared to Narinder trying to figure out who the hell ‘Myst’– probably because he remembered what Narinder had named Eon in the first place.

He pondered this for a moment.

“… you listened to Veles?”

Narinder could not tell if that was directed at him or the Lamb.

“They got very annoyed with us,” the Lamb responded cheerfully.

(As if that wasn’t the understatement of the century.)

Leshy was silent, wide mouth opening and closing repeatedly, as if trying and failing to find a proper rebuttal.

On one hand, Narinder knew for a fact that he was still angry.

(He was, as well. It was just very difficult to continue shouting at each other with the Lamb watching, especially with that stupid little doofy smile on their face.)

On the other, Leshy had also just watched the Lamb pour the two of them tea, offer a truce, then inform him that Veles/Myst/Eon had requested the Bishops be ‘freed’ and had gotten ‘very annoyed’ at them. Narinder couldn’t have expected a more bewildered expression if he’d grabbed a wooden bowl and thrown it at his face all of a sudden.

Narinder shot the Lamb a look in the awkwardly long moment of quiet that followed.

“One month,” he growled, reluctance obvious in every syllable that rolled off his tongue. “I will agree to the truce for one month.”

“Okay,” the Lamb said easily, tail wagging.

It would’ve been a little cute, if he didn’t know it was utterly fake.

Leshy found his voice at that moment while Narinder internally shoved the thought as far into the headache corner as it could possibly go. That was something he had absolutely no mental capacity to unpack at the moment.

“Hold on,” the worm growled, “you are more of an idiot than I thought if you think I will just agree–”

“Be quiet.”

Leshy’s head spun to Narinder, who’d turned his glower to the burrowing worm. “You–”

“I said be quiet,” Narinder snarled back. “You call the Lamb an idiot when they’ve defeated you? Twice now?”

“They have not killed me,” Leshy retorted.

“Technically I have,” the Lamb piped up.

Both Leshy and Narinder chose to ignore this comment.

Narinder bared his teeth a bit, a roar rumbling deep in his chest. “What, exactly, makes you think they wouldn’t?”

Leshy opened his mouth, then paused. His antennae twitched.

“Are we all in agreement? No bodily harm to one another and only minor bickering?” the Lamb broke in brightly when Leshy seemed to have subsided somewhat.

Narinder shot Leshy a glare; the burrowing worm’s mouth twisted into a nasty sneer, showing off the several rows of razor-sharp teeth.

However, neither of them denied the truce.

“Great! In that case, I’d better get back to making sure construction on the drinkhouse is going okay,” the Lamb said cheerfully, hopping to their feet. Tia floated into the air, holding the Lamb’s cup– it must have put the teakettle away while Narinder and Leshy were distracted. “C’mon, Narinder.”

“Why am I being dragged along for this?” he growled, but he stood as well. The healing bay suddenly felt stifling, and he didn’t want to so much as look at Leshy for a while.

The youngest of the five.

See no evil.

“You should eat, and then sleep. Tyan’s already made your meal.”

As if on cue, Narinder’s stomach growled.

Damn his mortal body. It seemed to choose the worst moments to humiliate him.

Narinder left the healing bay, following the jingling of bells and a Lamb that was perkier when they left the building than when they’d been in it, the mask perfectly settled over their whole body.

He did not look behind him.

They did not go crusading for three whole days.

Narinder had expected that the Lamb would be in quite the hurry to go get Heket, considering their ‘time limit’ before he and Leshy would go at each other’s throats was only about a month, but they’d informed him that they would be taking a brief break from crusading, and taking some time to rest; which meant he was back on kitchen duty.

Tyan was very happy to have him back in the kitchen. Which was strange, because Narinder got the distinct feeling that he entirely uprooted her whole mental ‘kitchen system’ every time he had to work there, but that didn’t stop her from chattering up a storm while he clumsily sliced beets and (occasionally) chunks of meat.

“Oh, I’ve been making another special meal lately,” she mentioned, while he was on cooking duty (to “get ya used to it”) and she was checking, approving, and serving his work. “It’s really just a big pile of beet leaves with a bit of cauliflower mixed in, nothin’ fancy, but still.”

What is Leshy’s favorite food?

He liked beet leaves.

Narinder didn’t respond; Tyan didn’t seem particularly put out.

She never really did, by his silence.

“Seems to be for that new follower the Lamb tasked Ryn with,” she said, slinging a bowl down the counter to a follower with a cheerful ‘heya’ to whoever it was, “he’s kinda like you.”

Narinder’s scowl darkened. He cut off the dirty end of a cauliflower stem with a louder-than-necessary kerchunk and flicked it into the trash.

It ended up missing, and sent it bouncing off the ledge to who-knew-where. “We’re nothing alike.”

“Ooh. Seems like you two have drama.” Tyan chuckled at that, for some reason, which made Narinder shoot her a withering look that she remained utterly unwithered from. “Well, nothing new on him, anyway. Ryn brings his meals to him before they head to sleep for the day, is all.”

“I don’t want to hear anything about him.” Another cauliflower stem. This one successfully made it into the woven bin this time.

It was a little clumsily woven, with a few bits awkwardly sticking out.

He had to wonder if the Lamb had made it.

“Ah. That kinda drama.”

Thankfully, Tyan’s chatter turned to less Bishop-related topics.

(Unfortunately, Narinder’s thoughts did not.)

Tyan was in the middle of giving Narinder an incredibly unnecessary update about Yarlennor (“Lenny tried fish for the first time yesterday. Boy, her expression was funny.” “I really do not care.”) when she paused, mid-sentence. “Ah, heya, Lamb.”

“Hi, Tyan,” the Lamb said cheerfully, poking their head into the kitchen and giving the follower grabbing a meal (it seemed to be the recently-born twins’ mother, Julkay) a cheerful wave as she took her meal. “How’s the meals going?”

(Narinder debated whether it was worth it to poke them in the forehead with the thing he was holding.)

(Then he realized that the thing he was holding was a very sharp kitchen knife, and there was a line full of followers in full view of him.)

(Probably not, then.)

Narinder scowled at them to make up for the lack of poking. “I hate this task with every fiber of my being.”

“You’re pretty compliant for someone who hates doin’ it with every fiber of his being,” Tyan chimed in, cheerful as ever. “You’re even wearin’ the hat like you’re supposed to.”

Damn this monkey. Did she have to insist on embarrassing Narinder at every turn?

The Lamb leaned on the counter, watching Narinder chop at the cauliflower (and thankfully not spotting the angrily-flustered flush that he could feel in his face). They had to practically stand on their toes to peek in through the window.

He scowled at them. They were unnecessarily close to him at the moment. “What? What do you want?”

“Do you want to visit Spore Grotto with me?”

Narinder shot them a slightly disbelieving look. “I could care less where you go in your free time, Lamb.”

A few kids (come to think of it, he never saw Noon or Yarlennor spending time with these children. He wondered why. He would not give Tyan the satisfaction of grudgingly inquiring her about it, though.) gawked at Narinder’s impudent tone with the Lamb, and hurried off. Probably to gossip to their parents about it.

“C’monnn, Spore Grotto is kinda fun. Not nearly as nice as the Smuggler’s Sanctuary, and definitely not as nice as Midas’s places, but it’s pretty cool,” they said brightly, tail wagging. He couldn’t see their tail from here, but it made their bell jingle from where they were practically perched on the countertop.

“Was that meant to entice me into going?”

They gave another of their bell-like laughs at that. “C’mon. Won’t hurt to go.”

“It certainly will not hurt me to stay, then, either.”

They leaned a bit closer, resting their face on their crossed arms. “You could probably use a change of scenery.”

“I’ve been getting that. Have I not been going on crusades with you? What would the purpose of going even be?”

“Getting used to the mushroom fumes again in a place where I won’t be at risk of dying to a heretic who won’t wait for me to adjust?”

Ah. Right. Narinder had completely forgotten about that.

As a God, the spores and fumes the mushrooms of Anura were basically harmless– the worst that could happen was that the spores would act like an allergen, and the God would find themself sneezing fairly often throughout traveling there.

(It had certainly affected him terribly. He’d be a sneezing mess, whenever he visited the four-eyed frog.)

As a mortal (was he a mortal? He certainly wasn’t a God; not anymore), the spores were downright hallucinogenic. It tended to spur on nausea and slightly ‘swimming’ vision, at the very least; and at its most severe could cause a mortal to be paralyzed in a mental prison for days on end.

The Lamb had used the spores once in a ritual and never done it again. They’d died whilst on a crusade (he knew that there was absolutely no way they hadn’t seen that spike trap, no matter how innocent they acted about it), and appeared in his realm with plenty of complaints about how creepy everyone was acting.

He sighed– an explosive huff of air through his nose– and pushed their head back out the window with his free hand. “Fine. When do you plan to depart?”

The Lamb laughed, totally unperturbed by him shoving their head out the window. “Probably once you’re done. I’d like to be back before dark. Tyan, when can Narinder leave for the day?”

Tyan and the not-quite-but-quite-close-to-elderly Anyay, who had just pulled up last for her meal (she’d probably lost track of time in the fields again), were staring at Narinder and the Lamb. Anyay’s mouth was hanging open slightly.

Tyan shook herself out of her surprise upon being addressed. “Oh– uh, he could leave right now, if he needs to.”

The Lamb glanced at Narinder.

He breathed out another sigh through his nose and set down the knife with a solid clunk. “Fine.”

“You could pretend to be a tiny bit more enthusiastic,” the Lamb said brightly, hopping down from the counter.

“Do not push your luck, Lamb.”

Narinder ignored Anyay’s gaze on him, as well as Tyan’s rather cheeky grin (’lover’s spat’ snuck into the back of his mind, and the damned blue monkey had better not be getting any foolish ideas from this interaction) as the two of them departed the kitchen towards the teleportation stone.

The trip to Spore Grotto was brief through the circle, and before long they found themself in perpetual-autumn woods. The air was cool and crisp, and the leaves on all the trees were vibrant hues of orange and gold and crimson. An immense skull, any flesh on it having long since decayed and leaving it half-buried in the earth, a skeletal hand half clutching at its temple as if suffering a strange headache.

Towering above the entire clearing was a huge, thick-trunked mushroom, sprouting out of the huge skull. Tendrils of mycelium clung to the skull, having long since become entangled with the aged skull. Narinder had to crane his neck back, but he could’ve sworn there was a strange face on the mushroom…

The Lamb and Narinder proceeded to simultaneously sneeze.

“I forgot the spores were– tchoo– this bad here,” the Lamb muttered, pulling out a handkerchief and offering it to him. “It’s been a bit since– achoo– since I last came.”

Narinder sneezed again as a reply. He was half-expecting his head to already be swimming and his limbs to feel weak, but surprisingly he felt completely normal.

Well, totally normal beyond the sudden excessive sneezing.

“How are you–” The Lamb sneezed, but it was much smaller– Tia was likely already subduing the worst of the effect for them. Damned thing. “– Feeling? Any spinning or nausea?”

Narinder took in a slightly deeper breath and instantly regretted it as he expelled it in a forceful sneeze. “No. Not yet.”

“That’s good to hear. I was worrying it’d be impossible to deal with.”

Narinder sneezed again, snatching the handkerchief they’d been holding out to him for the past minute or so and pressing it to his face. It helped a bit.

“Ah. Now that I think about it, it’s been a while since I checked on Sozo…”

“Who?” Narinder growled.

“He’s an ant. I think he leads the Mushroomos, or something.” The two of them made their way through the clearing trapped in autumn. “He’s really into mushrooms, which is probably why the spores– ktchoo– are so prevalent in this area, outside of Anura.”

It was eerily quiet. The Lamb looked around, their brow furrowing slightly.

“… something’s wrong.”

The Lamb, without saying anything else, hurried straight across the clearing and into the gaping mouth of the skull, pausing for a bit to let Narinder chase after them.

It was a vaguely grisly sight that greeted them inside.

An extremely long-legged-ant’s body, with red painted in patterns on his face, gangly and thin, was slumped against a massive backpack that he bore on his back. At first glance, nothing seemed to be wrong, but Narinder could see the flies that flitted around the ant– he was obviously dead, and had been for a bit.

“How long ago exactly did you visit him?” Narinder growled, sneezing again into the handkerchief.

The Lamb was quiet, looking at the dead ant slumped on the ground. They seemed more puzzled, than anything else. “Not… that long ago,” they murmured, brow creased in thought. “I could’ve sworn it had only been a few weeks.”

It had only been a few weeks since he had last fought the Lamb.

Of course, time was a little strange in the afterlife– hundreds of years had passed by, after all, and who knew how many more while the Lamb had fought him– but their followers hadn’t aged a day during that battle (strangely enough), and it sometimes had felt like mere seconds before the Lamb would pop back in after dying.

Who knew how long it had actually been.

The two looked at the body in silence, broken only by Narinder’s occasional sneeze. His eyes were watering from the spores in the air, but he wasn’t hallucinating, which he considered a small mercy.

He didn’t think he could tolerate sneezing and nightmarishly strange visions.

“… I always thought this was a hat,” the Lamb said, rather abruptly.

Narinder glanced at the hat-like mushroom atop the ant’s head, red and wide-brimmed and with a strange mark like a smiling face on it.

(It was a little similar to the one sprouting from the skull they were standing in, now that he thought about it…)

“It’s a mushroom,” he replied when the silence stretched for a bit too long, because that was in fact what it was.

The Lamb regarded it, before reaching out and poking it cautiously. “It’s a bit strange; the stem is black instead of–”

The mushroom fell into their hands.

The Lamb jumped at the sudden motion. (Narinder did a little too, though he concealed the motion much more effectively than they did.)

“You moronic– why would you just touch a strange mushroom?” he snarled, edging away from it. “Do you have a death wish?”

They stared at the odd mushroom, holding it at arm’s length with a strange look on their face. It looked a bit like thoughtfulness, their lips pressed together; but there was also the tiniest quirk of their brow.

Curiosity?

“It’s… not giving off spores like the menticide– tchoo– mushrooms,” the Lamb said, turning their head sharply away from both the mushroom and Narinder to sneeze.

He was vaguely grateful they hadn’t sneezed on him.

“What do you think it does?”

… well, Narinder couldn’t deny he was a little curious as to what it did. It seemed to have been growing out of the ant (Sozo’s?) head. “Do you think I would know, Lamb? I reigned over the afterlife, not Anura.”

“Worth a shot.” The Lamb was still holding the strange mushroom at arm’s length.

Tia floated off their head and began to pull yellow gloves on over the Lamb’s hands insistently. Maybe that was a good idea.

“Should we… try to plant it?” they asked, after another few moments of staring at it.

Curiosity killed the cat.

“… is that a wise idea?” he replied drily after a moment, though both of them clearly knew the answer to that question.

“No, but we can plant it behind the Temple, since nobody ever goes there,” they responded, apparently deciding to do it anyway and pulling out a cloth to wrap it up in.

He huffed out an irritated sigh through his nose. He could feel another headache coming on; though whether it was from his sinuses or the Lamb’s nonsensical behavior, he couldn’t tell. “If anybody asks, I had no say in this suggestion.”

“Sure, Narinder.”

Chapter 13: Mushrooms

Chapter Text

Anura was, remarkably, somehow not as bad as Spore Grotto.

Sure, Narinder’s eyes still watered quite a lot, and both he and the Lamb continued to be beset with sneezing and coughing, but it wasn’t near-constant.

Perhaps because there were simply less menticide mushrooms overall, and only a few dotted here and there that the Lamb collected with the grass that they were perpetually gathering.

“Must you insist on gathering grass every time we crusade, Lamb?” Narinder growled, punctuated at the end with a tremendous sneeze. “Every second we spend out here is another–”

He sneezed again, which summarized what he’d been about to say quite succinctly.

“Sorry.”

(They were obviously not sorry, judging by the way they had to turn their head away from him to hide the tiniest quirk of their lips.)

He scowled off into the treeline. The leaves were perpetually trapped in the midst of changing and falling; even in the dimness of the overgrown canopy of leaves above them, he could clearly see golden and orange and red peering out through the shadows. There were piles of dry leaves, but even with the heaps of leaves, there were perpetual colors in the canopies above.

A never-ending cycle of death, painting a forest in vibrant hues of warmth.

Death is beautiful.

(Narinder pushed the thought away.)

Perhaps the never-ending death of the trees and the leaves and the world in Anura was why it had taken Heket a little longer than Leshy had taken to stop visiting him.

Only a little, though.

The crisp autumn air had always smelled nice in Anura– the scent of slightly-damp fallen leaves, of a sharpness in chilly air that never stopped.

Narinder remembered when he’d always take in a single deep breath of the air when he’d visited Anura for funeral rites, in the past. It was certainly a change (though whether it was perfectly pleasant or somewhat jarring, he never had been able to figure out) from the smell of nothing that permeated the afterlife.

