The only way to know if the power Morgus had given him was going to be enough was to try. This divine beast wasn’t Tesir, but if she wanted a fight, Velik was more than happy to test out his abilities on her. All the talk aside, his goals were clear. It was the same as always: hunt monsters and kill them. The only thing that had changed was the scale.

There were ten steps and four feet of elevation between them. He could clear that in an instant. Warily, he lowered his spear into position and prepared to rush her, an action that mostly meant trying to predict what her response would be. This wasn’t a stupid monster with one or two tricks, though. She was a divine beast, and one that seemed to be magically inclined. The reprisal possibilities were practically endless, and he didn’t know enough about the way she thought to begin to guess what she’d do.

“Oh, stop,” she said. “I thought I told you to put that spear away. You’re going to come with me willingly because I’m leading you to Tesir. All the humans you waste your time with have made it quite clear that the human pantheon isn’t going to let him go unpunished. We want you in the monster lands. You want to go there. The way is open, so let’s go.”

“You can understand why I might find it difficult to trust you,” Velik said.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“I honestly don’t know what you could possibly say or do to make me believe you don’t wish me harm.”

The divine beast started laughing. “Oh, I don’t want to hurt you. No. That’s ridiculous. I want to use you.”

“How’s that any better?” Velik grated out.

“Because I want to use you to kill Tesir,” she said, leaning forward to stare him in the eyes. “You represent a new future for us. For thousands of years, we’ve been stuck in this uneasy truce. There are so few of us. There can never be another divine beast. No matter how much we hate each other, none of us is willing to kill another.

“But here you go, a golden-blooded artificial divine beast. You could take Tesir’s place. We could make new divine beasts. We could weed out the other… problematic elements in our group. You’re the key to finally ending this stalemate between the gods.”

“Awful big ambitions. Do I get a say in this?”

“That depends entirely on you,” the divine beast told him. “Your cooperation with confirming the process for creating an artificial divine beast is non-negotiable. Everything else… I’m willing to work with you. You want to kill Tesir? Great. I’ll help you prepare. You want to go back and tie yourself to the Garden again once we’ve figured out how to replicate your success? What do I care? Once we’ve gotten what we want, take your place among us or leave. It’s all the same to me.”

Strangely, Velik found that he did believe the woman. Her motivations were exactly as transparent as she’d made them appear, and her blunt dismissal of his own well-being and concern only for extracting what she wanted from him was reassuring in its own way. He had no doubt she’d let him die if that’s what it took to get what she wanted, but he also believed she’d happily help him kill a disliked rival to secure his cooperation.

So this is really a question of how much we can use each other. Ideally, we’d cooperate enough to ensure I gain enough essence to kill a divine beast. Then I’ll slaughter the lot of them, including her. She has to know that, though, which means this is just her way of getting me to the other side of the desert. She’ll make her move there.

The real question is should I cooperate long enough to get there, or fight her here and hope I can figure out how to activate this thing on my own?

Velik was well aware of his limitations. If Jensen and Aria were with him, he might have been willing to take the chance. On his own, he doubted he’d ever manage to use the sky bridge. He needed the divine beast to show him the way. Once he got there, things would change.

“Fine,” Velik said, shifting his spear back to an upright position. “You help me kill Tesir. I’ll explain exactly what happened to make me the way I am. Maybe you can fill in the parts I don’t understand myself. Then I go my own way and never see your face again.”

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“Certainly, if that’s your wish. As long as we can confirm the process works, I’m not going to force you to be part of our world. You’re young. I understand wanting to live your first life with the people you grew up with. Eventually, you’ll realize what kind of curse immortality is and come back to the only people who really understand what it’s like.”

“We’ll see,” Velik said. “That’s in the future. Let’s talk about what happens right now.”

“We walk through those big doors behind me, go into the bridge chamber, and cross to another one thousands of miles away. Then we figure out if you’re replicable, and then I help you kill Tesir if you still want to.”

“Fine. Lead on, then.”

