There were banes, and then there were creatures of such inclination, bearing, and disposition, that they were more accurately termed ruins. My Limiter was a ruin. The ongoing list of what she had accomplished for ill in the scarce hours of this morning would have been enough to engender my eternal wrath if she had managed them in a month.

  I needed to calm myself. Attempting Glitchwork while in the throes of fury was an excellent way to crystalize myself and everything around me for at least a hundred kilometers--and that was if I should be blessed. I closed my eyes, inhaled a breath, and deliberately loosened my muscles. I opened my eyes. The woman was not of my concern. The fact she stood mere feet away, breathing in her little fleshy form, host to nightmares and decisions of fathomless idiocy, was of no importance to me.

  I expanded my fingers, the snow blowing sharply into my face, speckling my glasses with their intricate water crystals. I allowed my physical awareness to retreat, tapping into the soulcode. Soulcode was a translation impressed upon Glitchlight, forcing a substance that was otherwise incomprehensible into a fashion where it might be comprehended. Glitchwork was the act of working within soulcode, and, therefore, with Glitchlight.

  Not that humans could grasp it, even with the translation. Any human that attempted such a thing introduced chaos, and Glitchlight abhorred Entropy. It was, in fact, naturally antithetical to the concept. I took a few moments to assemble the proper code to make what I desired--two new pairs of snowshoes. My heads-up display informed me that my health was 45/45. It had been nigh empty earlier, but the death of the first Raider had shot it to 20/40. Then the ultimate demise of the other three had not only finished filling my health points, but I had leveled. The woman likely had as well, but walking her through the process of allocating stat points could be done later.

  I drained a health point and executed the code. The space before me went from nothing to filled. With a flash of purple light, flecked with blue, and pixelated with dashes of red and orange, two pairs of snowshoes rested in the snow before me. I spun my staff, dropping it. It vanished in the same flash of Glitchlight before it collided with the earth. Leaning down, I began to affix the snowshoes. It was a methodical, meditative action, buying me precious moments of patience.

  The woman was standing next to me. “…You got snacks?” she asked.

  I didn’t deign to acknowledge that petition, instead finishing strapping my boots in. It was bitterly cold, but I had great fondness for snow. The world was in its most ordered state, and the only reason the cold had any effect on me was due to this enforced, bone-and-skin imprisonment.

  The snowflake debuff in my heads-up display blinked, reminding me that should I remain at this temperature for any real period, the damage would quickly aggregate over time. Movement would greatly extend the timer. The rest could be resolved later. I had more pressing issues than the reality that I was entirely without supply in a frozen wasteland.

  I straightened, and found that the woman had set about doing the same. Good. She looked well enough.

  I kept checking. She should have decayed with the rest of them, should have been curdling in agony from the slow annihilation of her very soul.

  Instead, she seemed utterly unharmed. That could not be true. Her armor remained dented, but free from the horror of rust or rot. Her cloak already had a small scattering of burn holes at the edges, and was covered in a thick layer of dirt, but it did not appear to be in the grasp of true decay.

  No, if she carried the corruption--which she must have--it would be below, on the flesh itself.

  I needed to look at her skin, interrogate her as to the nature of the debuffs in her heads-up display. It had touched her. The Herald of Ruin had touched her. Her soulcode was still denied to me, the path still encoded with encryptions I could not yet break, and by the stars, I had been trying.

  I would have to ask her to remove the clothing, inspect the extent of the damage done. We would be forced to make heading for the most doomed city of every Resurrection Raid. The only cure to the Decline, as it was so creatively called, would be found there.

  Never mind that the city of New Sins was annihilated every in-game era and must be rebuilt. In practical terms, it had been destroyed in every Raid. Only once had it escaped the clutches of destruction, and that had been 621 Raids prior. The questline to preserve it was infamously difficult. Once failed, summoned a “memory of the Firstborn,” which was uncomfortable to me in particular for a wide variety of reasons.

  The answer, of course, would be to avoid the questline entirely. Except that once one entered New Sins, it was granted automatically. Raiders of sense avoided it. In other words, Raiders who had not been touched by a Herald of the Decline and survived the contact.

  “Do you realize the magnitude of what you have done?” I said, finally turning to look at her. “You need to bring up your heads-up display, inform me of your debuffs, and then remove your armor and tunic. I must inspect where the corruption has buried itself.”

  She turned her singular, baleful eye upon me, the empty eye socket of the other a black void. She scratched her chin and squinted. “That’s not a snack,” she said, her tone mild.

  My lip curled. “The next occasion I should remove us from the grasp of annihilation, you will not turn around and run towards it, laughing.”

  She let out a low hum. “Next time you’ll tell me why, instead of just demanding.”

  I laughed, an angry, barking crack, despite attempting to swallow the urge. “Would that have stopped you, reckless creature? I need not know you better to understand that you live and bleed for any soul that is not your own, that you remain tight within the grasp of foolish hope. You burned to death, and you walk as a Paladin, a class only given to the strong of will and infected with faith. That fire that slew you was not a fire you faced on your own behalf.”