And Narinder truly did mean nothing. Darkwood smelled of flowers, Anura of crisp autumn air, Anchordeep of the salty ocean, and Silk Cradle of must and damp– but the afterlife, white and blank and empty, was a void of senses. You could see and hear, certainly, but touch was dampened and smell was nonexistent.

(Hearing Heket and Kallamar and Leshy bicker about the scent in the air of their own realms, and biting back sharp words that hung on the tip of his tongue.)

“What was Heket like?” The Lamb called across the clearing, using the hammer they’d gotten stuck with to smash a crater into the dirt, sending grass spraying up into the air.

He glared at them, leaning on his scythe and watching them crush another giant hole into the grass. “Are you going to insist on dredging up this small-talk topic every single time we go to free one of the Bishops?”

“Probably.”

Well. At least they were honest about that.

“Why?”

The Lamb slammed the hammer full-force into the dirt instead of immediately responding, sending a miniature explosion of mud and grass up into the air around them.

They turned to face him while Tia darted around picking all of it up.

“I would just like to know.”

“You owe me answers first,” he countered immediately. He still had at least twenty questions that they’d racked up in ‘debt’ to him, that one time they had chattered away endlessly whilst crusading.

(He wondered, not for the first time, why that they had been so talkative that one day.)

“Okay,” the Lamb responded readily. “What’s your question?”

… Narinder had not been expecting the Lamb to be so pliable.

He glowered at them for a moment, silent and mentally grasping for something.

The Lamb did not turn away, just waited patiently for him to say something. They went so far as to begin leaning on their own hammer, unconsciously mirroring his position. He would have assumed they were mocking him, but knowing them, they were not.

(Fool.)

“What do you plan to do with Leshy?” he growled, finally. “If you do not plan to kill him.”

“I don’t know,” they replied, without any hesitation.

Narinder stared at them.

“… you don’t know,” he repeated, when they made no indication of continuing or explaining their statement.

“No. Myst just said to free the Bishops, not what to do with them after. I really don’t have any idea of what to do about him living in the cult,” the Lamb said, with a completely straight face as if they weren’t saying the most ludicrously stupid thing Narinder had ever heard.

“And what do you think he will do? What Heket will do? Just accept life in your heretical cult and pick flowers all day?” Narinder growled.

The Lamb looked at him for a moment.

“To be totally honest, I am hoping that that problem will resolve itself.”

Narinder snorted at that, baring his teeth at them in a sarcastic grin. “Then you are even more foolish than I’d thought.”

The Lamb shrugged, unperturbed as usual. “Do you want to ask anything else?”

He let the ‘smile’ fall at that.

Damn it all. Narinder knew he certainly had dozens of questions, but at the moment he was also certain that his mortal brain was failing him, because he could think of none of them.

He grunted, glowering at them in silence, but the Lamb took it as his reply (perhaps it was, a small part of him said, and he kicked it into the headache corner as forcefully as he mentally could), and tilted their head towards him, gesturing that it was his turn to answer.

He met Tia’s eye.

The Crown, currently acting as a hammer, glowered at him when their eyes met.

(Okay, that was a question he’d have to ask. How had the Lamb won the Crown over so thoroughly? Not a single other vessel had ever endeared itself to the Crown this much, so much so that it actively glared at him when he ridiculed the Lamb or glared at the Lamb or… anything, really.)

“… she was annoying,” he replied, reluctantly. “Always picking fights with all of her brothers over the littlest of things.”

He ignored how that encompassed him as well; ignored the way she’d argue at dinner to distract them from stealing from their plates (Shamura had said nothing the first few times, amused at the reaction Leshy and Kallamar (and, occasionally, if Narinder had something she wanted, him as well) would give; before eventually deciding to speak up if the trick went on for a little too long).

“Just the brothers? Not Shamura?” they asked, still listening attentively even as they returned to picking grass.

Narinder glowered at them. “I am counting that as an extra question.”

They nodded, swinging the hammer down in the pause and sending more grass flying. “Alright.”

… damn them. He wished they’d argue back with him one of these times.

He maintained his acidic glare for a moment longer, before lowering his eyes to a stray white mushroom growing at his feet. It was round, and about the size of his fist.

“Brother, look at this one.”

Narinder looked at the mushroom his sister was holding up, and his nose wrinkled. “Yuck. Why is it so big?”

The four-eyed frog tossed it at his face, making the cat hiss and jump away, fur standing on end. “All the better to throw it at you,” she said, sticking her tongue out him.

“Brat.”

“None of us argued with Shamura.”

The Lamb did not inquire whether it was out of respect, fear (love), and Narinder did not volunteer the information himself.

(It was because none of them argued with Shamura that he had been chained, after all.)

(– reeling with shock and pain that sent fire up his spine, practically burning skeletal wrists– another shackle on the unchained wrist that multiplied the agony, doubled it so it felt as though tongues of flame and electricity were drilling into his bones–)

(“Quickly, Kallamar!” Heket had barked, her voice oddly close.)

(Like she was right next to him.)

He slammed the handle of the scythe into the mushroom, crushing it into bits.

“Did Heket ever lose an argument?” the Lamb asked, through his heavy thoughts and repeated jabbing of the scythe handle at the mushroom.

He shook his head, marking off another question that he could put them in ‘debt’ for (and forcing the memory to recede to the back of his head again). “No, never. It annoyed Leshy to no end. She was strangely skilled at arguments, Godly Debate rules or not.”

– Heket choking, grasping at a bloody hole where her throat had once been, rasping and gurgling as ichor tinted with gold drenched her hands and stained her robes–

She was the second.

“Huh.”

The Lamb’s voice was quite thoughtful, and he shot a look at them.

They had paused in banging the hammer on the ground repeatedly and was standing with their hands at their sides, as per usual, Tia half-hovering by their head. “What?”

“I didn’t really expect that,” they mused, staring off into the fiery-topped trees. “It sounds like she has a strong personality.”

Has. Not had.

It is no wonder that Godhood–

He tore his eyes from the Lamb and glared at the demolished mushroom at his feet.

“Get on with your grass collecting, Lamb,” Narinder responded.

Speak no evil.

They had just returned from Anura, red sparks settling from the teleportation circle that quickly dissipated in the darkness, when the Lamb abruptly pivoted to face Narinder. “Ah. I need to show you something.”

He growled at the abrupt comment, as if they had just remembered (which they probably had, which was utterly insufferable when his eyelids were heavy and his arms felt as though he’d been lifting sandbags repeatedly for hours on end. Hell, it was annoying when he wasn’t exhausted, drained of adrenaline) “This cannot wait until morning?”

They shook their head; he barely could catch the movement with how minute it was. “It’ll be busy during the sermon, and then Meran and Yartharyn have to do their duties for the day.”

The former God’s brow creased slightly at that. Why did that matter…?

Ah. Wait.

He scowled at them. “In the Temple? What blasted thing do you need to show me at Gods know what time of night that the followers cannot see?”

“They can see it, but I know you don’t like when they stare at you,” the Lamb replied, blasé as always.

Tia trembled, like it was laughing.

Narinder growled. The sooner they got the damn thing over with, the sooner he could go crash onto his bed. And after all the discussion about Heket (and her stupid arguments and her stupid mushrooms and he had used to keep bread in his pockets for her), he felt completely drained of the will to argue.

“Fine.”

The Temple had been quietly getting decorated for a while now, a pot here, a candle there. Narinder had never paid any of the decorations any attention before this; except that the floor had gone from wood to stone (it was cool on his paws, and was pleasantly smooth), and that there were columns with candles set in the little alcoves, spilling wax down but casting the entire room in pleasantly warm shadows, and that there were now two giant Lamb statues flanking the stained glass window that had been put in.

(As if to rub insult into injury, he could tell (the thinning of their lips, the resolute way they refused to look behind them while giving a sermon or a speech at a funeral or holding a ritual) that they did not like the two statues.)

They betrayed him.

They did not want Godhood.

Why?

The Lamb took ahold of the lectern, ignoring the little copy of their own doctrines and rituals that they had left up there. They lent it out often, judging by how worn the binding of the book was. Perhaps they should re-bind it sometime.

Narinder was about to ask what in the hells they were doing, grabbing onto the lectern like that; but a strange rumbling interrupted him just as he’d opened his mouth. Tia almost seemed to shiver.

Then the floor started to shift.

The Lamb’s knuckles whitened as they gripped the lectern. The stone tiles on the floor shifted, cracking and moss sprouting from between the cracks.

Narinder steadied himself on the nearest wall, only to belatedly realize that the walls were also shifting. The wall at the back of the Temple, bearing a stained glass window, seemed to grow, becoming rounder and more circular, and the two statues of the Lamb were two fairly-small-but-still-tall trees in the blink of an eye.

When the space had stopped shifting, everything was green and surprisingly lush. Even the stained glass window had changed to something more floral, and the candles dotted everywhere had been changed to stained-glass lanterns.

“Is that normal?” they asked.

Their nose had started bleeding– was it mentally strenuous to do the change?

“Your nose is bleeding, Lamb,” he answered.

They wiped at the blood with their arm. He was examining the space around them– was the temperature cooler in the Temple, too?

Shamura had been satisfactory with illusion magic (more so than the rest of them, anyway), but even they had not been able to transform their Temple so thoroughly. The texture of the stone tile beneath his feet (from smooth to slightly rough, like sandpaper, with spongy moss here and there), the bits of foliage that felt like smooth, waxy leaves when he brushed his paw against it– all of it was real.

“I… have not seen something like this before,” he admitted grudgingly. “How did it occur to you to try something like this?”

The Lamb glanced at Tia, who was watching them both. “Well… I can’t really take much credit for that.”

After a moment of hesitation, they held out their arm.

The Crown floated into their palm– then stretched, squirming and rippling like inky water, until it was entwined around their arm.

A single red eye opened on a strangely spherical skull.

“I will admit, as nice as it is to speak, it is tiring to maintain this form.” Tia’s voice was soft, a hiss, familiar–

– be more honest with yourself, Narinder–

“Sorry.” The Lamb nodded, and turned to Narinder. “It–”

Narinder’s fur had stood on end, and he realized he’d started snarling without even fully realizing he was doing it. His hackles were raised, staring daggers at the one-eyed serpent curled around the Lamb’s arm.

Tia tilted its spherical head at him. A clear sign of confusion.

The Lamb glanced between the two of them. “Ah… are you alright, Narinder?”

He glared at the Crown entwined around their arm, then turned his gaze to the Lamb. “And how long have you known about that?” he growled.

“Tia? Not long. A few days after bringing Leshy back,” the Lamb said, brow slightly creased. “I thought you knew about Tia being able to do this, too.”

“No. I did not.” He was glowering at Tia, who matched the ferocity of his gaze easily, recovering from the hostility radiating off of the former God.

“Quite pleasant of you,” Tia clipped back, sarcasm practically dripping from its voice.

The Lamb physically reached up and pushed the Crown’s head back a bit to cut off the glaring contest, running a hand over its scales soothingly. “Well… I just wanted to see if this was something you knew about and if I need to be concerned about it.”

“If you undergo so much mental strain that it makes you begin to bleed while doing it, I would suggest not doing it often,” he growled, still glaring at Tia.

The Crown glowered back, but subsided and began to shift back into its usual shape, settling into the Lamb’s hands.

The Lamb nodded, completely ignoring the two glaring beings. “In any case, that was all I wanted to check with you. You can get some sleep now, if you’d like.”

“Are you going to change it back?” He gestured at the copious amounts of foliage around them, the flowers peeking through in the moss and trees, the stained glass lanterns swaying in some strange, phantom breeze.

The Lamb regarded the room, before shaking their head. “No, it’ll be nice to sleep in here. I usually get dew in my wool when I sleep outside.”

He raised his brow at them, but didn’t actually push the issue as he turned towards the door of the Temple.

“Good night, Narinder,” he heard the Lamb say.

The former God gave a grunt of acknowledgement before disappearing through the door.

(When he glanced back at the Temple, walking back to his hut, he took note that the outer structure had not changed at all.)

(Interesting.)

Even with Leshy gone (well, gone from Darkwood, he was probably wandering around the cult causing trouble here and there), the creatures were no less aggressive, and the heretics were even worse than before. The lack of presence of their God somehow made the fanatics even more fanatical.

The one positive (and simultaneous negative) was that the heretics’ attacks became wild and uncoordinated, which made it easier to defeat them but also easy to get caught by a stray fired arrow or sword. Narinder already had a cut on his ear that had drawn blood and the Lamb had gotten a chunk of wool chopped off.

(It was reluctantly amusing for Narinder to hear the Lamb tonelessly saying “sh*t” at that.)

It was nice to have a break from the spores of Anura, but the primary reason they were in Darkwood at all was because of Leshy.

They had been about to prepare for another crusade to Anura when he’d popped out of the ground right next to Narinder, who had tried to kick him out of instinct (he’d used to try to punt the worm out of the tunnels he dug when getting pranked, when they did not have to worry about injuring each other) and had been stopped by Tia knocking him over.

Leshy had been discharged after only a couple of days in the healing bay. Narinder had thought that the worm would immediately try cause a great deal of havoc, perhaps attempt to kill people; but instead he seemed to have reverted to simple pranks on the Lamb’s followers, popping out of holes and sending all of the children scattering with shrieks (of mingled laughter and fear, Narinder suspected). He particularly seemed to enjoy bothering that yellow cat.

Why that was, Narinder could not fathom.

The Lamb was strangely tolerant of the pranks. Likely because not a single follower had actually gotten injured.

(He wondered how that would change, if someone did end up injured.)

“Hello, Leshy,” the Lamb had said cheerily, while Narinder tried to grab the Crown as it fluttered about just out of reach of his claws, taunting him. “What is the matter?”

“I do not need your pity, Lamb.” Leshy had grumbled, but he had propped his elbows on the edge of his hole, antennae twitching about. “Just to be crystal clear, this is not a favor.”

That definitely meant he was asking a favor.

“When my dear brother–”

Narinder would’ve snarled something at him, but he was currently trying to hit the Crown out of the air. As it was, he shot Leshy a black look, knowing the worm would not be able to tell. He glared at everyone, anyway.

“– struck us, my eyes were torn from the socket. One was salvaged, and hidden in the tangles of Darkwood.”

That was true. Narinder had only destroyed one eye.

“I despair at the thought of it being uncovered by some simple-minded beast. You have navigated my realm once before. Do so again, and recover my eye. Perhaps we can make an arrangment.”

Narinder snorted very loudly at that; Leshy pointedly ignored him.

“You don’t have to be so formal, Leshy,” the Lamb said cheerily. “We can take a quick look in Darkwood for it. Plimbo was complaining about a Witness blocking the way again, anyway.”

“Excellent. If you need me, I will be with the cat.”

“Ryn,” the Lamb corrected.

“Whatever.” Leshy disappeared through the hole again in a flash.

He had always been more comfortable buried in earth, where his antennae could feel a vibration easily, with very little effort.

So here they were now (after the Lamb had managed to get Narinder to stop attempting to catch the Crown), making their way through Darkwood with a fair amount of ease. The frogs were more aggressive than many of the worms, and they had just spent a long time in Darkwood– they were more familiar with the creatures that occupied that realm.

They had found yet another of the strange totems (this one spoke of Great Ones, of ‘fragments of power’, and something inside of Narinder was certain those ‘Great Ones’ were not the Bishops) whilst combing through Darkwood.

And, of course, they exchanged their questions.

“Why does the Crown like you so much?” Narinder finally found the chance to ask, shooting Tia another glare while he easily dodged a burrowing worm. Compared to the sheer number that had swarmed them while fighting Leshy, it was almost ludicrously easy to kill off the worms now.

He was certain that if Tia had a mouth, it would have stuck its tongue out at him as the Lamb replied, “I’m not too sure. I talked to it a lot when I could, though. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

They did sound vaguely apologetic that they couldn’t provide him with a better answer. They really didn’t seem to know.

Though the answer was wholly unsatisfying, he accepted the answer with a ‘hmph’. The Lamb could not help what they did not know, after all.

The Lamb stabbed the final heretic in the clearing with their dagger, having to duck under a swing of a blade to get close enough. “Did Shamura have a library?”

– silk strung between the shelves that had collapsed with rot and shreds of paper spread on the floor and a moldy desk–

“Yes. Why exactly do you care about that rubbish heap?” It came out far sharper than he intended, barbed and bitter.

The Lamb opened their mouth to answer, brow creased (they never seem perturbed when he snapped, so for them to seem concerned now was a bit odd– he shook off that thought, he did not notice their behavioral quirks, he did not care), and he interrupted before they could even say anything with, “No, never mind. Why are you even asking?”

“I wanted to know if it would be possible for me to see it,” they said, after a moment of hesitation.

He glared at them. “Why?”

“Shamura used to be the Bishop of War and Knowledge,” came the answer. “I thought they may have something in there about why your third eye is opening up.”