The woman rolled her eyes, then essence rippled around her. It shifted in a way that reminded Velik of someone casting a spell with mana, but as far as [The Wanderer’s Path] was concerned, it was pure essence. Threads of it reached out in every direction, causing him to tense up as they brushed against him, but it wasn’t an attack.

[You have gained 122 essence.]

She scowled down at him. “Stop that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re absorbing essence. It needs to settle on you or the sky bridge’s guardians will treat you as an intruder.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Velik told her, “but I can’t control that.”

“That fucking system,” she muttered. “How are you even still connected to it out here? The compact limits its domain, and we’re well past the boundary. If your pantheon is violating the compact, I can’t promise your safety. Not even we divine beasts can stand up to a goddess. If she decides that this is an overstepping of the agreements she made with the pantheon, you’ll be the one to suffer for it.”

Velik could honestly say he wasn’t connected to the system anymore, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to tell a divine beast anything that they could use against him later. Instead, he just shrugged and said, “I’ll take my chances.”

Muttering to herself, the woman shifted the essence she was weaving so that it hung in the air around him rather than being draped across his body. She squinted as she studied the working, then nodded with an unhappy frown. “That should be good enough. Stay inside the essence cloud and be ready to defend yourself if the guardians see through it.”

“Your confidence is inspiring,” Velik told her dryly.

“Just go. I’m holding this working with raw willpower. The faster we move, the better.”

They slipped through the massive doors into a hallway lined with what appeared to be metal statues at first glance. Each was fourteen feet tall and sported a sword the size of his body and a shield that could have doubled as a bed. All of them reacted to Velik entering the sky bridge, but it was only to turn their gazes on him. They watched him walk forward, motionless but for their eyes.

“Creepy,” he said.

“It’s worse when you walk in and find them covered in blood spatters from taking care of a recent intruder,” the woman told him bluntly. “Thankfully, these ones haven’t had to do that in a long time. Nothing gets past the pillars out in the desert, and only we divine beasts use the sky bridges these days.”

“And there are how many of you?” Velik asked. “Six, was it?”

“Seven, now that you’re here.”

Gods, six of them. Even if I could fight them one at a time and recover between each battle… Six Tesirs. It’s too big. I don’t think I can do this. I’m here for Tesir, but also the guy who seeded my home and unleashed the corruption on us. If I have to pick just one, which one do I go after?

The reality of the situation was that Velik might very well die in the process of killing one, and he’d accepted that price. Ideally, he’d hunt each one down individually, but he could still feel the pressure the woman had put on him just slapping a hand down on his shoulder.

Nothing new. I already knew I needed to get stronger. You don’t catch up to something that’s been growing in power for a thousand years overnight.

Almost as if she’d read his thoughts, she laughed. “Oh, don’t worry yourself, little wolf cub. We’re not going to gang up on you. We don’t need to. Any of us could easily defeat you on our own. Give it a few centuries, and we’ll see how things change.”

“How sure are you that I’m immortal?” Velik asked. “I certainly don’t feel like I’m going to live forever.”

“Get used to the idea. I’ve seen your golden blood myself. Unless there’s something seriously flawed in the experiment, you’ve got eternity left to live. Burn up that hatred for monsters you have now, because we’re the only family you’re going to have left in a century or two.”

“Family? I don’t even know your name.”

The woman paused. “Huh. True. I suppose I have been rather rude. You may call me Eslaka.”

“Velik,” he said.

The two of them had been walking the whole time, and at a fairly brisk pace, so it didn’t take long to reach their destination. It was an open, airy chamber ringed with empty terraces and framed by grand, flowing archways. In the center was a massive circular slab of marble, cut smooth and covered in dust.

Two sets of tracks clearly led away from the middle, and one returned later. Tesir and Eslaka, Velik thought to himself. He recognized not only the footprints of both, but the smell of the tiger. The bird woman was still doing something to cloak her scent.

“Here we are,” Eslaka announced. “Just step into the center and I’ll get the device primed.”