Ashinaro stood outside at the bottom of the steps leading from his rented room above Jarnik’s smithy.

  The old smith was whistling as he swept out his shop.

  He must have had a really good night to also put off cleaning up until morning.

  But Ashinaro had bigger things to worry about.

  Namely where his parasite or passenger or whatever Zanas was had gone.

  He’d had a brief moment of panic at the broken lock and thought someone might have come to kidnap him, but then remembered Zanas kicking in the door earlier.

  He couldn’t have gone far: he’d been stopped when he’d gotten only a few hundred paces away from Ashinaro when they were running from the arnaphen. Zanas had complained it felt like Ashinaro had him at the end of a leash, which apparently was some kind of special chain or rope meant for monsters, at least according to Zanas. He’d described it like a pull keeping him from going any farther.

  Now, it felt like a pull on Ashinaro. Almost like he could sense the direction Zanas was in.

  Zanas, can you hear me? he asked mentally.

  The skeleton didn’t respond.

  He could read Ashinaro’s thoughts normally, but either he was too far away now, or was ignoring them.

  Had Ashinaro being unconscious allowed him to get farther away than he’d been able to previously?

  As Ashinaro walked through the city, following the pull, he slowly became aware of the unusual activity. There weren’t normally so many out this early in the morning, and he wondered what they were doing.

  Perhaps the arnaphen attack the day before had displaced people in the housing district.

  But these people didn’t look displaced. In fact, they all seemed to be headed to the entertainment district. Which was a strange place to be going so early.

  Maybe today had been declared a holiday. The new mayor had a habit of doing that. She’d already declared five new holidays, and she hadn’t even served a quarter of her term yet.

  Zanas, where are you? We’re wasting time. The blood moon is tonight and we still have a lot to do to prepare. I told you not to leave.

  He couldn’t tell if Zanas could hear him or if he was shouting into the void.

  But the pull was growing stronger as he followed it, and he hoped that meant he was getting closer.

  After a bit more walking, he realized that the light in the sky was not getting brighter like it would before sunrise, but dimmer.

  With a jolt, he realized that it wasn’t morning, but evening.

  But that would mean that he’d been unconscious all through the night and then through the following day.

  Which meant he didn’t have until tonight for the ritual.

  Or rather he did, but it was tonight. Right now.

  He looked up to the sky. It was a clear night, and so the moon was easily spotted. Its green hue was shifting. Turning red. It was almost the blood moon.

  Worry filled him as he got the sudden intuition that Zanas had taken it upon himself to disrupt the ritual and kill High Priest Vershik.

  Ashinaro had no idea if that would even work. Would it count for the quest if Zanas was the one to do it?

  The skeleton was bound to his battleform, so perhaps. But whether or not it would count, he had a bad feeling about it. There were too many ways it could go wrong, and just barging in without a plan of attack was suicide.

  Ashinaro wasn’t even prepared. He didn’t have his staff, only his sash and the simple clothes he’d worn for the procedure.

  He shifted to his battleform and sprinted back to his apartment for the arnaphen poison. The haste his sash granted made him fast enough to draw attention, but he didn’t care.

  Back in his apartment, he quickly threw everything he thought he might need into his pack, pried out a barb from the arnaphen corpse—which took frustratingly long—slung his staff in its sling, then rushed out and headed for Joy’s temple.

  It perfectly matched the direction of the pull he felt from Zanas.

  Curses.

  It didn’t take long to reach the temple.

  The pull was extremely strong now, and he thought he could faintly hear Zanas.

  Not words so much as intention. Nerves. Wondering where Ashinaro was, but also something else.

  Excitement.

  That didn’t bode well.

  Ashinaro closed his eyes, trying to remember the priests that had been on the dais with Ascendent Maris, but couldn’t recall any clearly enough to take on their identity. Instead, he went with the one he could: Vershik. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than going in as himself. If nothing else, it would sow confusion.

  After quickly glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he took on the priest’s form.

  Projecting confidence, he strode toward the temple door, hoping Joy didn’t decide to smite him when he entered.

  Some said the gods could see your thoughts, while others—including most priests—said that wasn’t true. But they all agreed they could read your intentions when you entered one of their temples.