Narinder gave a sound. It may have been a scoff, but with how annoyed it was it came out more as a snarl. “I highly doubt that.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

He didn’t respond for a moment, glowering off into the trees. There were giant flowers with eyes again. They seemed to be watching the two.

He wished he could tear out their eyes, like he had done to Leshy.

“It has likely fallen to pieces. Shamura may be the only Bishop who still remembers where it is. And even that is a long shot, with their mind as it is. Besides that, it is locked and located in Silk Cradle,” he finally replied.

“But it is possible to visit?” the Lamb pressed.

He glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, teeth glinting slightly as he felt his back teeth clench. “I suppose it is technically possible with everything I just said, yes.”

The Lamb nodded, as if opening up some kind of mental book and writing that down somewhere, and he turned away towards the next path.

“Let’s hurry, Lamb. I do not want to spend longer than necessary in this blasted place again.”

It was midday when they reached the next graveyard.

When Narinder glanced about, the ruins of a village lay just beyond it, overgrown and long-since half rotted away. The wooden grave markers stuck haphazardly out of the dirt. Perfectly identical to the last one the two had found. Narinder fully expected the Lamb to immediately start digging up the graves as per usual.

They did not.

When the silence and the stillness lasted just a skip of a heartbeat too long, Narinder glanced at the Lamb standing beside him– only for them to suddenly walk past the graveyard and into the village.

He stared after them for a moment as they weaved into the destroyed houses, dumbfounded– then muttered something dark and spiky and sharp, and the taste of black ichor stung the roof of his mouth as he gave chase. “Lamb!”

They were moving surprisingly quickly despite not actually running, trotting through the streets with a strangely practiced ease.

The Lamb ducked past a shattered pot, kicked aside a rusty-hinged wooden gate that screeched loudly and made Narinder’s fur stand on end in irritation, and sent a little cloud of dust fluttering up behind them and (somewhat inadvertently, though he also wouldn’t have been shocked if they’d done it on purpose) right into his face.

He coughed, waving it away from his face and swatting at his clothing.

They were already having to deal with menticide mushroom spores on the regular in Anura. He certainly did not need other mortal irritants in his lungs–

The ‘dust’ smudged black, leaving the patterns of his fingers where he’d swatted.

He stared at the marks for a moment, frozen in mid-motion, then turned his hand over to examine it.

Black dust left smeared trails on his fingers.

Coal dust.

Narinder stared for a moment at his hands, then lifted his eyes.

He hadn’t been paying enough attention with his initial glance at the village earlier.

The buildings were not only in ruins from age, rotting wooden boards and collapsed structures; but most bore the scars of flames, covered with a thin layer of ash and coal dust. A few buildings had half-rotted torches lying around the houses (held for ages near the wall until it caught alight, secretive and silent in its ambush), or explosions from within that sent flower pots on windowsills flying or the door off its hinges.

The heretics burned our village down.

Surely not.

This could not have been the only village that had been burnt down, slaughtered. There were hundreds of villages that had suffered the wrath of the Bishops. Leshy had had no qualms about torching parts of the forest to kill the sheep.

Surely not.

He looked to the Lamb; who in their quick movements, had already reached the end of the street and was rounding the corner.

He caught a glimpse of their face, from far away, and without the enhanced sight from his third eye, their expression was totally blank.

Narinder hurried after them, kicking up his own clouds of ash and coal, even without running–

And put his foot straight through a charred rib cage, which shattered at the brush of his foot and sent fragments of bone skittering across the dusty road, and more clouds of charcoal and ash pluming into the air.

He swore– normally this time; the taste of black ichor was thick and foul and he was finding it difficult to get rid of the taste, and did not want to layer something far fouler on top– and instinctively kicked it off.

He stopped again, mid-swear and in the middle of trying to get the fragile rib cage off his foot.

The skull that had come detached from it and gone clattering across the ground was half-shattered, half-burnt, jaw twisted asunder– but something remained.

A small, blunt horn, just barely starting to jut from the skull.

A lamb’s skull.

We lived in Darkwood.

He managed to detach the rib cage from his foot; he ran this time to catch up with the Lamb.

(He didn’t know why.)

Surely not.

The Lamb had stopped in front of what had probably once been a decently-sized house. It was nowhere near the size of the Bishops’ grand temples, or even the Lamb’s temple, which easily towered above the other buildings and bits and bobs in the cult but looked piddly, when he remembered his own; but it was certainly the largest house in the village.

With pastel blue paint peeling off splintering, warped boards, a door that had been kicked in and then wrenched off the hinges, leaving only a torn chunk to cling to rusty hinges, and a roof that had caved in, smothered in ash and coal dust; Narinder could only picture what it once may have looked like.

(Beyond the house, past the long-since-rotted fence, Narinder could see a small shack that had somehow remained untouched by the flame, the door half-open.)

The Lamb was staring at the doorway. It was dark inside; the sunlight filtering through the trees cast the interior of the building in shadows that made it impossible to make anything out past a rotted grass mat.

“Lamb…”

Narinder realized, somewhat belatedly, that he didn’t know what to say. His thoughts were scrambling between ‘there’s no way in hell we just happened to stumble across your old village, you idiot’ and ‘let’s return to the graveyard now and dig it up’ and several other options, all of which were instinctively far worse than the already horrendous two options he had thought up.

He was spared from having to make a choice of what terrible thing to say by the Lamb taking a small step towards the doorway.

Why did he care that it was terrible?

Narinder didn’t know when he moved– didn’t know why he moved– but his scythe was suddenly blocking their way.

“Lamb,” he repeated, still at a loss for words; he made up for it with force. Any mortal (he was not a God anymore) would have quailed at the tone in his voice.

The Lamb did not engage him, staring blankly into the darkened doorway– and perhaps that perturbed him the most.

Even when blank, even when their smiles barely touched the corners of their eyes and their lips if they truly were amused, and even when their frowns were tiny creases of the brow, and even when they sounded toneless, they would speak to him.

But the Lamb that stood before him was not speaking to him. Gods, they did not even look at him, their eyes gazing dead forward.

It was as if he was staring at something possessed.

His fur stood on end.

“Lamb,” he repeated, even more forcefully this time, mind scrambling to figure out why his fur was standing on end all over his body suddenly and sending icy chills down his spine. “What are you doing?”

They still did not respond; simply moving their hand to push the blade aside.

Tia looked at Narinder. For once, the Crown was not shooting him a glare or scowling or anything of that nature– it looked worried.

The Lamb took another step forward.

Narinder half-lifted the handle of the scythe, torn between shoving it between them and the door again and simply standing back and watching.

His teeth had clenched; he could feel physical chills.

It couldn’t simply be psychological. This…

(The Lamb, trembling and frozen in place, his siblings (first Leshy, then Heket, then Kallamar and Shamura) towering over them, waves of fear washing over them–)

The Lamb stepped through the doorway.

Narinder followed, a step late. It was physically difficult, like dragging his foot through a pound of sand.

The boards creaked, the wooden structures above them compromised by time and the scars of fire. Most of the downstairs (for he could see a small staircase, immediately to the side of the entrance; though where ‘upstairs’ had been had completely caved in, leaving an awkward tunnel that the Lamb just walked through) were blackened with the same coal dust and ash that the rest of the village was covered in. A few mushrooms, able to cling to decomposition, had sprouted feebly here and there, but the choking black dust meant it was truly only a few.

There was, however, a small area that Narinder spotted– what had originally probably been where a cauldron was hung, but now was simply a circle of stones around a dirt circle, where the floorboards had been carved away to expose the space. A few beams had collapsed over it, but the rest of the structure around it was remarkably sound and sturdy.

The Lamb walked slowly, taking their time, towards the back of the house, which was blocked by massive heaps of collapsed, burnt wood (he only knew it must have been a support beam by how half of it, along with the ceiling, was completely blocking the back door which he could see just past– the rest had become one with the heaps of ash and dust everywhere).

Abruptly, they stopped, and Narinder quite literally ran into them.

He could see a small, white thing in a pile of ash (and, he was fairly sure he saw a few lonely fragments of bone, though a stray breeze had sent a lot of those fragments scattering everywhere).

Narinder shot a surreptitious glance around the part of the house that he could see.

(He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or… otherwise, when the glance turned up a lack of visible bodies.)

“Lamb,” he tried to say, but he found his throat was dry.

Probably from the ash and dust that he could see floating in the air.

(Or because of the way he was trembling, because of the way his jaw was set and he could feel the weight of fear pressing on his shoulders.)

– red eyes and darkening wool and icing sugar poison on their tongue–

The Lamb bent down, ignoring how this caused their fleece to immediately get covered in the black dust coating the floorboards, and reached for the small white thing.

(Narinder thought he could see their hand tremble, too.)

When they pulled it out, he could see that it was small. A crude little tall, with a white (well, it had probably once been white; it was now rather beige) cloth for a ‘body’, wool for hair, and a small wooden ball as a head. The ‘face’ on it had worn off, leaving it blank. There was a smear of rust red on the cloth, having dried so long ago that when the Lamb’s thumb moved over it, none of it moved.

Lacey.

There had been hundreds of sheep and lambs that had died.

She had a doll that she called Dolly.

Narinder couldn’t remember the amount that had been small children– so small that they didn’t even understand what was happening. Small children that had cried for their toys and beds.

One of Leshy’s followers bashed her head in with a club.

The Lamb was staring at the little doll in their hand.

Their face had not changed, gazing expressionlessly down at it.

(He thought– for a moment, where his fur seemed to prickle where it was on end, where his grip on the scythe tensed– Narinder thought, briefly, that he saw red eyes–)

“Lamb,” he repeated, a bit more forcefully this time, as if trying to physically jolt them into acknowledging him (or, a part of him whispered, to shake off the weight of the fear on him, of his fur standing on end and his jaw clenched so tight that it ached and his ironclad grip on his scythe.)

This time, the Lamb’s head turned slightly to acknowledge his voice; which just made him falter momentarily.

He still didn’t know what to do.

(Why did he even care?)

“… there seems to be a space that is sheltered from the elements, near the fire . There is soil exposed there,” he found himself saying.

The Lamb did not reply, head still half-tilted in his direction. Acknowledging his words, but only just.

“Hurry up and hold your funeral. I will wait outside,” he said, at last, through teeth that had had to force to not click with fear.

Only fools and children don’t fear death.

Children learn eventually.

The Lamb did not react for a long moment, holding the blank little doll in their hands.

When their hand shifted, Narinder noticed smeary coal dust prints from the Lamb’s fingers. They had not turned their head enough for him to see their face.

Finally, they stood, without a single sound, and made their way towards the indicated corner; ducking under fallen beams and stepping around broken pottery and glass and whatever else littered the floor, half-hidden from the dust that coated everything.

Narinder watched them for a moment, before letting out a growl of a sigh– his shoulders untensed, and he abruptly realized he was sore from tensing every muscle in his body for so long. He had been mired in the weight of fear for so long, oddly familiar and foreign all at once, that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to exist without it.

Fool.

He turned away and made his way back to the front door, to wait for the Lamb.

It took several hours for the Lamb to return, but when they had their hands were covered with dirt instead of ash and coal, and he could see a touch of concern in their eyes instead of an utter void.

“Sorry for taking so long,” they said.

He had, in fact, gotten thoroughly bored, even after checking the graves on his own (his paws were filthy. Hopefully, they would find a stream sooner rather than later, and he could wash them off with clean water) and finding a crumpled note with the remnants of a wax seal, vaguely damp from being buried in the soil.

One fled my blade. I will find it.

He crumpled it back up and shoved it into the pocket of his clothing.

He had gotten so bored that he had eventually wandered into the garden. What may have once been a nice space was empty now, though grass was beginning to sprout feebly once again, as well as the occasional weed here and there.

(Narinder saw the small shack with the rusted-open door, the moth-eaten blankets and a bloody axe just outside the door.)

(He could only make assumptions.)

(None of them were good.)

Eventually, he had wandered back to one of the windows and watched the Lamb hold their makeshift funeral.

It was no grand affair by any means– in fact, the graves were pathetically makeshift; two small mounds of dirt (and a little white smudge, on one of them) with slightly crooked sticks stabbed into them, and he was fairly certain that he did not even see the Lamb speak their usual grand, comforting (but short) speech.

There were no flowers on the graves, nor crowds of followers to bid the Lamb’s brother and sister farewell. Simply a God of Death; and the former God who had shepherded their siblings to the afterlife, lurking and watching the Lamb sit in front of two mounds of dirt for a long, long time.

(He wondered, as usual, about their parents, and their reluctance to talk about them, but now was certainly not the time to bring it up– at best, they’d brush it off, and at worst–)

(– fear and red eyes and a crushing weight that he could barely move through–)

The Lamb was gazing up at him, awaiting his answer.

He grunted, leaning on his scythe. “It doesn’t matter.”

The Lamb quietly accepted that, the two silently standing in front of the house.

The venture into the village had brought up more questions than Narinder could have expected; what he was fairly certain was that the Lamb would probably not answer any of the questions that hung at the very tip of his tongue.

So he swallowed them back and turned towards the forest path beyond, winding deep into the wood. “I already checked the graveyard. We may leave.”

He expected the Lamb to linger and dawdle, looking behind them, but the Lamb nodded and moved ahead, into the pace of a trot, without once looking back.

Instead, it was Narinder who gazed back at the decimated village.

You could not save them.

He gritted his teeth and turned away again, following the Lamb ever-deeper into Darkwood.

Ryn was on the way back home from the healing bay, after concluding their shift and reorganizing the entire shelf again.

It was getting to be a massive hassle to redo it nearly every time they had to work; especially since the day shift would complain if Ryn left it alone.

Perhaps they should complain to the Leader about it.

But then again, the Leader certainly had better things to do with their time than to investigate people shuffling bottles and bandages about in the cabinets. And there was a chance it wasn’t malicious.

Granted, it was a very small chance, but regardless.

They reached their door and reached out to turn the knob–

“Boo.”

Ryn gave a loud yowl of shock and simultaneously leapt several feet into the air, landing rather unceremoniously on the roof and scrabbling to stay on it without sliding off the shingles and landing painfully on the ground below.

Their heart was pounding away in their chest; perhaps it was a bit of an overreaction but nobody really expected to have someone jumpscare them while they were standing right in front of their house.

They peeked over the edge of the roof, after a few moments had passed and it didn’t feel like their heart was about to combust, to see Leshy snickering up at them.

After the burrowing worm had recovered from ichor in the lungs, the yellow cat had very quickly discovered that he had a penchant for pranks.

He’d reorganized the bottles himself once or twice (which they managed to discover because he’d do it in the middle of their shift, after they’d already organized everything); would hide in various places in the healing bay so they’d have to chase him down and order him back into bed; and after being released from the healing bay, had burrowed into the ground, waited patiently, and popped out of the dirt in front of a bunch of the kids and Ryn who was accompanying them, terrifying everyone in the vicinity.

It was very annoying. Ryn hadn’t realized a former Bishop (a former God) would apparently find it so hilarious to see Ryn’s exasperated reactions to his pranks.

After being discharged (after only a few days, and a clean bill of health), he had been assigned the house right next door to theirs, though for whatever reason, Ryn did not know. The burrowing worm had simply been sitting in the shadow of his own house, and they hadn’t seen him in the dark and in their single-minded focus.

Ryn’s shock was quickly fading, now that they were confident there wasn’t an immediate danger. They frowned down at him. “Don’t do that!” they hissed, still perched on their roof. “You scared the living daylights out of me!”

Leshy grinned up at them, wide mouth filled with needlepoint teeth. It looked a little like a leer, cast in the shadows. “It’s very amusing.”

“Have you done this to anyone else?” Ryn asked, sliding off the shingles carefully and landing with only a brief stumble.

Great, now there were twigs on their robes.

They dusted absently at them while Leshy continued to grin at them, obviously still amused at their reaction. “No, mortal. Just you. And those children you were with, that one instance.”

“Thanks. I feel very special,” Ryn responded drily.

Leshy stood up from where he’d been crouching. He was a good few heads taller than Ryn– not nearly as tall as the Hermit (that was just another height range that Ryn couldn’t quite fathom altogether), but enough that when he was standing, Ryn had to tilt their chin upwards to make eye contact.

Well, eye contact if he had eyes.

They still tended to look up on instinct, anyway. Perhaps out of politeness?

When neither of them said anything, Ryn (finally) opened their door and glanced at him, as if expecting him to turn around and go into his own house.

He didn’t make any move to actually enter his own house, so Ryn dragged out another sigh and gestured at their front door. “Would you like to come in for a bit?”

Leshy’s mouth fell a bit. It wasn’t quite a frown– not displeased enough for that– but it was no longer wide and grinning. Ryn took it as an expression of surprise.

(They certainly hoped that’s what it was, and not a sign of burrowing-worm-teeth about to get stuck in their arm.)

“I’m about to go to bed, but I drink some camellia tea before bed, so you can have some of that. For a bit. If you’d want some,” Ryn said, feeling increasingly awkward with each sentence-segment that came out of their mouth.

