The cleanup went smoothly, with only one more loss of a woman Michael hadn’t yet learned the name of whose skull had been shattered before anyone could do anything. Michael closed her eyes gently and said a prayer over her body.

“Who are you praying to?” asked Suraj. He’d just finished giving a few orders to the others, but had waited respectfully for Michael to finish what he was doing.

“The divine.”

Suraj frowned. “You think they can help her? Her spirit?”

Michael nodded. “With all they’ve done for me, yes I think they can.”

Suraj shook his head. “You’re like a character from a movie. It’s very funny,” he said without even a hint of a smile on his face. “‘We have the gods on our side’, is a mad thing to say in the middle of a fight, but I have to admit it got a fire burning in my chest when I heard it.”

“In your chest? Sorry about that, it was just meant to be on my sword.”

Suraj gave an amused scoff before walking off to check on some of the others.

Michael was slipping his divine symbol back into his shirt when Pyotr approached carrying Syl bridal style. She was bleeding heavily from her calf.

“I told you I do not need to be carried,” she said, indignant.

“This is faster than you stumbling your way downhill,” replied Pyotr. He gestured with his head from Michael to her. “Would you mind?”

Michael nodded, “Of course. Sorry, if I’d realized you were injured I would have come right away.” He’d already healed all of the other’s injuries, but hadn’t seen her. He supposed that was kind of the point of where she’d been hiding.

He sealed the deep wound in her thigh and she pushed herself off from Pyotr. Only taking a moment to look over her shoulder and say “thank you” to Michael.

Pyotr watched her walk away appreciatively, in spite of the fact that, in Michael's opinion, there really wasn’t much to be appreciating.

“Wasn’t she… on the opposite side of the fighting from you?” asked Michael.

Pyotr shrugged. “I just thought I might check on her.”

“And you think that worked?”

Pyotr chuckled. “It will eventually.”

Michael doubted that given her reaction, but considering how far out of the game he’d been since he died, he supposed he may not have a clue.

He walked over to one of the enemy corpses and grabbed it by the horns to get a better look at them. Their faces were a bit more elongated than humans, and their legs had odd joints like those of a goat, but they had clawed feet rather than hooves. Their weapons seemed crude at a glance, but when he looked closer they seemed to be surprisingly well made. One of them had a belt with some pouches and he opened it. He pulled out a yellow-white statuette of a female figure with horns. She seemed…motherly, but for all he knew she was the height of sexuality for the maneaters. The texture of it felt familiar.

“Bone,” he muttered to himself. He considered dropping it there, but instead he took a moment to bury it and say a short prayer on the off chance they were human remains. These creatures ate men, and looked terrifying, but he wondered what they were like. Much like the last time he’d fought them he was also surprised at how easy the fighting had been for him. He’d had much the same feeling when they were fighting the yeti. He took a moment to divine the bodies and saw not a hint of the golden divine energy that floated around him and the others. Perhaps that was the answer? Titles and Deeds were levelling the playing field and giving humans an edge they wouldn’t have otherwise. Is that why they had them?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He sighed, in spite of all the questions he’d been asking he still hadn’t reached any answers, but he’d keep looking, just like he’d keep seeking the gods.

He walked over to Suraj who was watching as everyone finished gathering arrows and getting ready to head back to the village.

“Suraj, on the way back I’d like to break from the group for a day, maybe less.”

He shrugged. “Current job’s over, do what you want as long as you catch up to us.” He paused for a moment. “Can I ask why?”

“The gods are pulling me in that direction.”

Suraj shook his head. “If you say so Mr. Dramatic. Good luck.”

Michael smiled and went over to Pyotr who was taking a moment to check the edge of his blade.

“You wanna come with me to investigate some gods?”

“Will I hear strange disembodied laughter like Ollie has been?”

“Possibly.”

“Eh, I will join you anyway.”

Michael chuckled at that and they travelled with the rest of the Gemini mercenaries back to the village where Michael could actually feel the relief in the air when they were told that the rift was sealed and the monsters had been slain. He only wished they could also tell them that their missing friends and family had been returned to them, but unfortunately that was not the case. He watched as the village buildings were opened and children went to greet their friends they’d missed since they’d been locked away.

One unfortunate child actually slipped and fell hard on the cobblestone, and Michael instinctively reached out as if to catch him, noticing that Suraj did the same, but the child's parents were there in the blink of an eye and he was quickly soothed. Though Michael did take a moment to heal his scraped knee. He wished he’d been able to do that for his own kids. Vick and Gabe had always had the worst fits when they got hurt. Laura would’ve just pouted a bit though, she was always tougher than Michael thought she was going to be.

Michael and Pyotr said their goodbyes and started making their way toward where Michael was being pulled. They stayed on the road for a good portion of the day and when they reached where they would need to start turning toward the woods they made camp for the night with Michael taking the majority of the watch since he needed less sleep. The next day they started walking along the remains of a few animal trails, but eventually they found themselves in very thick woods.

Michael chopped at some thick brush so that he could take another step forward, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Your gods don’t make things easy, do they?” asked Pyotr, taking the spot in front of Michael to have a shift at cutting through the brush himself.

“I don’t think any gods make things easy. Even the ones people make up.”

Pyotr chuckled a bit. “Gods, women, men, I’m beginning to wonder if everything in every world prefers to be hard.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” said Michael, taking a long sip from his canteen before he moved in front of Pyotr to chop down more of the brush. Michael could probably do the work almost indefinitely with his stamina, but Pyotr insisted on taking even turns. The man even cut down bushes beautifully, his longsword whipping through the brush in smooth arcs that made Michael feel self conscious of his single minded thwacking.

As they moved, the pull that Michael was feeling grew stronger and stronger, until it was practically pulsing across him every few seconds. The words of the gods grew louder as well.

~godseeker~pilgrim~find~brother~brother~

The words were alternating between the feminine voice he identified as being Seras and the more whimsical masculine one he identified with Nykas. Their words were becoming more clear and coherent as time went on and it seemed to correlate with what victories he dedicated to their honor and what knowledge he found about them. Nykas’s voice in particular seemed to be much clearer after he dedicated his last fight to him. He could even tell that the way he was saying brother had a hint of annoyance to it. Michael would have to check his Titles and Deeds to see if Nykas had granted him anything the way that Seras had.

Michael could see what appeared to be a gap in the foliage a few yards ahead and so started to cut more quickly, pushing forward until he was able to step onto a cleared path.

He and Pyotr sheathed their swords and looked around. They seemed to have reached what looked like a road. It was smaller than the one they’d pushed off of a few hours ago, but it seemed perfectly maintained without even a single branch pushing its way onto it from nearby.

Michael took a few steps forward and very suddenly felt the ground give way, and he started to fall.

Pyotr lunged forward and managed to grab the edge of his pack, holding him as he dangled over a pit filled with sharpened stakes. Pyotr grunted as he hauled him back ward and Michael shook his head as his heart beat out of his chest.

“Well that’s a good sign,” said Michael as he adjusted the straps on his pack.

“How?” asked Pyotr.

“Someone’s protecting whatever I’m being drawn to. That means there's someone here that might have answers for me.