  He stopped at the threshold, wondering if the god could detect him. Was that why he couldn’t hear Zanas? The temple was interfering with their binding?

  Stealing himself and clearing his mind so his only thought was of saving Zanas, he stepped into Joy’s temple.

  Before Ashinaro was a set of stone steps slightly taller than he was, which made it so that he couldn’t see into the rest of the temple.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  On either side of him were two larger-than-life statues. Two faces of Joy smiled down upon him.

  They no longer seemed kindly, but sinister. A mask hiding her true nature.

  Several breaths passed, and he was not struck by any blinding beam of light from the heavens.

  The thought of a blinding light reminded him of what he’d seen with Ascendent Maris. That look on her face. Not joy, but horror.

  Despite no one else seeming to have noticed, he found himself less and less convinced that he’d only imagined it.

  Whatever she’d seen in that light or whatever it had done to her, it hadn’t been what she was expecting.

  He shook off the memory, then proceeded up the steps into the temple.

  It was empty at this time of night, no priests in evidence.

  The temple was large, but consisted of only three rooms: the main hall he was in now, and two smaller rooms to the left and right.

  Following the pull from Zanas, which was extremely strong now, led him to a stone wall in the room on the right.

  A hidden door?

  He pressed on it. It felt solid.

  On examining the floor in front of it, he discovered a slightly greater wearing than the areas around it, which might indicate it was in fact a hidden door.

  Or the pull was directing him beyond the wall, and Zanas wasn’t in the temple at all.

  His beyondsight revealed nothing.

  He looked around the room. There was a desk in the far corner, chairs on either side of it. Checking its contents revealed no obvious means of opening a hidden door.

  He sat in the chair behind the desk, considering.

  He scanned the walls again, then the floor. Nothing.

  Then his eyes landed on something near the ceiling, above the spot on the wall he sensed Zanas beyond.

  He carried one of the chairs to the wall and mounted it. Near the ceiling there was a small notch in the wall, slightly larger than his finger. Embedded within were two stripes of metal, one silver, the other gold.

  An essence lock. One that was veiled and even now which he couldn’t see with his beyondsight.

  But he didn’t need to see it to be able to activate it. He was in the form of a priest, but would that be enough? He didn’t gain their relics, but what about their essence signature?

  When he touched the lock, he felt essence drawn from his own core and he suddenly worried about setting off a trap.

  Before he could pull back to reconsider, the stone wall popped forward slightly, then slid to the side, revealing a small chamber containing a winding staircase.

  That had been his own essence, yet it had unlocked it. So, it wasn’t just the physical which was changed. Or that was an illusion as well, and even essence locks could be fooled.

  Inside the chamber, there was an obvious switch on the wall. When he pressed it, the door slid shut.

  Now he could hear faint chanting echoing up to him.

  He proceeded down the stairs.

  At the bottom, he found himself in a short hall ending in another statue of the goddess.

  He quickly ducked down, shielding himself from what lay beyond: a ritual chamber, and several priests of Joy all in battleform.

  High Priest Vershik was directly ahead, scepter in one hand, standing at the edge of a patterned circle etched into the floor, seven other priests fanning out circumscribing the diagram.

  All were chanting.

  It was not a chant Ashinaro had ever heard before, nor was it one he could understand. It almost sounded like words, but they wouldn’t register. Somewhat like the nonsense Zanas had been singing when he’d taken Vershik’s form.

  Zanas was somewhere here, Ashinaro could feel it, but he couldn’t tell which priest the jester was posing as.

  “— grandeur pales — none — them,” came the stuttered response in his mind.

  It was louder now, obviously words this time, but garbled as though someone were shouting with a mouthful of water.

  “Awfully — dreadful — temple — blocking.”

  “Zanas, where are you? Do you have the poison?”

  Ashinaro had brought the vial with him, but Zanas taking some would explain why there had been so little.

  Ashinaro quietly undid his pack and carefully removed the arnaphen barb.

  He wanted to make far more preparations, and the setup wasn’t amenable to an ambush, but it was now or never.

  They would need to create a distraction after all.