Leshy still didn’t respond.

Ryn decided to just go inside.

A few moments later, footsteps followed them, almost matching perfectly down to the slight creak of the boards.

“Close the door behind you, please.” Ryn grabbed their kettle and put a few camellia petals in.

They didn’t have anything like Tyan’s cauldron or a campfire, but the Lamb had given them a kettle that would heat up on its own a while back, when Ryn approached them in the confessional and admitted they were having trouble sleeping and that it felt strange to go to the kitchens to make themself tea.

They then proceeded to give the cat something the kettle could sit on, when Ryn came back a week later and admitted the kettle was searing marks into their table. Some of them were still there, even after Fikomar had sanded the surface so thoroughly that Ryn thought he would go straight through the table.

The door slammed shut, with enough force that the cups Ryn had stored off to the side rattled upon the cabinet.

Ryn winced; that would be a complaint from the neighbors in the morning.

At least he shut the door, they supposed.

“I don’t have anything to add to the tea. Not that I add anything to my tea. Or that I know what you like in your tea. Or if you even like tea, I just offered you tea. I just don’t have anything if you prefer your tea with something,” and Ryn was rambling, and promptly shut up because they’d just said the word ‘tea’ six times in less than a minute.

Leshy was picking at a large splinter of wood that was sticking up out of the table and occupying their only stool. His antennae twitched here and there, as if trying to sense what their house ‘looked’ like.

His echolocation was surprisingly good.

Then again, he’d had centuries of time to let himself get accustomed to blindness, so maybe it was not so much of a surprise.

“You are very odd, cat,” he said.

“Ryn,” Ryn automatically corrected.

They didn’t know why they felt the need to do that, but it was coming to them more and more easily as a habit.

Perhaps because of the Lamb’s insistence on informality.

(They would never had imagined that one day, they would speak to their former God in such a flippant manner.)

“Whatever.” The worm tilted his head, antennae twitching slightly as his fingers searched for another bit of the splinter to take a better hold of. “Why do you enjoy reorganizing that cabinet so much?”

Ryn had to take a second to figure out what Leshy meant, but the second they did they gave a brief snort. “Does anyone enjoy reorganizing a medicine cabinet daily?”

The worm rested his elbow on the table. He’d managed to pluck off the splinter, and was currently working on largening the small gap he’d made. “Then why do you do so, cat?”

“Ryn. And my coworkers will get annoyed at me if I don’t. Speaking of, do you prank them, too?” Ryn carried the kettle over and put it on the little wooden stand. “Careful, it’s hot.”

“Why?”

“Well, you certainly prank me enough,” Ryn said, grabbing two wooden cups, deciding not to go with the low-hanging fruit of ‘well, I did just heat the kettle enough to boil water’.

One was still full of water, from before their shift the night before, so they dumped it out the window (that patch of grass right under their window was thriving) and kept the cup for themself.

Leshy snorted. The worm had managed to somehow, in the period of time that Ryn had turned around to get two cups that were sitting on their shelf in the open, dig a very long crevice in their table. “I was wondering why your colleagues would be annoyed, Cat.”

“Please stop that,” Ryn said in reply to Leshy and his pile of splinters, and was totally unsurprised when Leshy did not in fact ‘stop that’, but continued to pick out shreds of wood from the rapidly-growing miniature ravine in their table.

Fikomar was not going to be happy about that fix.

They set down the dry cup and started to pour tea into it. The liquid was not as vibrant as the Leader’s– the Lamb simply had a strange penchant for tea-brewing– but it would do to soothe Ryn’s nerves and get them to relax.

Perhaps maybe not as much as they would have normally, considering the former God hunched over their table and trying to scratch a new design into the surface, but relax nonetheless.

“They just are. Annoyed, I mean,” they responded.

When the silence stretched a bit, Ryn hastened to clarify. “They always are. I mean, only with me. I mean, not that they’re singling me out or anything; but they might be, but I mean– they do a lot of stuff like that. Petty stuff, nothing big, just reshuffling the cabinet or leaving spills on the floor. It’s not a big deal. I just deal with it.”

If someone had told Ryn a week ago that they would be talking to a former God (of the realm they’d used to live in, no less) about how their coworkers might be bullying them, Ryn would’ve laughed hard enough to land themself in the healing bay.

Leshy’s antennae wobbled a bit. “And you tolerate it?”

Ryn shrugged. “I’m new. Picking a fight just isn’t a good idea.”

They paused.

“Well, actually, by that logic, the Hermit dethroned me as ‘the new guy’, and now you’re the new guy. In town. So I’m not really that new, anymore.”

Leshy continued to ‘stare’ at Ryn.

After a bit, his mouth widened into the toothy grin again.

“You are very odd, cat.”

“Ryn. Here’s your tea.” Ryn tapped the table (and watched his antennae prick up, rotating a bit as his hand automatically went to the vibration) and set the still-steaming cup next to his hand, where it was emanating enough warmth that Leshy could adjust and not knock the thing over.

They took a sip and sighed in relief. The flavor really was nice; light and floral without being heady and overwhelmingly sweet.

With some of the stuff they’d been dealing with lately– with their coworkers, with the pranks, with the burrowing worm currently sitting across from them– they were starting to rely on the tea to put them to sleep.

Actually, they were starting to rely on the tea to go to sleep a little too much. Maybe they should stop.

Leshy didn’t take a sip immediately, still regarding the yellow cat, antennae twitching and spinning periodically.

They self consciously shifted from where they were leaning on the table. “Uh… so… has Leader given you a job yet?”

“Am I supposed to have one? My b– the ‘Hermit’ does not.”

“Well, he helps Tyan in the kitchen when he’s not going with Leader on crusades,” Ryn corrected.

The worm gave a loud bark of laughter that had Ryn wincing and hastily hushing him. They already had some semblance of a noise complaint from him slamming the door; they did not need another one on top of that. “He cooks?”

Ryn nodded, unsure of why exactly this was so funny. “Yes. He’s getting a lot better at it.”

This got another laugh out of Leshy, though to their surprise, he did indeed tone it down into a giggle. “Hah. Of course he is given a farce of a job.”

“Hey, cooking is important,” Ryn argued immediately. “If Tyan– and, I guess, the Hermit– didn’t cook, we’d all starve. Not all of us can make meals that are tolerable.”

Leshy’s toothy grin didn’t fade, but his antennae did spin wildly, twitching. “Are you fond of him?”

What? Where the hell did that come from?

The yellow cat took another sip of their tea. “… I don’t know. Some members of the cult don’t like him. A few do. I don’t know him very well. I’m… reserving judgement, I guess, until I know him better.”

They were being strangely honest. Maybe they were too tired.

Ryn looked at the burrowing worm. He was holding his cup of tea in both hands, which thankfully had made him leave the long crevice in their tabletop alone.

“I don’t know you very well, either.”

Leshy stared at Ryn.

Then proceeded to swallow the cup whole.

“Agh!” the half-distressed, half-exasperated exclamation burst out of the yellow cat without them intending to, standing up immediately, “what the heck?! Spit it out?!”

Leshy opened his mouth briefly, showing off rows of needlepoint teeth– but more importantly, his completely empty mouth– before closing it again.

“I cannot, cat.”

Ryn set their cup down hastily and grabbed Leshy’s hand (it startled, under their touch, and they mentally made a note to apologize for startling him with the sudden touch when he couldn’t see it coming), dragging him up. “We’re going to the infirmary.”

“Why?”

“You have a cup in your body.” Ryn’s voice would have been quite loud, but because of how late it was and how they were now hastily shoving Leshy out their door, they kept it at a loud whisper that bordered on a squeak.

“Is that not normal, mortal?”

Oh, he was definitely mocking them. Maybe they shouldn’t give that apology for startling him after all.

“No!”

“Umm… is this a bad time?”

Ryn jumped half a foot into the air, spinning around– the Lamb was standing next to Leshy’s house, about to knock on the door.

Behind them, the Hermit slouched against one of the nearby houses. Despite that, he still towered over both Leshy and Ryn; his eyes seemed to glint in the dark.

“M-My Lamb– I mean Leader–” Ryn took a deep breath.

They weren’t going to get in trouble for staying up late (the Lamb would jokingly scold the cult for things like that, but they never enforced sleeping times), and besides the startle, they were certainly not afraid of the Leader.

Possibly the Hermit behind them, but never the Leader.

“My apologies. Leshy– um– nobody’s around, so– Leshy swallowed one of my cups. I was about to take him to the infirmary to… uh… see if we could extract it. Somehow. I didn’t actually think through that process.”

The Hermit gave a sarcastic bark of laughter, but it was not directed at Ryn, as he was already turning a baleful gaze to the now-scowling Leshy. His antennae were all standing on end. “Incredible. What exactly spurred that on?”

“It is none of your business, brother.”

Brother? Didn’t Leshy only have one brother? The Hermit was quite obviously not Kallamar.

… no, there had once been the hints of a legend that there had been a fifth Bishop, in Ryn’s old town, but that particular rumor had been swiftly and brutally stamped out; and the elders had all been burned at the stake.

Was there an inkling of truth to it?

The Lamb interrupted the tense air with such cheer that even Ryn, still concerned about what was undoubtedly a massive chunk of wood in Leshy’s system, had to smile a little. “Oh! We got what you asked for earlier, Leshy.”

They held out their hand, and the Crown (which had been shaking, as if laughing at the cat and the worm glowering at each other) proceeded to deposit–

Ryn couldn’t help the half-disgusted, half-awed “oh, my Lamb” at the sight of a red eye, rimmed with black sclera and with a strange, split pupil in its center that the Lamb was very carefully cradling in their hands. It seemed to emanate a strange sort of power that made Ryn’s chest tight.

The worm’s attention was immediately removed from the glowering Hermit. “You found it.”

“Yep, though… uh, Chemach got to it first.” The Lamb looked sheepish (ha-ha) at that.

Ryn thought the Hermit muttered something like ‘blasted blue owl’ under his breath, but when they glanced at him, he was fixated on looking away from the scene in front of them altogether.

Leshy waved off whatever (or whoever) ‘Chemach’ was. “Be its caretaker, for now. Something may yet be done.”

The Lamb nodded, gently handing it back to the Crown.

“Are you satisfied, Lamb?” the Hermit growled. “You delivered the damn thing.”

They beamed up at him. “Yep. Thanks.”

Ryn could see the worm slowly sinking in their peripheral vision. When they turned to look at him again, he’d started silently digging a hole beneath him.

He paused.

Then looked at Ryn, apparently sensing that they’d looked at him; the Lamb had started talking to the Hermit.

Ryn could tell that they seemed strangely at ease with the large cat, despite how violent he had been upon first joining the cult. He was snarling something at them, but with none of the roar that could occasionally build up in his throat.

Leshy gave Ryn a toothy grin.

“… you’re not off the hook about that cup.” The yellow cat crossed their arms, ignoring how their nighttime routine of go home, drink tea, and go to bed had been utterly disrupted. “We’re going to the infirmary.”

Leshy’s toothy grin turned into a frown instantly.

Dark.

Usually, it was good for a vessel or a God to bear some darkness. A God could only absolve a mortal of sin, and use that sin, if there was a bit of darkness in itself. Pure light and pure dark were the strongest and weakest of beings simultaneously– a glass cannon. It was better– stronger– really, to have a mix.

But the Lamb… the Lamb was nice.

The Lamb spoke pleasantly, if oftentimes tonelessly or absently; insignificant things like nighttimes on docks fishing–

“Do you think this one will be a lobster? Or is it a squid again? C’mon, it’s okay to bet.”

The Crown waited for the bobber to tug, remaining still in the Lamb’s hands. They were chatty today.

– of sleeping in the Temple, when it was raining or hailing or whatever other weather that made it too annoying to sleep outside–

“Isn’t it soothing? Come on, close your eyes,” they coaxed, holding the Crown in their hands like one would hold a small snail.

The Crown closed its eyes, and despite not having ears, it listened.

– and minor victories.

“Do you think Ratau will like the bag? You used to be his Crown, too, so your opinion is probably the most helpful right now. I could ask The One Who Waits, I guess, but I’d probably traumatize someone by jumping headfirst off the Temple and breaking my neck, and I don’t feel like fighting today.”

Tia regarded the lumpy, misshapen bag; and privately thought that the Lamb could gift the old rat a lump of coal and he would probably be satisfied.

The Lamb was so nice.

– shadows that dug its claws into the Lamb’s heart and dragged their thoughts into a strange darkness that often left them gazing into blank space and the overwhelming power that had surged through them and into Tia, today, staring at a small doll that the Crown could see in the glimpses it could get into the Lamb’s nightmares–

The Temple had morphed the moment the Lamb stepped in, foliage cracking and calcifying to bone, lanterns transforming into disconnected skulls that collapsed into massive heaps around them, red candles that oozed bloody wax and left stains on the columns and walls, the back wall morphing into something warped and twisted, like faces screaming in agony.

They were sleeping on the floor now, lying on their back as per usual to stare up at a jet black ceiling set with hundreds of skulls.

Tia looked up at the stained glass window, and at the piece of moon it could see through it.

The moon is waning.

The strange red mushroom with a black stem that the Lamb had decided to plant, in a far-flung corner of the cult behind the Temple that nobody visited, had sprouted.

Lambert stared at it.

Narinder stared at it too.

The two of them had come by before they headed out on the next crusade– Narinder mostly when the Lamb literally insisted, chipper as always in front of the flock, and half-towed him along (though they immediately let up the moment they were out of sight and took one, two steps away, so he could reach them but their much-shorter arms were out of reach). They’d merely been planning to water it.

But here it was. Fully grown.

It was also twitching slightly, which Narinder found absolutely revolting.

“We should kill it.”

“It’s already fully grown, we can’t,” they replied, staring down at the twitching mushroom; though their facial expression was definitely not one of pleasant surprise that there was a twitching, ‘smiling’ red mushroom sitting in front of them.

Abruptly, a hand thrust through the dirt.

Narinder hissed loudly, and promptly found himself shoving both himself and the Lamb back a few paces.

(Why did he bring the Lamb with him?)

(To the headache corner with that thought as well.)

Another hand thrust out, clawing madly until it managed to grip some of the grass around the mushroom–

A smaller– but still kind of gangly– ant proceeded to heave himself out of the dirt in a single motion, the mushroom wobbling violently from where it was on the ant’s head (like a hat)… and then faceplant unelegantly in front of them, his backpack clonking him on the back of the head briefly.

The two of them stared as a very familiar ant proceeded to do a somersault, using the mushroom as a cushion for his head, and sprang to his feet, limbs strangely jerky and bending in strange ways.

Familiar for the Lamb, and familiar in terms of appearance for Narinder, at least.

“Sozo?” the Lamb blurted, when the ant just beamed at the Lamb.

“Friend! Best friend, good friend, only friend,” the ant said, practically springing to life at the Lamb’s exclamation and leaning forward. The Lamb half-stumbled back to avoid them slamming their heads into each other.

“Sozo just had the craziest dream! Sozo dreamt that Sozo had too many mushrooms and…”

A moment of confusion flickered over his face. “And…”

The grin returned in full so quickly it was as if the confusion had never existed. “And Sozo was happier than Sozo has ever been before!”

Narinder growled, verging on a snarl.

Sozo’s face switched on a dime, from absolute delight as he leaned towards the Lamb to a glare. “Nasty liar.”

“You–”

Sozo swiveled back to the Lamb, all smiles again. “Sozo must have more.”

“What–” the Lamb barely got out, before he was off again.

“Sozo miss the taste. The feeling. Sozo will live here with Lamb and be happy if you just bring more MUSHROOMS–”

Narinder dragged the Lamb forcibly back several paces. He was growling louder now, rumbling loud enough that he could feel it in his throat.

The ant’s face had dropped into a rather ugly glare again as he stared at Narinder, swaying slightly. “You not friend. You liar. Mushroom Lamb is good. You are not Mushroom Lamb.”

“Obviously not,” Narinder snarled back. Tia was shooting a side-eye at him in his peripheral vision, which was a little distracting, but he maintained his harsh staring contest with the strange ant.

“You… just want mushrooms?” the Lamb cut in suddenly, before either of them could say anything else.

Sozo’s head swiveled– almost unnaturally– to the Lamb.

It was almost impressive, how he could go from matching Narinder’s glare to absolute delight.

“You bring mushrooms? More mushrooms?”

The Lamb was smiling, despite the fact that Narinder was pretty sure Sozo wouldn’t care a whit if they were cheery in front of him or not. “Yes, sure. I have extra from the last time I got you mushrooms.”

(That was an understatement. Narinder had gotten dozens of menticide mushrooms in the offering chests for a while.)

“Is this a good idea?” he asked the Lamb, not even bothering to keep his voice low.

The Lamb handed the mushrooms over and turned to face him, barely keeping Sozo in their peripheral vision. Just enough to keep an eye on him.

“… do you know who the Mushroomos are?”

