Preface

“In this strange, twisted universe, there are many worlds. Most are lonely, desolate rocks. Some are husks, stripped of resources and left like the bones of a carcass picked clean by carrion crows. A few are inhabited, peopled by races grotesque and fantastical, and crystallizing from the collective consciousness of these people are their gods. Infused with the power of mass belief, sometimes benign and often tyrannical, these beings exist in a place outside of time—eternal and undying. But sometimes gods, too, must die…”

~ from the private journals of Nemo Shade

Chapter 1

The desert sands were hard packed beneath my feet as I struggled toward the temple. Gusts of wind blew grit into my eyes, and my white robes billowed around me.

I cursed under my breath. “Who,” I gasped to myself, tugging the broad strip of cloth back up over my nose, “in the universe puts a temple in the middle of a damn wasteland?”

The walls rising several hundred feet before me were the yellow-brown color of the desert, spiderweb cracks reminding me that this place had been in disrepair for decades, if not centuries. The contract that brought me to this world was unusual, to say the least, but this was the last time I took a job for the novelty.

I frowned grimly and hefted my pack, my gladius bumping comfortingly against my leg as I strode forward, step by step. When I finally reached the entrance to the temple, I blew out a sigh of relief and dropped the pack in the shade with a clatter of metal.

I stood to my full height. “That’s more like it…”

I shook sand from my robes and looked around, taking in the short, vaulted entrance and the courtyard beyond. The air was unnervingly still after the constant, blustering wind. I narrowed my silver eyes and scanned again, then sniffed.

He was here, certainly. I could smell old, dusty power and wealth long since dried up.

I blew the air out between my lips and rolled my shoulders. No sense waiting around.

I headed in. The layout seemed solar, the central dome crisscrossed with glass panels designed to capture light from one or both of this planet’s suns.

My hand hovered by the hilt of my weapon, but I didn’t draw her from her sheath. She didn’t like waking up unless there was blood in the offing.

That, and we usually got on each other’s nerves.

I pulled the cloth down from my face and shoved the hood back from my head, long blond hair spilling free. I tucked what I could back behind my ears and ignored the rest, taking another deep sniff.

The scent, predictably, drifted on stale air from the center of the compound.

Old gods… I mused. Always stuck in their glory days. Never willing to move on or move out.

I wondered, for an instant, if that was why they ended up like they did: all bitter and hateful. Then, I decided I didn’t care.

Nothing changed, gods least of all. For now, the only thing that mattered was the contract.

Sand crunched beneath my feet as I continued, stealthier now. If he had any modicum of power left, he would probably sense me coming, but if not…

Well, I was never one to give up the element of surprise.

I approached the inner sanctum, ghosting from shadow to shadow until I was just inside the nearest archway. I peered deeper, but all I could make out was a long, dark corridor that opened out into some sort of central chamber and the scent of…

Another one?

“All right,” I muttered. “Time to wake you up.” My fingers curled around the hilt of my blade.

Good morning, handsome… Lilith’s seductive purr sounded in my mind as I slid the sword free of its sheath.

I rolled my eyes. “Save it,” I muttered, even though I knew she could hear my thoughts clearly. “We have work to do.”

Oh, she murmured. She tried to play it cool, but I could hear the excitement churning beneath her calm facade. The desert dweller?

“None other,” I answered, my fingers flexing on her grip.

Lead the way, then, she ordered, and I obeyed, not bothering to point out that since I was the one with legs, I hadn’t planned on waiting around for her.

Oh, I added silently as I stalked down the corridor, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. Remind me not to take another contract unless Chester gives us all the details. I don’t like uncertainties.

Yes you do, darling, she told me smugly. But I’ll remember, if it makes you feel any better.

I gritted my teeth and reminded myself, not for the first time, to minimize my banter with soulbound demonblades.

Then we reached the edge of the central chamber, and all my thoughts turned to business. Because there, standing on the circular dais, was our quarry.

I scowled. I hate bugs.

He was tall, probably eight or nine feet, with a vaguely humanoid shape but the dusty black carapace of a desert beetle. He wore a long, linen skirt that reached the floor. His torso was bare.

The god had two pairs of arms, one roughly human and the other wickedly hooked scythes like some type of mantis. When he turned to look at me, his head had the triangular face of the same insect.

His mandibles scraped together oddly when he spoke, giving his voice an unnerving quality. It felt like dozens of ants running up and down my spine.

“Come forth, mortal,” he rasped. “Come forth from the shadows and into the light of my presence.”

Lilith? I asked. Thoughts?

No sense hiding, she mused. The blade sounded bored. He knows we’re here.

I grunted. Then, slowly, I slunk out of the corridor and several strides into the chamber. My eyes scanned the room, taking in salient features: twelve entrances with high, arched windows and an internal support structure that reminded me of the cathedrals back home.

Back when I had a home.

The room was built of the same stone as the exterior walls, but at some point in the distant past, someone—or, more likely, many someones—had taken the time to make it look magnificent. Old, fading paint covered the walls. Images of figures, dark like shadows, worshipping two glowing suns. Geometric patterns in blue and red and green.

The bug looked me up and down with his prismatic eyes. His human hands flexed and then relaxed—the only body language I could read. Then he spoke. “You bear arms in this most holy of places. I can only assume this is because you are a stranger, far from home…”

I stood silently, watching him for any hint or twitch that might give away his next move.

The hands closed slowly into fists, knuckles white, and his volume increased as he started again. “You refuse to answer? I am M’ardukaath the First Sun, Ordu of the Twelve Cycles, Devourer of Night and—”

“Look,” I interrupted, raising my hand. I’d heard it all before. “You’ve obviously seen my sword. You know what I’m here to do. So the way I see it, you only have a few options.”