  Which made him wish they hadn’t failed in retrieving the gas. Much easier to create a distraction when everyone was caught in the grips of delirium.

  The poison would have to do. Ashinaro might fail the quest if Zanas killed Vershik—and he didn’t know if Zanas would even be able to use an uncrafted monster part—so Ashinaro would have to be the one to poison Vershik. Which meant Zanas would have to create the distraction.

  Which was one thing Ashinaro had full confidence in him being capable of.

  Now that the effects of the paunthum had ameliorated, speaking mentally to Zanas no longer made him quite so dizzy, but it still took concentration.

  “I don’t know which one you are. Don’t attack, I’m not certain the quest will count as completed if you do it. When I give the signal, create a distraction, and then I’ll sneak in, poison Vershik, and grab his scepter.”

  No response.

  “Let me know which one you are. I can’t tell.”

  Ashinaro continued scanning the priests, looking for any sign that Zanas was disguised among them, but none looked his way, all of them continuing their chanting.

  “Not — priest,” Zanas replied. “I’m — here.”

  “Where?”

  “I — you there’d — of — metal.”

  It was then that Ashinaro caught a glimpse of something glowing at the very top of his vision.

  He looked up. There was a large crystal in the ceiling providing light into the room from some unknown source. It was not the crystal which held his attention, however.

  To his surprise and horror, he saw, dangling from a chain anchored to that crystal, a crystalline cauldron of molten metal. Atop the cauldron, clutched to the chain, and gnawing away at it where it attached to the crystal, was Zanas.

  He was disguised as a priest, though he was also naked, and in the humanform of High Priest Vershik, so Ashinaro very much doubted anyone would be deceived. Though, there were now three of Vershik in the room, which might confuse the other priests.

  “Zanas, no, don’t! That’s not going to—”

  The priests fell silent and Ashinaro thought he might have shouted that last out loud.

  Then a blinding beam of light shot through the crystal in the ceiling, passing through Zanas and the vat of metal and falling precisely within the confines of the circle on the floor around which the priests were gathered.

  All the priests besides Vershik shielded their eyes against it, but Ashinaro could see within it.

  And there within it, he saw a vision of Ascendent Maris, chained and naked, screaming as something vital was drawn from her.

  She looked worse than he’d ever seen her. Gaunt. Terrified.

  It chilled him to see someone so powerful looking so helpless and afraid.

  None of the priests cast their gazes upon the light, save for one: High Priest Vershik.

  Ashinaro could perhaps have dismissed what he was seeing as delusion, or a false vision, but it seemed the priest was seeing the same thing he was, and he looked as horrified as Ashinaro felt.

  What chilled Ashinaro more however was that it didn’t seem like this was a surprise to him, but rather something he’d expected; an unpleasant reality. For, rather than calling out in surprise and horror, rather than questioning whether the ritual had gone wrong, he quickly gained control of his expression, and began to speak.

  “Goddess on high,” he began, his voice rising above Maris’s wails, “Exalted Joy, your faithful adherents come before you in supplication, requesting your grace. Grant us your blessings if you deem us worthy.”

  High overhead, Zanas in the humanform of a naked Vershik continued chewing at the chain.

  Ashinaro feared they’d discover the intruder, but the real Vershik kept his gaze on the light, all the other priests remaining bowed.

  Then within the beam, a face appeared, a face he and anyone else in the city of Argalis, and perhaps any drakken ever, would recognize.

  Joy, one of the Exalted; the highest, most powerful gods.

  She smiled upon her high priest, and then spoke, and the words penetrated deep into Ashinaro’s being.

  “You have served me well, my faithful. I am pleased with you. Share in this meal, and take a measure of the power returned to me. Grow stronger and spread my influence.”

  The beam fractured into eight streams of light, the thickest of which connected to High Priest Vershik, and within that flow, Ashinaro saw indescribable power.

  The Ritual of Return was the gods returning power from fallen godsworn back into the world.

  So it was said. But this was flowing out from Ascendent Maris. Into the priests.

  They were stealing her power, he realized. Feeding on her.

  The goddess’s image disappeared, leaving Ascendent Maris screaming in agony, as her very essence was drained away into the priests of Joy.