Narinder blinked. “They occupy that damned Spore Grotto that we picked up your brainwashed ant from. Yes, you mentioned them. Why?”

“They were very afraid of Sozo, the last time I saw them.”

“Rightfully so. He’s a lunatic,” he grumbled.

The Lamb was a little toned down from their usual pep, but still had it on– they probably figured that Sozo (who was now sitting on the floor and devouring the mushrooms, knees bent strangely) didn’t care that much, but still felt the need to keep their mask on around him.

It was odd talking to them when they were this animated.

“But before that, they worshiped him as a God. That’s odd, right?”

Narinder was silent, which the Lamb took (correctly) as a grudging acknowledgement of the statement. “Sozo eats mushrooms.”

They paused, then gestured behind them slightly, voice taking on a slightly dry tone “Clearly.”

Narinder snorted in half-amusem*nt and surprise, and they continued, softly, “And what are the Mushroomos?”

“… mushrooms,” he muttered, the faintest little tick of realization in his eyes.

Followed immediately by: “He eats them?”

Cannibalism was not exactly something that was frowned upon, but many followers were not fond of the idea of eating someone that had once been a friend, loved one, or at least fellow follower. It wasn’t strictly forbidden by the Lamb, but they didn’t exactly encourage it either.

“Maybe not, but if he doesn’t, then the Mushroomos are just randomly afraid of him, which doesn’t feel quite right,” the Lamb replied. “And if he tries to ask me for one of them, he’ll probably just try to eat them, which I’d feel bad about.”

“So what is your plan? Unless it is like Les– my brother, and you have none at all,” Narinder growled.

The Lamb considered it for a few moments, one finger tapping their lip. They never did that when they thought in front of him, but even this was less exaggerated than usual.

How many layers did that mask have?

Finally, they met his eyes.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“You have no idea, do you.”

“Nope.”

Chapter 14: Speak No Evil

Chapter Text

“Heket, what are you doing?”

The little frog looked down from where she was sitting in the food stores. Somehow, she had managed to get up onto the very top shelf, even though there had been strategically placed baskets to prevent her from doing exactly that.

As if to further spite the attempts to keep her out of the food, she took a big bite out of the stalk of cauliflower she had in her hands. “I was hungry.”

The black cat at the bottom put his hands on his hips, frowning up at her. “Mura’s gonna get mad at you again. You know, last time, you ate every single beet we had in storage? Leshy got really mad and threw a tantrum.”

“It’s okay. Mura never stays angry for very long. And Leshy’s a little twerp anyway.” Crunch went the cauliflower. At least she never wasted food.

Narinder sighed, scaling the shelves with ease and perching awkwardly beside her. She was just small enough to fit in the shelf, while he had already gotten tall enough that he had to duck his head awkwardly. “That is entirely besides the point.”

“You didn’t deny that Leshy’s a twerp.”

“That’s ‘cuz he is.”

The two of them giggled at that. Despite the not-very-nice name, it was obvious in their tone and grins that neither of them actually disliked him.

Narinder tilted his head at Heket a moment later. “You know, you can just ask me if you’re hungry. I told you, I keep snacks for you.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, successfully nailing him in the side of the head even when he tried to duck. (He wiped the spit off when she looked away.) “You only have bread, Nari. It gets boring.”

He knuckled her head at that, making her two extra eyes squish around atop her head. She found it funny, as per usual, and swatted at him. “Hey! Stop it!”

(Despite him being smaller than he currently was, it wasn’t by much– back then he probably would still be around the height of his current shoulder-height. Heket, though, was teeny. She hadn’t grown much for quite a while, despite her voracious appetite.)

“... I do not want to see this.”

The False Lamb tsked at Narinder, the two of them seated a fair distance away. This time, unlike the steadfast presence, the eerie similarity to his Lamb, the False Lamb’s eyes were filled with fervor (the blood of the devoted), overflowing down their face and staining their wool and their hands.

Red eyes.

“Aww. Too sweet for you? Or is it painful to see?”

He glared at them, ignoring the way his fur was standing on end and the way he couldn’t move his head.

He could take this. He could–

“How is this, then?”

The world smeared, blurring like oil in water, and suddenly he was sitting next to his only sister; this time on a large rock, watching the sun set in silence. He was holding a bottle, while Heket cradled hers in her hands. Both were older now, and taller. Judging by the fact that they had reached ‘adult’ heights, those bottles they were holding were ambrosia.

“You’re usually not thirsty,” his foolish younger self said absently, taking a swig of the bottle.

He’d trusted them all so much, hadn’t he?

He wouldn’t make that mistake again anytime soon.

“And yet,” the False Lamb cooed, “you make the same mistake with trust so easily with the Lamb.”

“You don’t even pretend to be them,” he snarled at the False Lamb currently leaning against his shoulder. He was so weighted down by the waves of fear that rolled off of them, setting his teeth on edge and making him tense, that he couldn’t even shrug the damn thing off.

(The Lamb seemed cautious around him, drawing their hand back when he growled at them and standing a respectful distance away. They’d never–)

“Why are you here?” he gritted out.

The False Lamb giggled. It sounded sinister. “I told you. Prophecies–”

“Bullsh*t that this has something to do with prophecies!” Narinder snarled. “You are just tormenting me!”

“Oh, good, so this does bother you.”

Heket glanced at her brother, obviously unaware of real-Narinder paralyzed and snarling with a horrible, irritating little parasite currently draped over his shoulder not-very-far-away.

He could see that his arms had started to become skeletal at this frozen point in time, though it had not yet reached the point where the flesh started rotting off. “It’s still going?”

“Yeah. Mura said it’s a side-effect of being the Bishop of Death.” Younger-Narinder shrugged and took another swig from his bottle, as if it was nothing.

In truth, he knew his younger self was probably hurting. The pain was definitely present earlier than the rot had been, but he’d gotten excellent at hiding agony beyond perhaps a stray wince or hiss if Leshy grabbed his arm to tow him along, or if Kallamar patted his hand awkwardly to be ‘kind’ to his younger brother, or Heket poking him to be annoying, or–

“This is really nice. You sure you’re not the God of Wine and Alcohol, rather than famine?”

She punched his younger shoulder (which made Narinder’s jaw clench. He remembered that punch hurting, even though he’d hid it with a chuckle at the time because he loved–)

They both laughed, but Heket stopped just a bit sooner than he did.

(Narinder ignored the way the False Lamb was half-draped over his back, and the way his chest ached. That must just be a side effect of the overwhelming fear weighing on him.)

“… Nari?”

(How long had it been, since he’d heard her say that name?)

(How long had it been since he’d heard her voice at all?)

(Throat torn asunder.)

“Yeah?”

“… did you mean what you said to Shamura?”

Shamura. Not Mura.

(He’d ignored that warning sign. Or maybe he had not ignored it, but just pretended to.)

“… why, are they mad at me for talking back?” He took another swig, probably to offset a small knot of fear that had formed in his stomach.

None of us argued with Shamura.

The fear did not stem from Shamura themself– after all, the spider would cradle them in silk (even when Kallamar complained he was far too old for it, he always tolerated it when he went to visit), and smiled when they teased each other (Leshy’s pranks just made the spider click their mouth in amusem*nt), and–

(– skull split in two–)

No, Narinder knew all too well that the fear his younger self felt was a fear that none of the others would’ve acknowledged.

Abandonment.

(After all, to acknowledge it, they would have had to acknowledge how they no longer visited him or left him gifts or spoke to him at all.)

(And why would the great Bishops do something so beneath them?)

“Mura should expect it by now, anyway. I’m not a little kid anymore,” he muttered, gripping the bottle tightly.

“Narinder…”

His younger self kept talking, oblivious to how tense (nervous?) Heket looked.

(No, that wasn’t true. He’d known.)

(He was just pretending.)

(Narinder gritted his teeth, an irritating presence leaning on his shoulder and watching this sordid scene in silence beside him.)

“And what’s wrong with bringing people back from the dead, anyway?”

“It’s… it’s just wrong.”

He shot Heket a look– she’d said the wrong thing, and she knew it judging by the way she half-flinched at the look. “Why? Just ‘cause Mura said so?”

“Well–”

“Kallamar gets to cure diseases as well as cause them. You get to end famines as well as cause them. Even Leshy gets to be able to create a semblance of order when he’s the God of Chaos. Why is it just a problem when I do it?”

Even though this had been so long ago that he could barely remember the sound of Heket’s voice until he was hearing it now, ringing in his ears, his scowl hadn’t changed. He didn’t even need a mirror to know that.

“Brother… those things fluctuate, yours–”

He set the bottle down with a firm clink. It was not empty yet, and a bit of the liquid inside splashed with the motion.

(He should’ve thrown it.)

(He would’ve frightened Heket.)

(He shouldn’t care about that anymore.)

“So I’ve just got the short end of the stick, have I then?” His voice came out much harsher than he’d wanted it to, and Heket’s second flinch did not escape neither the young nor the old Narinder.

“That’s not–”

He stood, dusting off his robe with a curt, sharp gesture. “Thank you for the drink, sister.”

Sister.

(He had not called her Sister since that day.)

(He barely wanted to call her by her name at all.)

“Stop,” he snarled at the False Lamb. “I have seen these events–”

(– and the events after, where Heket stopped asking to meet him, stopped inviting him to things, stopped calling him anything other than ‘brother’ as if it was a title rather than their relation–)

“You let yourself care for them, didn’t you?” The False Lamb cooed, patting his cheek with their hand. He wanted to bite it clean off, but couldn’t even turn his head to one side. “Just like you’re letting yourself care for the Lamb.”

He gave a derisive laugh, hoping it would force the tightness in his chest out. “As if I could ever care for that little traitor.”

“You can lie to yourself all you like, Nari.” The False Lamb’s thumb was against the side of his mouth.

He could taste blood, though whether it was his (mortal) or from the blood dripping from their eyes, he could not tell.

“But you can’t lie to the world itself.”

“You are lying.”

“Believe that if you want.” The touch was sharper now, more forceful, tighter– digging into his skin with every touch. He could feel blades tap, one, two, three; against the side of his face, the bottom of his throat, the area right above his pounding heart.

Did the Lamb somehow find a knife? No, there were too many taps, too many contact points.

The stench of black ichor filled his nose.

“But then you won’t be doing yourself any favors.”

The last thing he heard before the False Lamb slit his throat was his own heartbeat, pounding in his chest.

Narinder bolted upright, gasping.

Despite the chilly air outside– winter was really beginning to set in; even if snow never touched the cult, cold air certainly would– his fur was damp with sweat.

He was shaking, which infuriated him and made him try to hold it in, only to shake even more.

On top of all that, his third eye was open, judging by the scent of fresh blood and the way he could see the individual fibers that composed the blanket.

As if to confirm (to mock him), a drop of blood stained the fur on his hand. Even with already dark fur, it stained black in the dim light.

Narinder kicked the blanket off and stood, shaking. He wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep anytime soon after that (red eyes and the stench of black ichor and blades against his heart and throat and lips), and he felt strangely active– as if he could run for miles.

He doubted he actually could, since he was mortal now, and mortal bodies had the irritating habit of being ridiculously fragile; but the feeling persisted.

He was in the middle of wandering the cult aimlessly, grass whispering softly against his paws and his breath gusting white in the chilly air, when something ghosted across the back of his mind.

… wuss…

That’s right. He could read minds. He was so used to being around the Lamb– who may as well have been an impenetrable fortress in that regard– while his third eye was open that he’d completely forgotten about that detail.

But that sounded like a child’s voice (thought? Whatever, the distinction did not matter). And not a child he was familiar with (when had he become familiar with the capybara and the duck? He needed to remember to not use such loose, strange terms).

Well, there were certainly other children in the cult, so that was not surprising.

… scared…

… that one Narinder recognized instantly. It was Noon.

Now what in the blazes were these children doing at Gods knew what time of the morning?

He found himself wandering in the direction of the thoughts, straining– it was easier to focus on Noon’s; he already knew the duck’s voice better than these other miscellaneous children– and it eventually led to voices.

Real ones, not mental ones.

“– are you scared?” This voice was taunting, mocking. A little like when Leshy had to goad Kallamar into helping with a prank.

Strangely, though, Narinder could tell (from the punctuated, whispering thoughts that sputtered into his mind) that there was no affection behind the taunt. Just pure childhood cruelty.

(Children could be crueler than they ever realized.)

“N-no.” That was Noon.

Scared... That was also Noon.

Narinder stopped walking, listening in silence. His third eye was stinging (it always did if it stayed open a tad too long).

“Then do it!”

Shuffling. He would’ve peered around the edge of the tree he was behind, but it was already halfway chopped through and he suspected too much movement would just draw attention.

“But we’ll get in trouble…”

“Why? Are you gonna tattle to the Leader like a baby?”

There was a little chorus of ‘ooooohs’ at that, as if the insult warranted any admiration. It didn’t; it was a rather in infantile insult– Narinder had to resist the urge to snort.

(Even Kallamar, who would always get stuck stammering when Heket argued with him, who would stutter without retort whenever Leshy called him a silly name, could come up with something better than that.)

“N-no…” Noon sounded strangely uncomfortable. Even when asking an angry black cat to play Knucklebones with him, he hadn’t sounded so put out.

(Why did he care?)

… tell?

It was getting difficult to focus on Noon’s thoughts, though, in the sea of louder and more obnoxious ones. Narinder was starting to strain to hear them, and his eye was burning.

… maybe… Hermit?

Why on earth was he popping up in this child’s head?

Actually, why did the child find him a suitable adult to ‘tattle’ to?

He growled, low and soft in his throat, and slipped into the shadows.

What a waste of time.

(He ignored something in the back of his head that whispered that he should do something, nestled deep in the strange tangle of thoughts that he’d been shoving aside.)

The next week went by swiftly, strangely smoothly.

The crusades went without a hitch, with Clauneck eyeing them both with eerily knowing eyes and handing the Lamb their cards each time; with small totems that the Lamb never missed in their harvesting of grass, and with Narinder watching the symbol engraved above the door glow, just a bit more each time.

(Eligos caused some trouble– the Lamb was not used to the flying giant bat, and got hit in the face with a fireball at one point.)

(They were rather tolerant of Narinder angrily dabbing camellia oil on the burn.)

The drinkhouse was erected without even a splinter in a thumb somewhere– all Narinder knew was one evening, when they came back, it stood near the kitchens in all its glory.

(The Lamb had slid in behind the counter, having to stand on their tiptoes to even have their head above it, and jokingly offered to mix him a drink. He’d rolled his eyes at them with some careless insult and gone back to his house to fall asleep in peace.)

The Lamb did not open the drinkhouse terribly often– so far, he had watched them open it once, while they were present and able to break apart fights (it was a little frightening to watch Fikomar, face barely flushed, try in full seriousness to wrestle Tyan; though Tyan herself didn’t really seem to care a whit and had laughed it off when Fikomar signed ‘sorry’ at her repeatedly once he had sobered up).

(They talked during their battle with Zepar, answering some question that Narinder pulled out of nowhere about Purgatory; which as it turned out, his siblings were not the only ones trapped inside, but also some of the most fervent of the Bishops’ worshippers; and suddenly it made perfect sense as to how the Lamb had fought Leshy as if it were yesterday– it literally had been.)

Actually, now that Narinder thought about it, there had been one incident during the week.

A big piece of wood decorated a crude drawing of Narinder (really, his ears weren’t THAT big, and he certainly didn’t have teeth THAT large) and a smear of excrement appeared on the shrine; so early in the morning that Narinder only saw it because he needed to go to the outhouse and noticed it hanging off of the shrine from behind, and circled around to get a good look at it.

He’d spotted the Lamb staring at it in the distance as he went to the outhouse, face devoid of emotion.

It disappeared before breakfast without comment; and he noticed the Lamb keeping a closer eye on him and the shrine over the next few days.

(He didn’t really care. He knew he was hated, anyway.)

Noon would gaze at him with pure guilt for a few days.

(He’d be a terrible poker player in the future.)

Narinder debated telling the child that he’d overheard him and the other children, and that it was fine, he truly didn’t give a damn (death is cruel and hated and who would want death at their most joyous moments)–

He did not.

(It didn’t matter.)

And Sozo was, of course… Sozo.

The ant seemed to hang around the Lamb a lot, skipping aimlessly around the cult (and eating the mushrooms if Anyay wasn’t present, after the first time where he tried to shove some freshly-sprouted menticide mushrooms into his mouth and received a shovel to the face from the elderly mouse), but always scampering over to the Lamb whenever he saw them.

“Friend! Lamb friend!” became regular to hear around the cult.

Narinder wished he knew why the ant’s constant hanging around the Lamb irritated him. If anything, he should be glad that it distracted the Lamb from constantly bothering him.

(Yet it did irritate him, and he was not glad.)

It felt that every time the Lamb came to ask Narinder on a crusade, they were fending off a loopy, overly-affectionate ant with one hand.