I ticked them off on my fingers, Lilith sighing in the background at my display. “You can try to impress me with all your titles, but I won’t be impressed. You can try to blast me with your holy power, but you won’t. If you could, you would have done it already. Or, you can kill me and put me out of my godsdamned misery.”

The insect looked at me, mandibles agape. Then he reared back, praying mantis arms clawing in my direction. “You dare—”

“Yes I dare!” I was raising my voice now, Lilith practically vibrating in my hand. She wasn’t bored anymore. “I was sent here to kill you. So what do you say we get on with it?”

Surprisingly, that calmed him down.

“Kill me?” The old god laughed, a sound like a thousand centipedes chittering across miles of broken rock. “Kill me? I am Eternal. I am Undying. I have been here since the foolish mortals of this planet crawled from beneath the crust, and I will be here long after they have withered to dust. What fool has convinced you that you have a blind man’s chance in the desert of killing me?”

I didn’t bother to correct him, to tell him that he was merely the incarnated figure of mass superstition. It certainly wouldn’t have shaken his god complex. Instead, I just tightened my grip on Lilith and sank into a fighter’s crouch.

A sound broke the tension.

It was a loud sigh off to my right, the sound of someone almost as tired of this god’s antics as I was.

I pivoted, not entirely surprised, as the second god I’d smelled walked into the room from one of the twelve corridors.

The insect whipped his head around, kaleidoscope eyes locking onto the figure, and together we surveyed the newcomer.

This one took the shape of a young man in his twenties, bald and bronze-skinned, dressed in a long white robe that brushed the floor as he came slowly forward. His hands were tucked into voluminous sleeves that ended inches above the smooth, dusty tile, and he wore an expression of world-weariness that I could get behind.

“Isn’t it obvious, brother?” he asked. He gave the insect a look that might have been a pair of raised eyebrows, but he appeared to lack that particular facial feature. “I think we can both agree that it’s high time the Second Sun rose to supremacy.”

I was tempted, in that moment, to sheathe Lilith and leave. I could sense another monologue in the offing. Instead, though, I simply sighed audibly and shuffled back several steps, leaning loosely against the wall.

The young man spared a glance my way. “Be still, bounty hunter,” he sneered, his face a mask of disdain. “For the price of one million credits and a single golden aureus, I will have words with my brother before you use your blade.”

I blew out an impatient breath and rolled my eyes but gestured with Lilith for him to continue.

Maybe we should kill the other, afterwards, Lilith suggested. I could hear the eagerness in her voice, the bloodlust rising inside her.

That was the problem with demons. They could be good conversation for a lonely angel wandering the desert, but at the end of the day their moral compasses were all out of whack.

Or… I suggested, trying to ignore the mantis god as he took a step back in shock and began to spit what I could only assume were profanities in a clicking alien dialect. We could actually get paid for our trip out here. The bounty will stay in escrow with Chester until the contract is complete, and there is definitely a clause about ‘not killing our employer.’

The blade huffed silently, then said, This bug better taste good, then. Otherwise, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

The younger brother stood placidly until the older ran out of breath, torso heaving with infuriated breaths and mandibles chewing the air in a manner I found oddly disconcerting.

“We are old, brother,” he finally responded. “Eons I have spent in your shadow. Millennia, as the desert spread, crops failed, water vanished, and our people starved. You are harsh, you are brutal, and you are dangerous. The ages have made you mad with power, and if our world is to have any chance at survival, I am the only one who can stop you.”

M’ardukaath hissed, his human hands flexing spasmodically. “Mad?” he spat. “I will show you mad. I will tie you to the rack and take you a hundred miles into the desert. I will rip off your eyelids, and you will burn, staring up into the sky as my star crosses above you over and over and over again, until there is nothing left of your treacherous corpse but bleached bones and a warning to any who would oppose me.” Then, his eyes turned to me.

It probably had nothing to do with the fact that I had laughed softly under my breath.

I’d found, in the past, that those who imagined the most elaborate tortures were the least likely to carry them out. They lacked the spine. The thought that had prompted my laughter was a question: I wonder if this bug even has a spine in there?

“Just as soon as I have dealt with this pesky maggot you hired to dispose of me.”

I supposed there was only one way to find out. About the spine, that is. I felt my heartbeats slow, my breath stilling.

Ready? I asked Lilith silently.

Always… The gladius replied.

I opened up my heart, and Lilith’s power surged in my body.

“Are we going to fight, then?” I asked the mantis god, my eyes narrowing. My muscles pulsed with energy, but I didn’t move, still leaning casually against the rounded wall of the chamber. “Have you built up the courage yet, or are you going to keep on stalling?”

The long, draping hem of its skirt fluttered, and I could suddenly see at least six insectile legs beneath as they flexed and tensed. That was all the warning I got as the mantis moved with frightening speed, covering the distance between us in a single long bound, twin scythes slicing through the air where I’d stood a split second before.

Instead, though, I was a dozen feet above, Lilith’s energy thrumming in my body and my legs tensing as I pushed powerfully off the wall. With a grunt, I flung myself forward, flying parallel to the floor for an instant before I tucked into a roll and landed lightly on the dais.

I spun swiftly on the balls of my feet, my robes billowing around me, and met the bug’s shocked kaleidoscope eyes with my own silver gaze. “Is that all you got?” I goaded, settling into a fighter’s crouch with Lilith held out before me.