Though… now that Narinder thought about it, Sozo was rapidly putting off many followers of the cult.

Anyay, of course, since she had to fend him off with a stick from eating the menticide mushrooms the second they were grown; but Leshy (who would pop out of the ground right next to Narinder’s window and tick him off periodically) reported that apparently Ryn was at their wits-end for Sozo attempting to eat the painkiller medication that was created from the mushrooms.

Then there were Yarlennor and Noon, who would run and hide behind Narinder if he was present (he debated kicking them away, but then he would get in a world of trouble on multiple ends, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it, for some reason).

He wasn’t entirely sure what about the ant distressed them, but he also couldn’t fault them for it, so he’d glower at the children before turning the glower unto an oblivious Sozo as the ant skipped away.

Meran had complained at breakfast to Tyan once or twice (eyeing Narinder warily, as if he was planning on telling all of this to Sozo– he would have rather put that ugly children’s drawing of himself on his head than to speak to the damned ant) that he’d gotten into the Temple’s ceremonial stock of the mushrooms.

Hell, even Brekoyen and Kimar, who at first had been smug seeing Narinder glaring at the ant, were clearly starting to feel uncomfortable around Sozo’s delighted ‘Mushroom Lamb’ that would echo through the cult every couple of days.

In short, Sozo’s behavior was just unhinged enough that several followers were uncomfortable with him, but not enough to actually punish the ant for dissenting.

Narinder was currently watching the Lamb talk to Sozo in the distance. They’d been coming to meet up with the former God for today’s fight (Heket, the second youngest, the Bishop of Famine, throat torn asunder), but unfortunately had gotten caught up by Sozo mid-walk and were now trying to calm him down.

Sozo was leaning into their face, grinning loopily. The Lamb was smiling– he could see it in their body language, if not their face– but were leaning back a bit, and trying to maintain a pleasant distance.

Narinder found himself walking over, footsteps fast and crunching in the grass; and pushing his arm between the Lamb and Sozo, tugging them back a few paces from the ant. “Lamb. We need to go.”

His voice was sharper than he intended it to be.

“Oh! N– hi!”

(Leshy snickered nearby at the near-slip, mouth wide in a toothy grin. Narinder wanted to punch his brother’s teeth out.)

(He’s not your brother.)

(He ignored the brief flare of pain in his chest at that, as if reacting to the statement. Of course not.)

(That would be foolish.)

Sozo’s face dropped into a frown immediately. “Annoying cat.”

“You are certainly one to talk, brainwashed ant.”

Rather than reply to Narinder, Sozo craned his neck around to look at the Lamb; all smiles in the skip of a heartbeat. “Lamb! Sozo’s mushrooms… I mean, Mushroomo followers!”

“Don’t ignore me–” Narinder snarled.

“– they must be terribly lost without Sozo! They love Sozo! Everyone loves Sozo. Especially Lamb!”

Somehow, in a single, half-jerky-half-fluid motion, Sozo had climbed up over Narinder and was back in front of the Lamb, clasping their hands. The Lamb’s smile had frozen on their face in pure surprise– as if they were desperately pressing their mask to their face with a hand, lest it slip.

Narinder would’ve complained, but he was stuck in the middle of trying to figure out how the hell he’d done that.

“Mushroomos must be so frightened, so lost without Sozo,” the ant whined. “Lamb! You! YOU… you must save them. They are in Anura. They are always getting captured in Anura, without Sozo to protect them.”

“Um,” the Lamb said. Narinder watched them blink a few times, still taken aback, still bearing Sozo’s weight as the ant practically leaned on them. “I, I guess–”

Narinder growled– a low rumble deep in his throat, deep in his chest, resounding– and grabbed Sozo by the mushroom stem implanted in his skull, lifting the ant into the air. “That is enough, you–”

There was an unholy shriek– unnaturally high pitched, unnaturally loud (even though Sozo was naturally boisterous and cheerful, he did not get this loud)– and suddenly, Sozo’s gangly leg had slammed right into Narinder’s throat.

Of course, as one does when they get kicked in the throat full-force, Narinder immediately released the ant with a half-retching cough, grasping at his windpipe desperately.

There were yellow paws gripping his elbow, immediately trying to make him straighten– he could hear Ryn frantically stammering something about how clearing the windpipe was important, and that it wasn’t bruising– he thought (maybe, for an instant, no that would be stupid) that he could feel Leshy’s hand keeping him from face-planting into mud, a stray twig overlaying fur poking into his arm–

He looked up just in time to catch the Lamb’s face.

Empty, icy, red eyes and darkened wool and sugar laced with poison–

“What were you thinking?!”

The Lamb came back twice as loud as Sozo somehow, the ant’s head turning nearly a perfect 180 degrees to meet their eyes in surprise.

“Cat was bothering Lamb and Sozo,” the ant replied, as if he hadn’t just kicked Narinder in the throat.

“He is my friend,” the Lamb snapped back (Narinder would’ve denied this, but he was too busy dealing with Ryn frantically yanking down his collar to check his throat while he hacked and coughed, and Leshy was holding his head still while the yellow cat gently poked and prodded)–

“But Lamb is my friend.”

“Not when you do something like that!”

Sozo’s eyes seemed to darken, shaken by the remark. “Lamb… hates Sozo?”

There was only a moment of pause, a moment where the ant almost seemed to contemplate his actions– then his face further darkned with stormy anger. “Fine. Then Sozo hates stupid Lamb, too.”

“Is that dissent I hear?” the Lamb asked.

Despite the inquiry presented, their voice was deadly calm.

Narinder peeked to see their face blank again.

(Were they that upset by Sozo disliking them?)

Sozo glowered at them, an ugly look in his eyes, but that was all the answer the Lamb seemed to need.

An amorphous black chain shot out of Tia, dragging a clawed hand with it– in a second, it had grabbed Sozo by the ruff and was dragging the gangly ant after the Lamb.

“Lamb is locking Sozo up? Fine!” Sozo shrieked, “Sozo would rather be in prison forever than see stupid Lamb!”

“I-it’s not bruising,” Ryn said, sounding rather relieved and drawing Narinder’s attention off of the spectacle he was currently watching. “I don’t think he gained enough speed to do any damage.”

The set of hands that possibly might have been Leshy’s released Narinder’s head. “I thought you were good at dodging.”

Narinder glowered at the burrowing worm, rubbing his aching throat. “And I thought you were above helping mortals,” he hissed, making sure to keep his voice low– Kimar and Brekoyen were watching nearby, and as much as he outright didn’t care what happened to Leshy; further inviting the Lamb’s ire wasn’t really something he wanted to do.

The worm scoffed. “I was not helping.”

“You were kind of helping me hold up the Hermit’s head. Which I appreciate. A lot, actually. But since I’m saying this right after you said it, I sound like I’m being contrary, don’t I? Sorry. But you did help. Thanks,” Ryn said, the yellow cat’s rambling getting weaker the longer it went on.

Leshy thumped a fist onto Ryn’s head gently, ignoring the short “ouch” that followed. “You are funny, cat.”

“Ryn.”

The Lamb was hurrying back over, hands already reaching out to hold Narinder’s face without thinking. “Are you okay? He didn’t hurt you too bad, did he–”

He shoved the Lamb back, heart a little too fast (fear?), a growl forming at the base of his throat.

The Lamb’s hands remained frozen for a moment, and then they gave an apologetic smile, letting them drop to their sides. “Sorry. Just panicked. Do you want to stay in the cult today?”

Narinder stood, almost tripping over his own paws with how quickly he got to his feet. “No,” he growled, a bit too forcefully. “Let’s go, Lamb.”

He stormed off towards the gates first, refusing to look behind him– at the yellow cat, at Leshy, at the tapir and the horse, at the Lamb themself.

After a moment, the jingling of a bell followed him.

The air was stale again.

Even though it was as crisp as usual, even though the leaves still looked like fire and the ground crunched beneath their feet, it felt strangely still again.

(The way it had felt before fighting–)

Narinder gripped the scythe more tightly, until his knuckles were white beneath his fur and he could feel a knot in the wood digging a sore, angry rut into his thumb.

His younger sister.

(She’s not my family either.)

“Stop doing that.”

Narinder looked round at the Lamb, who was harvesting grass (of course) with their axe; with each swing a huge swathe of grass went fluttering up into the air.

“What?” he growled.

“Kudaai’ll be annoyed if you get a blister on your paw. He made all the effort to make the scythe handle ergonomic so it wouldn’t give you blisters.”

... so they’d noticed.

He forced his paw to relax, but shot them a sour look anyway. “I do not think the owl cares about me at all, Lamb. He only made the weapon because you asked.”

The Lamb shrugged at that, drawing back to chuck the axe in a throw. “He called me ‘Promised Liberator’ when we first met. I think he cares more than you think. Watch out.”

Despite the comment, the axe toss didn’t even go near Narinder– he just watched the Lamb move slightly as the axe tomahawked back into their hand, slicing through a large section of grass in a single motion– though, catching the axe, they did stagger a bit with how heavy it seemed to be.

He sat back and watched them for a few moments.

“… will you go visit your siblings again?”

He didn’t elaborate; the Lamb obviously didn’t need him to. They were quiet for a moment before shaking their head.

“Why not?”

“Am I almost through my question-debt yet?”

He snorted at that. “Not even close.”

Their lips curved the slightest bit in a smile, but their eyes were far away. “… that place doesn’t hold good memories for me. And I don’t think you want me to drag you there every time I felt the inclination to visit.”

“Why would I have to come along?” he growled.

“… I don’t want to answer that one,” they said, after a moment of thought.

“You’re not exactly doing wonders in clearing that debt of questions, Lamb.”

They tossed the axe again, still careful not to aim near him. “… what does Heket like to eat?”

He growled slightly, shooting them a look. “Why do you insist on being this way?”

“What way?”

Were they being purposefully contrary, in response to him replying to their question with another question?

Narinder’s next growl was louder. “Heket will eat literally anything. Flora or fauna.”

Will. Not was.

When the Lamb looked at him, clearly not accepting it as the answer to their question (which he supposed, now that he thought of it, he had not actually answered– merely confirmed that she would eat anything), he let out an explosive sigh. “She prefers meat. Now answer my question.”

“Sure, but what way do you mean?” The Lamb had stopped harvesting grass, looking up at him.

He could see a faint quirk in their brow– genuine confusion on their face, rather than anything mocking.

“… you are kind to your enemies. You seem insistent on keeping them alive. And sheltered, and fed,” he muttered.

(He didn’t elaborate that this included him as well.)

“Why?”

They pondered that for a moment, the little crease in their brow clearing at the explanation.

They really had been genuinely confused.

(What an idiot.)

“… I don’t know that I can say I’m being kind,” they murmured after a while. “Perhaps it’s more being selfish.”

Before he could try to prod for more, the Lamb was looking back at him. “Then… how did Heket and Leshy get along? Do I have to worry that they’ll… argue?”

He could tell from their tone that when they said argue, they really meant ‘burn down half the cult’ or something equally destructive.

“They are juvenile at best. The worst spats they ever had involved pulling on each others’ antennae. Your cult should be safe from major incident,” he grunted.

Well, Leshy would probably play pranks on the frog, but he always played pranks on people anyway. It wasn’t as though Heket being there meant that the pranks would be much worse.

“That’s a relief.”

… he wished he knew if the Lamb was being sarcastic when they said that or not. Even though he was starting to recognize twitches of their lips, creases of their brow, it was still quite difficult.

They were quiet for a moment.

“… do you… ever miss them?”

Usually, a question like that from Aym or Baal or (they’re not your family) would be followed immediately by tensing muscles, preparing to dodge back from an angry swipe or a roar of fury– but the Lamb was just standing there, hands at their sides. Looking at him.

For some reason, that single lack of action didn’t ignite the brief spark of anger in his chest. He just glowered at them, then at the yellowing grass.

“I do not care, Lamb.”

The Lamb did not reply, or seek to ask more questions. They were silent for a moment, before he heard their bell jingle– like a nod of acknowledgement– and a swoosh of wind as they tossed their axe again, letting his words dangle irritatingly in his head.

But they were true (“you cannot lie to the world itself, Narinder,” whispered a voice, sweet as honey and more barbed than a wasp’s sting), and so he said nothing more, either.

Heket had used to stick her tongue out to tease her siblings, tagging them in the forehead or on the face and cackling at their reactions– Narinder remembered Leshy would make the biggest fuss over the saliva on his face, while Kallamar was the quietest by just making a face and wiping his face off.

(How had he used to react?)

(It had been so long since she’d done it to him.)

Narinder dove out of the way in the nick of time; as Heket’s giant, engorged tongue cracked the stone tile he’d been standing on. The Lamb took the opening and her divided focus to slash her with the axe.

His sister was just as hideous a sight as Leshy had been– her flesh was torn in places, revealing ribs, fleshy entrails, and a flayed opening that might have once been her mouth. Her limbs were barely attached to her body, clinging on by sinews of flesh and muscle, and her four bulging eyes grew to six, two of them rolling wildly with every huge leap she took.

(A small, four-eyed frog who laughed with him on the pantry shelf.)

He slashed through another lashing tongue with the scythe, which made the huge frog let out a roar of agony.

“Narinder!”

He barely took his eyes off of Heket, reeling in pain, but allowed his eyes to briefly flick to the Lamb.

This time, unlike with Leshy, the Lamb hadn’t been completely unscathed– a stray fly that they hadn’t spotted had exploded, scorching their fleece and dealing a raw-looking wound to their arm.

(He wanted to look at it, but then he had been forced to dodge as Heket had leapt towards them.)

(What a stupid thought.)

“We’re almost there!”

He jerked his head briefly– it might have been a nod– and lunged at Heket, who was taking in a deep breath– presumably to spew more of those irritating red flies around her–

The scythe hacked into the exposed organs he’d just targeted, just as the Lamb brought the axe down over their head and into her spine.

Heket let out a scream of agony, gargled with blood and lack of a throat, shaking violently.

Narinder covered his face (just so he would not splatter blood upon his own face, that was the only reason) just as something burst. He could feel warm ichor splatter against his arm heavily.

(He had not watched Heket die the first time, either.)

When he lowered his arm, it was to see that her head had split open, leaving the lifeless bottom half of her body intact. The limbs that had barely been clinging on were half sprawled on the ground, and black-and-gold ichor was pooling around her.

The Lamb snatched the God Tear up from where it had appeared quickly and shoved it into Tia, wiping at their face with their uninjured arm– he thought he saw a glimpse of tears in their eyes, and ignored the warmth pricking at his own.

“Um… I think she’s going to be in here somewhere.”

He looked at the giant frog corpse, and the copious amounts of ichor that were already pooling around it.

“… I am not helping you look for her, Lamb.”

I don’t care.

The Lamb gave a non-committal sound, already half-wading through squelching black ichor. “I wasn’t expec–”

Narinder didn’t have the time to turn away (he used to keep bread in his pockets for her) when a hand soaked in black ichor thrust upwards and grabbed the Lamb by the throat, cutting off their words with a startled bleat–

– the former God was already halfway there, scythe raised to hack the damn arm right off–

The Lamb grabbed the handle of the scythe, shoving it just off-trajectory that it wouldn’t sever the limb; and also using its momentum to heave them and the ichor-soaked red frog that was holding them by the throat out of the corpse they’d just been stuck in.

This, in turn, knocked Narinder off-balance, and all three of them promptly went crashing onto stone tile.

He was already scrabbling upright, claws scraping at the tiles. The Lamb had popped back up and was muttering about the ichor that shimmered with gold in their fleece; but his eyes were focused on the red frog that was currently coughing and rasping and soaked in ichor.

Heket.

Her four eyes darted around, before landing on Narinder– in the span of a few seconds (a few moments), the air that had been knocked out of his lungs had rushed back in (almost painfully– mortal bodies were so idiotic) and looming over her–

“What were you doing?” he barked, fur standing on end.

The Lamb absentmindedly rubbed their throat.

(– a hand thrusting from ichor and seizing the Lamb by the throat–)

“What were you doing?” he snarled, louder, when Heket didn’t reply. There were a myriad of emotions lingering on the frog’s face; from shock to rage to confusion.

Rage won.

“You–” She coughed; the brief raise in volume from the frog was immediately proving to be unsustainable without her throat. In fact, speaking at all seemed to strain her.

He was too angry to care, a hard knot in his throat, making it difficult to speak. He gripped the scythe tighter, so hard that it dug into his hand.

It seemed that it would give him a blister after all.

“– you– hurt– us,” Heket strained out.

That little ball of anger exploded.

“I hurt you? I hurt you?!” he snarled, louder this time. “I can’t believe you have the audacity to say that I hurt you when you– all of you– hurt me first!”

Any shock that had been on Heket’s face had turned to pure anger. “Nec… necessary… evil–”

“A necessary evil, oh yes, I see, that changes everything!” The sarcasm in his voice was drowned out by the sheer volume it was at. It felt like he was boiling, like his very blood was turning to steam from how furious he was.

He should swing his scythe, hack her head from her shoulders–

There was a burst of familiar light, a sudden feeling like being grabbed by the nape of the neck and hauled into the air, and suddenly they were all off-balance on the teleportation stone (when had the Lamb snuck up on them and teleported them?), and the Lamb had to catch themself on him and Heket fell onto the Lamb.

Their legs buckled, just for an instant, before they were somehow supporting her weight.

The moment Narinder didn’t feel as though magic was suffocating him, he was growling again, even as the Lamb gave a little “this way” and was tugging them both back towards the gates– probably so that the yelling would bother less of the followers.

“You… you know… what… what you did,” Heket rasped, breaking out into hacking coughs.

(Some very, very small part of Narinder, buried deep within that part of his mind that contained a million headaches, wanted to quell the swell of rage in him, and hold her by the shoulders, and make sure she was alright.)

(Death is cruel.)

(He crushed that part of him back down.)

“At least I admitted to it. You stooped to lowly, underhanded tactics,” he snarled. “All of you.”

His sister (she isn’t your sister) glowered at him. “Nec–”

“If you say necessary evil again,” Narinder growled, a roar rumbling deep in his chest, “I will–”

“Sister?”

Both Heket and Narinder’s heads snapped around. The moonlight was partially obscured by the trees towering above them, but enough filtered through for both of them to make out Leshy. His wide, toothy mouth was slightly open in shock.

Narinder’s head snapped around to look at the Lamb instantly, but they immediately put both of their hands up in surrender and shook their head. “I didn’t do anything.”

He growled, displeased at the interruption. “I did not even ask yet, Lamb.”

They gave him a sheepish little smile– he was more and more put off by their smiles and laughter these days (sinister giggles and red eyes), but this one had a hint of that soft one that seemed to only show up around him.

“You had that look.”

His ears flattened against his skull. “I do not have a look.”

The two could probably have continued for a bit longer, but Leshy had abruptly crossed the clearing in a few large steps and was at Heket’s side, keeping her from slumping to the floor.

Despite being covered in ichor, she hadn’t coughed up any of the gold-tinted blood yet– the coughing seemed to stem entirely from her missing throat.

Leshy and Heket.

The fifth, the fourth.

(The first, the second to chain him.)

(Eyes gouged and throats torn.)

The anger swelled back in before he knew it.

Leshy turned to glare at them both– mostly at Narinder. “What did you do, brother?”

“You mean besides tearing out her throat in self defense several hundred years ago? Nothing. Do you not recall how you recently emerged from your own mutilated corpse, Leshy?” Narinder shot back.

Heket growled something, raspy and incoherent, while Leshy’s antennae pricked up and his teeth showed, glinting in the moonlight. “You dare–?”

“I do,” Narinder snarled back, the starts of a roar rumbling deep in his chest. “Especially because none of the Bishops thus far have admitted any fault.”

Leshy’s antennae flicked again. He looked like he wanted to step towards Narinder, but was stuck supporting Heket’s weight. “Fault? You think what we did–”

“You see?” Narinder gave a sarcastic half-laugh; it came out far too high, nearly hysterical. “Even now, you act like you had no hand in your own fate. You think you would be like this if you had just listened–”

“Why should we have?” Leshy snapped back. “You murdered–”

“We murdered hundreds of other Gods. Suddenly this one was the exception where you wished to point fingers?” Narinder snarled.

Heket opened her mouth to speak–

“Yes!” Leshy’s antennae were vibrating in his indignance. “You knew that he was not meant–”

“And I told you– all of you– that I–”

Leshy interrupted (talking over both Narinder and Heket yet again, who was struggling to verbalize her own argument), “We had a right to fear you–”

“You had a right to fear, not the right to assault me!” Narinder shouted back, even louder to be heard over his screeching brother. His roar was deepening, rumbling his entire chest. “You did not even ask, you didn’t even listen to my side before binding me with chains–”

Heket’s frustration was clearly mounting, which Narinder found a cruel (wrong) sense of satisfaction with– she was not used to this mortal body, this lack of a voice that was easily talked over, and she rasped something completely incoherent again, leaning heavily on Leshy.

“What was there to listen to?!” Leshy barked back. Heket made another frustrated noise, though whether it was in agreement with Leshy or to tell him to shut the hell up, Narinder didn’t know.

“Everything!”

This came out as a proper roar, echoing through the trees and the gates surrounding them– Narinder thought he saw the Lamb glance at the empty doorway where his own realm had once been–

Then he did a double-take.

The Lamb had sat down on the lip of the well (the entrance to Purgatory; the Lamb had said that it would cast the entire clearing with an eerie red glow at night, but Narinder saw nothing) and was pouring themself a cup of tea with that dinged-up teapot that they’d used the previous time as well.

Judging by the way Tia was giving them a look, they’d had quite a few cups at this point.

Leshy had started saying something, but was starting to dwindle in his own rage as Narinder stared at the Lamb wordlessly. Heket had turned her head to look at them as well now, glancing between a surprised-silent Narinder and a vaguely confused Leshy.

After a few moments of silence, the Lamb finally looked up to see the three former Gods staring at them. Narinder’s ears had pulled back but had half-pricked back up, Heket was barely keeping herself upright with Leshy, and Leshy looked like he wanted to drop her on the floor because of how she was half-pulling him down on one side.

“… yes?” they finally asked, when the silence persisted.

“Are you planning on saying anything, blasted Lamb?” Leshy growled.

The Lamb stared blankly back. “… like what? What exactly would I be adding to the conversation here?”

“Get… out,” Heket hissed. She couldn’t really speak above a raspy whisper.

Did Heket ever lose an argument?

No, never.

(Throat torn asunder.)

“I’m a bit afraid you three combined will destroy the entire cult, and Fiko already has enough overtime to get through,” the Lamb replied cheerfully, “so as much as I’d like you three here to have your, ahem, ‘family discussion’ in peace–”

“I do not consider them my–”

The Lamb talked over Narinder’s protests, though they put a hand up (placating) while doing so. “– I am afraid I will have to stay, just to make sure nothing is damaged.”

Narinder glowered at the Lamb, who turned to smile (red eyes) at Narinder.

“Besides, Leshy and Narinder have that truce, remember?” They didn’t stop smiling while saying that, but the emphasis that suddenly entered their voice on the last word proved as a very helpful (forceful) reminder of the terms of that truce.

Damn it all to hell.

He growled, rumbling deep in his throat, and crossed his arms. “Fine,” he spat at the Lamb, “but don’t blame me if Heket does not agree to your moronic terms.”

As if mentioning Heket’s name was some sort of cue, Heket’s legs finally gave out, and Leshy abruptly was bearing the full weight of his sister on one shoulder.

He let out a loud yelp as he was promptly being weighed down on one side by a (no longer small) red frog with four eyes, pinwheeling his free arm frantically to try to correct his balance.

Narinder’s hands jerked– just for a moment, just for an instant, just a fraction of a second of weakness– and the Lamb was already at her other side, using surprising strength for their size to keep her upright. “Here, let’s get her into the healing bay. Ryn’s working tonight, right?”

Heket snarled at them incoherently, but the Lamb maintained their grip on her.

“Yes, the cat is working,” Leshy responded.

The Lamb nodded. “Okay. Let’s get Heket checked out… and also clean the ichor off of her…”

It took several minutes (mainly because Heket was half-strangling the uncomplaining Lamb on the walk there, with Tia playing interference and smacking her hand off of their throat; which meant the Lamb had to re-catch Heket each time while Leshy complained about his sister’s weight (which got her half-strangling him, which had Tia looking totally exasperated and practically bouncing between them since Leshy was much more vocal about complaining despite how late it was)–

In short, it took quite a while, but finally, Heket was sat on a bed, ichor-free as a frazzled Ryn began to unwrap her ichor-soaked bandage around her throat. The three (former) Bishops glowered at each other in slightly awkward silence.

(The yellow cat looked stressed beyond belief at the amount of tension in the space.)

“So,” the Lamb said, quite cheerfully (rubbing their undoubtedly very-sore-by-now throat), “the truce thing is something Leshy and– uhm, the Hermit– that’s what we call–” The Lamb gestured at Narinder.

Heket looked confused. Narinder allowed himself to feel a petty streak of smugness at that.

“– both mutually agreed to.”

Leshy grumbled something rather rude under his breath at that. Ryn elbowed him in the shoulder as they passed by.

Odd. Leshy should’ve immediately got riled up by a mere mortal doing something so familiar with him. Instead, he just rubbed his shoulder and grumbled something else.

The Lamb paused before continuing to explain, glancing at Ryn. “Um, before I keep going…how is she?”

Heket was glaring daggers at Ryn, who was examining her throat. It looked similar to Leshy’s eye– scarred (fresh, as if the wound had only just healed), but not life-threatening.

“The actual wound itself should heal, so long as she doesn’t try anything strenuous like shouting or eating things that are too large– strict gruel and porridge diet for a while.” Ryn looked stern, which was a strange expression to see on what Narinder was fairly certain was an anxiety-ridden cat.

Heket looked immensely displeased at that.

“Beyond that, she’s actually in quite good health, strangely enough. She doesn’t even have nearly as much blood that Leshy had in her lungs. I mean, not that Leshy had that much anyway, but he still got quite a bit in his lungs. But she doesn’t have much, almost none at all. Which I just said.”

… now Heket looked confused.

The Lamb seemed to be looking at the medicine shelf again as Ryn spoke. It was about as disorganized as the last time Narinder had seen it.

(Leshy was frowning at that, for some reason.)

“That’s good… how come Leshy ended up with so much blood in his lungs, and Heket is… mostly fine?”

“He can’t keep his fat mouth shut, that’s why.”

“Shut up, Brother.”

Narinder felt a mean little twinge of satisfaction at Leshy’s glare in his direction, and another little tug of something else at the look of amusem*nt on the Lamb’s face– even if they were faking it, or at least pushing their amusem*nt as much as they could, they did at least find it somewhat funny.

(Why should he care?)

For some reason, Leshy had now gone over to the disorganized shelf and was feeling around on it, picking up bandages and some glass bottles.

“Anyway, the truce– the bandages go on the top shelf, Leshy– is pretty simple. For the next… I think we said a month, it’s more like three weeks now, you, Leshy, and N– Hermit cannot kill each other and must be relatively civil to each other– bickering is okay, screaming is a no–”

Heket was frowning at the Lamb, though whether it was because she was displeased with the truce, displeased with Ryn carefully rewrapping the bandage around her throat (“you can slap my wrist if I’m doing it too tight, I’d rather know”), or displeased in general, Narinder couldn’t have said.

“It’s only for a month. Presumably after that, we’ll… figure something else out.”

“You have nothing planned in that event, do you Lamb?” Narinder asked bluntly.

“No I do not.”

The Lamb looked to Heket after a moment. “So… how about it?” they asked, still smiling pleasantly.

Heket continued to frown at the Lamb, silently.

The two stared at each other for a moment.

“… f… fine,” Heket finally managed. “O… only be-because… unsettle…”

Her voice seemed to give out around then, so she faltered before jabbing her hand at the Lamb.

“… Lamb?” the Lamb guessed, their lips half-twitching.

She jabbed her thumb at herself with a curt nod.

“… me… I unsettle you?” The Lamb’s eyebrows had gone up at that.

She gave another jerk of the head in a nod. Narinder blinked at that.

The Lamb? Unsettling?

– red eyes and sugary poison and dark wool–

Narinder blinked again to get the image out of his eyes.

The Lamb blinked a few more times as well. “I… well, if you agree to the truce, then, um…”

Clearly thrown for a loop (Leshy also looked rather bewildered from where he was working on the shelf. Surprisingly, it looked a little less messy than before), the Lamb turned to look at Narinder. “Um… do you agree to it too?”

Narinder scowled at them. “Why are you asking? You do not exactly give me a choice.”

It wasn’t a denial, which the Lamb seemed to accept with a nod.

The room was starting to feel stifling with the tension. Heket was clearly having difficulty actually articulating anything, and Leshy looked annoyed but trying to puzzle through what Heket meant by the Lamb ‘unsettling’ her; and he was just too tired to deal with this right now.

Narinder stood to leave– and nearly ran straight into Fikomar, who was in the doorway. Tyan was perched on his shoulder.

She did have a tendency to ride on Fikomar’s shoulder like a strange parrot, now that Narinder thought about it. It was probably faster than moving around on her own, but the sight never really ceased to be slightly odd.

“Heya! Brought Fiko ‘long, like you asked, Lamb,” the blue monkey said cheerfully, ignoring the atmosphere of pure tension in the room.

(If Fikomar was put off by it, Narinder couldn’t tell worth spit.)

(Also, the idea of ‘bringing Fikomar along’ was quite funny, considering she was the one perched on his shoulder, and Narinder’s found himself turning to glare at a blank wall in an effort to hide a brief, unwilling twitch of the lips.)

Ryn waved a bit to them both, awkwardly standing beside Heket.

Narinder stepped aside to permit the gorilla entry, shooting the Lamb a bewildered look– he didn’t even bother hiding it.

When had they talked to Tyan? For that matter, why was the gorilla even here? He certainly wasn’t a healer.

The Lamb turned to Heket. “Heket, uh, this is Fikomar. Fikomar, this is Heket. Please don’t spread rumors about her.”

… Narinder was pretty sure that was a joke. Fikomar rarely talked to anyone except Tyan or the Lamb; except for the nervous possum priest that one time he’d run into them outside of the food line. Even if Fikomar had had a perfectly functioning voice, the gorilla was about as chatty as a stone.

Fikomar raised his hand and signed an “okay”.

“Tyan–”

“Lips are zipped, Lamb,” Tyan responded swiftly and easily, leaning against Fikomar’s head slightly. “Don’t want Hermit to be in a weird spot.”

What the hell? Why did she bring him up just now?

He shot Tyan a strange look, and received two thumbs up in reply.

What a strange mortal.

The Lamb glanced at Ryn, who hastily put their hands up. “Healer’s honor. I won’t breathe a word about any of this, Leader. Lamb. Not that I was going to anyway. I mean, I’m also swearing on my honor as a healer, but I wasn’t– anyway, healer’s honor, lips are zipped,” the yellow cat stammered.

“Why…” Heket was glowering at the Lamb, though carefully.

(What did she mean earlier, when she had said that they unsettled her? They had not been blank once this whole time, which was certainly what had thrown Narinder off the first time. Maybe she just meant that she really disliked the Lamb.)

Her voice had cracked at the end, obviously straining; so she jabbed a finger in Fikomar’s direction with all the force of thrusting a dagger into someone’s ribs.

“Fikomar knows sign language,” the Lamb elaborated, without her needing to finish her sentence (or elaborate on her gesture). “Since... um… well, your throat isn’t… um… in good shape…”

Narinder gave a derisive snort at that very generous description, making Heket’s glare turn onto her older brother instead.

“… I asked him to teach you some sign language, so you don’t strain yourself too much.”

“Are we to believe that you are doing this out of the goodwill of your heart, Lamb?” Leshy growled.

The yellow cat looked up sharply at that, shooting Leshy a look that indicated that yes, it probably was being done out of the goodwill of their heart.

Which Narinder somewhat doubted, but he also could not grasp their end-goal– why was the Lamb letting any of them live? Why did the Lamb care?

(Why had the Lamb let him live?)

Death is beautiful.

Leshy’s antennae twitched briefly in Ryn’s direction at the indignant motion of the head, but he seemed intent on hearing the Lamb’s answer.

The Lamb scratched their head. “Well… even if I did say it was out of the goodwill of my heart, I don’t think you’d believe me,” they said brightly. “So let’s just say I’ve got something planned for later.”

Narinder’s ears pricked up. This was the first he was hearing about it.

Well, but they might be bluffing. They had a tendency of telling him that things would work out when they had nothing planned at all anyway.

Fikomar waved, making Heket glare at him instead and rasp something incomprehensible.

He glanced at Tyan, who nodded and translated (with her signature little twang) as Fikomar signed, “Fiko says he’ll teach you whatever signs ya want, Ms. Heket, and since we don’t have as much carpenter work as of late, he’ll have some free time to stop by–”

“F-f*ck… you,” Heket wheezed out, glaring at them both

Fikomar, without looking a whit offended, put his fingers under his chin and flicked outward.

“… the sign for ‘f*ck you’ is to put your fingers under your chin, with your palm facing towards ya, and flick outwards,” Tyan translated, sounding quite amused and also looking wholly unbothered by being sweared at.

(Narinder recalled that Tyan had apparently grown up in Silk Cradle. With how much emphasis was placed on war there, especially with Shamura having only grown more focused on knowledge as they got older (from what he’d heard), being sweared at was probably not so much of an oddity to Tyan.)

Heket considered this, still glaring at the two.

Then looked to the Lamb and began to incessantly sign it at them.

The Lamb grinned at that, visibly relieved. “Well, as long as he can teach you some so you don’t injure yourself when you speak, that’s alright.”

“Well, if Ryn’s here, I’m gonna head back to the kitchen,” Tyan said cheerfully, hopping off of Fikomar’s shoulder. “We gotta prepare some food for Julkay’s kids; we’re runnin’ out of ground meat.”

Julkay… right, the recent mother. Her children were growing quickly; from newborns to toddlers in only a few weeks. He’d seen her once or twice; the tiger would ask Yarlennor and Noon’s mothers for advice and she got extra portions at meals.

(When had he started noticing the behavior of the damned cult? He’d better stop, or if Leshy and Heket found out he’d never stop hearing about how he was going soft.)

The Lamb nodded and bowed to Fikomar. “I leave Heket’s sign language abilities in your super-capable hands, Fikomar.”

He smiled and patted the Lamb on the head, Tia quickly floating out of the way to allow him to.

Narinder would never have let a mortal so much as touch him as a God, but the Lamb accepted it easily and with a bright (fake) smile.

(Fool.)

“You coming?”

Narinder realized the Lamb was looking at him after saying that.

They still didn’t use his name in front of anyone from the cult, even now that it had been over a month.

Were they that insistent on respecting his wish (as much as someone who had usurped a God could respect that former God)?

He glanced back at the scene that would remain, once Tyan and the Lamb left.

A taciturn gorilla, an extremely shy yellow cat, a glowering burrowing worm, and a red, four-eyed frog that was still signing “f*ck you” at the Lamb.

There was no need to stay here.

He didn’t want to see Leshy and Heket more than he needed to, anyway.

(He was the first. She was the second.)

(Eyes gouged from the skull. Throat torn asunder.)

Narinder growled, and followed the Lamb outside.

Ryn watched the Hermit glare at both Heket and Leshy briefly, before he averted his eyes with a frustrated snarl and was turning on his heel to follow the Lamb out.

Fikomar signed something, which made Ryn quickly return their gaze to him. “Sorry, Fiko, could you repeat that?”

He signed it again, quite patiently. “You look tired… oh. Yeah, um, both of the daytime attendants called out–”

Ryn unintentionally punctuated that with a loud yawn. They hadn’t slept very well; and then they’d been called in because both of the daytime healers ‘mysteriously’ needed a day off.

“– so I had to stay late yesterday…”

Leshy glanced over from where he was fiddling with the shelf. Was he trying to play another prank on them?

“Cat–”

“Ryn.”

“– just decline.”

Ryn yawned and rubbed their eye. Hopefully they could get a bit more sleep tonight… “Can’t.”

Leshy growled a little at that, his teeth showing.

Heket (who was just a tad bit taller than Leshy, barely; though it was hard to tell when she was sitting on a bed) was looking at the worm like he’d grown a separate head– probably because former Gods didn’t usually talk to mortals.

Fikomar signed. I can stand in for you tonight.

Ryn couldn’t help but smile at that.

No wonder Tyan and Fikomar got along so well, despite being polar opposites in terms of social habits.

“You’re sweet, Fiko, but I don’t want anyone to complain about me.”

Both Heket and Leshy looked confused.

Right. Leshy might be able to use echolocation to ‘see’ the signs, and Heket could obviously just see them; but neither of them knew what Fikomar had actually said.

Leshy’s antennae suddenly stood up, twitching a bit. He clearly had a question all of a sudden. “Gorilla–”

“His name’s Fikomar–”

“– I do not care– what is the relationship between the Lamb and m– the Hermit?”

Heket shot Leshy an even stranger look. “W-what…?” Her rasping voice broke, and she coughed. Ryn handed over a cup of water.

(Ryn then promptly had to duck as a cup of water went flying over their head and crashed against the wall. Jeez. Were all Gods this temperamental? At least Leshy seemed to find amusem*nt in pranks. Heket just seemed mean.)

“Br– the Hermit is quite… pliant towards the Lamb,” Leshy said, after a moment of thought.

That was the first Ryn had heard of that. It seemed to them that the Hermit was constantly glowering at the Lamb, though the Lamb seemed to find amusem*nt in that more than irritation.

Actually, if anything, the Lamb seemed more pliant towards the Hermit. Sure, they always seemed amused by dissenters overall, but they outright seemed to smile more whenever the Hermit insulted them, or glowered at them, or… expressed general displeasure towards them, really.

Fikomar scratched his chin thoughtfully, then started to sign again, but slower and more carefully– Ryn wondered if it was more for their benefit (they were not nearly as fluent as some of the other followers, because of how new they were), or the two former Gods staring at them.

“Umm… Tyan has talked about them having a lover’s spat, and how the Hermit was embarrassed by that…”

Leshy grinned at that, evidently taking amusem*nt in (his brother? Ryn still wasn’t too sure about that) the Hermit’s embarrassment. Heket looked beyond anger at this point. Actually, she looked remarkably confused.

Fikomar lapsed back into thought, and Ryn sighed and dragged over a stool. This would likely shape up to be a very long conversation…

Lambert liked Dr. Sozonius.

When a very long night had passed and the sun was up, they had been surprised to find the strange, smiling mushroom shriveled on the ground, and an elderly ant looking at himself in the stocks in quite some confusion– which was when they had met the researcher Dr. Sozonius.

Of course, they had liked (somewhat) the eccentric Sozo as well (he had been quite funny, if a little off-putting at times); but Dr. Sozonius was polite and soft-spoken, and had quickly become a favorite with many children and adults alike in the cult.

(Well, Yarlennor was very shy with him at first, but had been won over when he’d agreed to play Knucklebones with Noon.)

(Perhaps Lambert should stop playing Knucklebones with the children. They’d started making little bets with each other, which could lead to a lot of fighting if they didn’t keep a close eye on that.)

Strangely, Narinder also seemed to tolerate Dr. Sozonius; as much as he tolerated anyone anyway. When Lambert had introduced them, he had stared at the ant and eventually given a noncommittal huff.

Which wasn’t exactly the friendliest behavior ever, but at the very least, he wasn’t trying to pick a fight with the old ant, like he had with Sozo.

It was difficult to think of Sozo and Dr. Sozonius as the same person, to be honest– they just seemed so… different.

Speaking of Dr. Sozonius, this was why Lambert was out tonight– Dr. Sozonius, while too old for fieldwork or cooking, had offered to help with some research on the plants of the cult. He’d apparently had extensive notes on the menticide mushrooms, but had come up empty after checking his pack.

So here Lambert was, sneezing away in Spore Grotto and checking a corpse’s backpack for notes that possibly didn’t exist anymore.

Tia was helping them sort things– by which, Lambert meant that it was tossing aside unnecessary things.

So far, two rotting packs of rations (probably meant for the initial venture into the Spore Grotto) and enough mushrooms to put a God to sleep for a decade had been chucked aside.

“… isn’t it weird that Narinder only had an allergic reaction, and not a psychedelic one?” Lambert asked, carefully setting aside some papers– they’d check the content of them afterwards.

Tia glanced at them.

“I mean… he’s not a God. We can guess that since Myst said.”

The push and pull of the tide is ceaseless, as is the power of the Red Crown. It was a comment Lambert had mulled on when they had moments of spare time– which wasn’t often, but it happened just often enough that Lambert couldn’t quite wave it off or dismiss it.

Maybe they’d ask Ratau what that meant.

It wasn’t likely that he’d actually know, but it was worth a shot.

“… but he’s not a mortal, I don’t think. Not entirely,” they finished, chucking out some old mushrooms.

Tia bobbled in the air– the Tia equivalent of a shrug.

Lambert laughed a little at that, pulling out the last of the papers. “Yeah, I… expected that, a little bit.”

– two graves, marked with sticks in the remains of an old fireplace–

Will you go visit your siblings again?

Tia suddenly straightened in midair, startling Lambert out of the train of thought they’d been on– now that they were more alert, they could feel a pair of eyes boring into them.

Somehow, they already knew who was watching them.

“Little Lamb… we meet again,” the Fox practically purred.

(Lambert found themself instantly wondering if Narinder purred, and immediately scolded themself for potentially launching themself down a thought train that would leave them off-guard.)

They still were not afraid of the Fox, surprisingly, even after their visit with Ratau– but their smile felt much more wary, much more of a mask than usual. “Oh, hello, Mr. Fox,” they said cheerfully, already trying to figure out how to disengage from the conversation. “It’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”

“Indeed,” the Fox replied, though he seemed more intrigued than before. He leaned a bit closer to the Lamb, though it was just far enough that he still remained largely in shadow– it was difficult to tell just how huge he was in comparison.

Not nearly as large as The One Who Waits may have been, but still– far larger than a mere mortal.

Now that he was much closer, Lambert realized that the Fox did not have red pupils, as they had initially assumed from further away. Instead, he had pinpricks of red flames that never seemed to die, like embers that could spark and reignite with a gentle fan of the flame.

Red… Lambert liked the color red. It was a warm color, and it meant such a large variety of things. It could mean courage, it could mean happiness, it could mean love– the list went on and on. And there were so many shades of it.

“What’s your favorite color, Lambert?”

A laugh, like bells. “Good question, Lacey. Umm… red.”

“Cool!” A pause, then a whisper– like there had been a quick look-aroun to check that nobody was around. “But… mama said red’s such an aggressive color… won’t she be mad when you say that?”

But the color of the flames in the Fox’s eyes certainly meant none of the things that Lambert liked about the color red.

No, it felt like a strange lust– thankfully not for Lambert (that would’ve been beyond weird and creepy); but for power, for hatred, for danger.

It was… off-putting.

(Narinder’s eyes had never once felt like these eyes.)

“A beautiful night, is it not?”

Lambert sneezed, hastily burying their face into their elbow. The Fox didn’t seem put-out by this, simply tilting his head with a toothy smile.

“Does your Cult flourish? Are they devoted? Are they strong?”

“It’s doing alright,” Lambert said, when they were fairly certain they weren’t about to sneeze in some creepy deity’s face and potentially curse their entire Godly existence. They could certainly do without that.

The Fox gave a somewhat noncommittal sound, tilting his head to the side. “Well… you know what they say, don’t you Little Lamb? The best thing a Follower can do… is follow.”

“I didn’t know people– well, I guess Gods– said that,” the Lamb said lightly.

They paused. “I mean, I can see Leshy or Heket saying it, but it’s not like I had tea with them to talk about Godly duties.”

The Fox chuckled at that, a low, flinty sound that made Tia hide in their tuft of wool to keep glowering at the Fox. “You are an amusing thing, Little Lamb. Say, how about another deal? I’m afraid the hunting tonight is… sparse. Too many predators, not enough prey.”

What other thing could be hunting in the night? It surely wasn’t Narinder, who was getting a good night’s sleep after the crusade they’d just battled through.

“If you give me one of your loyal Followers, I will give you something in return. How about that?” the Fox grinned. It was more like a leer.

Lambert stood there, smiling blankly up at the Fox. Strangely, even though that statement should’ve made their heart quicken and a cold sweat spring up on the back of their neck; they felt totally unaffected.

“… um… you wouldn’t accept another fish, would you?”

The Fox tsked a bit, though he seemed amused that they were trying. “Oh, no, Little Lamb, my hunger has grown beyond mere morsels such as fish and squirrels. Besides, there isn’t nearly enough… devotion in those. Consuming things devoid of fervor is terribly boring. And it’s not exactly tasty.”

Worth a shot, Lambert thought, but didn’t verbalize it this time. Unlike Narinder, or the owl siblings, or even Myst, the Fox didn’t seem like one to appreciate jokes.

“… did you know I make a deal with Narinder?”

“The One Who Waits?” The Fox’s leer seemed to deepen, red flames leaping slightly higher in his eyes. “Yes, I know about your ascension from a vessel–”

“No, no, not like that,” Lambert hastened to clarify. “We… have a new deal, of sorts.”

The little fire in the Fox’s eyes brightened. “Is that so? He isn’t much of a deal-maker.”

“I… we exchange things.” Lambert had been about to say that they exchanged questions, but a brief press on the head from Tia made them switch out their words hastily. “But… sometimes, I will… exchange the thing later. I take a rain check on it. Do you know what that means?”

The Fox tilted his head. “It’s a bit of a foreign term…” The little fire in his eyes died. “Does that mean you are uninterested in my deal, Little Lamb?”

“It’s… not that I’m uninterested.”

Which wasn’t entirely false. Lambert was quite curious– especially if it was a talisman piece– but a Follower…

They’d already be sacrificing two (“knowledge oft requires sacrifice” came to mind, and they mentally shooed Myst away) Followers soon– three would get people whispering; and there were no elders who felt that their time had come.

Besides, even if they felt no fear, Ratau’s warning was practically setting off every alarm bell Lambert could possibly have in their head.

The less they dealt with the Fox, the better.

“… the timing is just… wrong. Could we hold off until another time?” Lambert asked, and a lifetime of faking smiles and brightness meant that the ‘apologetic’ smile they delivered could have convinced even Narinder, who knew full well that this smile of theirs was a mask.

The Fox was no longer smiling, staring at the Lamb. The little fire in his eyes had died practically to embers.

Then he smiled again.

“You are an interesting one, Little Lamb. Very well; should you change your mind, seek me out. I shall wait.”

He practically seemed to vanish into the shadows in the very next blink Lambert made.

They stood there for a moment, half-expecting him to pop back out like it was a cruel prank, but he seemed to have well and truly departed.

They scooped up the pile of papers they’d set aside and stood, unwilling to speak aloud in case the Fox overheard them.

Tia vibrated on their head comfortingly.

Beware the Teeth in the Darkness.

We shouldn’t speak of him.

Lambert resolved that this would be the last time they spoke of the Fox– and to him, if they could help it.

They turned on their heel and trotted out of the clearing, holding the stack of slightly-moldy-papers.

Spore Grotto was perfectly silent within the confines of the monstrously huge skull.

After all, now that Sozo was no longer there (a dead ant corpse with flies flitting around it), there was no need for any of the Mushroomos to enter what they considered hallowed ground.

Perhaps that was why the Fox peered out of the shadows so quickly when he heard the sound of footsteps again. There weren’t many people it could be.

“Ah, you have returned. Have you changed your mind so quickly, Little–”

He stopped swiftly. The tiny red flame in his eyes almost seemed to snuff out as his expression darkened.

“Ah. You are not the Little Lamb. Merely a Follower.” The Fox turned away, already disinterested in the mortal standing before him.

The Mystic Seller had the right idea, in refusing to deal with mortals; though there were entirely different reasons for both of them in wanting to only deal with Gods.

The Mystic Seller found dealing with mortals to be frustrating; tedious. They lacked the understanding that Gods had for longer time periods (a day was like a second for an immortal being, after all; and a year was like an hour), and the willpower and patience to carry tasks that spanned that time out.

(A God could only be granted a Crown, after all, if they were able to earn it.)

(Of course, that was before, when there were hundreds of Crowns, hundreds of Gods, instead of five becoming four becoming three becoming two becoming one.)

But the Fox?

He simply found dealing with mortals to be boring.

Mortals were all the same, after all. Sniveling, puny little things that were afraid of staring for a little too long, a little to deep.

Oh, sure, Gods had feared the Fox as well (as they rightfully should), but they were still willing to deal for the correct price.

(The Lamb was fascinating that way. An Infant God who could face him with no fear.)

There were always only one answer from a mortal who tried to deal with him. And that was abject terror.

He could tell the mortal had not left yet, so he began, quite lazily as he began to blend back into the darkness, “Begone. I have no business with you–”

“I would like to change that.”

He paused, not fully melting into the shadows.

“... you are a follower of the Little Lamb, are you not?” He could tell from the sheer amount of devotion flowing off of them. Not even the former followers of the Old Faith had so much unyielding devotion towards their God– even less so now that those Gods had been defeated once.

“I am.”

“You wish to make a deal with me?” the Fox sneered, allowing his fangs to show in a bared grin with a tilt of the head.

The mortal backed up a few paces, but did not fall to their knees in a blubbering mess at that.

How interesting.

“Just so you know, my prices are steep, mortal.”

“I understand.”

Curious. Mortals were always so foolish (so pathetic) that they would cower in his presence… but this one wished to make a deal with him?

How so very novel. Perhaps even more novel than a Lamb with no fear.

“Then what can a mere mortal like you offer me?”

It was usually wealth. Wealth or power or land or some other trivial, unimportant mortal possession that the Fox had no need or desire for. Wealth didn’t matter to Gods (and it certainly did not matter to the Fox), he had all of the power he needed, and land… well, what use did he have for that?

“You are looking for a follower of the Lamb’s, are you not?”

He did, seeing as they were the only God still around, with a flock filled with devotion (no mortal, even one who wished to deal, would be foolish enough to be a devotee to him; nor did he even want such blind stupidity– stupid was the most utterly droll thing a mortal could be); but the mortal certainly did not need to know that information.

Nor did they seem to care, as they continued without hesitation.