  She stared at me, unblinking, seemingly devoid of thought. Snow blew into her empty eye socket as she studied me, her mouth pursed.

  “Have you no rejoinder to that, woman?” I snapped. “Remove your breastplate and tunic.”

  “My nipples will freeze off,” she said, after a long moment. “I found the debuff you’re talking about--it’s just a skull, and it says “The inevitable comes,” which is…kinda shit.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The cold air stole the breath from my lungs. I blinked, once, processing the magnitude of what had just been conveyed.

  Ah. The worst possible option. I had time enough to reach New Sins, but that was all the grace I would be granted. Inevitable. She would turn into a Herald herself, should the conditions for the debuff’s removal not be met.

  The yawning void of my imprisonment rose in my memory. Was I doomed to return once more? The itch scratched at the inside of my skull. I scrabbled for something, for anything to distract me from that twin despair and desire. Her manner of speech was an easy target.

  I gritted my teeth and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Must you insist on speaking in such a manner that you steal what dredges of patience I might retain?”

  “You haven’t got shit in those dredges,” she said. “So--”

  “I need to see how the corruption will spread. I can only delay it if I am aware of its exact location. The debuff’s existence confirms what I was already aware of--you were not somehow spared it in its entirety. This, I knew. There is no soul touched by a Herald of the Decline that escapes. They decay and die…or they become what you now are.”

  She scratched at her face and squinted. “Which is?”

  “An Inevitable.” I said.

  “..Still doesn’t answer shit.”

  I glared. “You have uttered that obscenity thrice in as few minutes.”

  “Shit,” my Limiter said, entirely serene. I could have strangled her where she stood.

  If I could slay the woman, I would. Alas, I was stuck with her for a not insubstantial amount of time. The first chance I had at freedom in nigh two thousand years, destroyed at the hands of a woman who sought death like a favored friend.

  It would be over before it could even begin.

  For a moment, I considered it as I looked at her, my fingers touching the soulcode. Kill her and be done with it, end this farce and have the bitter satisfaction of having slain my second Limiter. The moment the thought entered my mind, the temptation sank in its claws.

  It would be so, so easy to break her open, find peace in her blood and shredded organ meat, in the tender warmth of her lungs and liver, in the panic of her rolling eye before the light in it went quiet.

  I strangled the itch. I would not kill her for the vulgar satisfaction. If she were to be slain, it would be a dispassionate, final rejection of the Parent. A blow against the gloat of its satisfaction at beating me before the game had even truly begun.

  She had been infected with Inevitable. This endeavor was already doomed. What would be required of me to even attempt to repair this situation was debatably not worth the effort.

  Waiting had been a unique hell. I had managed, at times, to see the Raids, absorbing what data I could into my records. Other times, I had slept. Mostly, I had existed in the bridge between thought and despair, hollow and desperate. It was a wonder I had not gone mad.

  I could not survive it a second time. I did not know how I had managed it the first, but I knew, instantly, that it could not be done again. I could not bear another two thousand years locked away from everyone and everything, grasping sanity by observing fractions of the Raids themselves. Desperate for gleaming bits of history and story and consuming the tattered code fragments of the long dead. Reduced to acting as if I was a base hound, waiting for the meanest of scraps for my empty stomach, while my so-called Parent sat at the table, content with the richness of their spread.

  So the singular option remained--I needed to play the hand that I had been dealt, dictate victory where there should be none. If there was any who could accomplish it, it was I.

  “I must see the extent of the spread, woman. Cease arguing with me, unless you truly wish for the quiet of annihilation?” If she answered me flippantly here, I did not know how I should respond, only that the itch had hesitated, not stopped. It was waiting, and I desired nothing more than to rip it from my system and banish it into the void.

  “What’s Inevitable?” she said instead. She cocked her head, still squinting.

  Infuriating. I clicked my tongue and glowered at her. “If you so crave the truth, then have it--you are cursed. All Heralds were once men, mortal and wanting. By the touch of the Decline, they were reborn into horrible, consuming creatures, forever starving, decay stalking in their wake.”

  It was deeply satisfying to watch her expression change. She blanched, paling so thoroughly that it made the ugly mottle of her burn scars even brighter. The mild, serene amusement that had been writ in the light cock of her eyebrows and careful curve of her mouth vanished.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Will you continue to argue for the petty joy of it, or will you do as I say?” I raised an eyebrow.

  She opened her mouth, and then closed it. “That was a person?”

  I clicked my tongue. “Have your ears ceased their function? Yes, that was a human, though I know not whether the change was recent or from an era long past.”

  She closed her mouth, and craned her head around, her one eye rolling in its socket.

  “…We’re in the middle of…” She gestured around, and her face warred twixt a red blush and white horror. There was a field of white, and cold wind. A distant forest, which I had no intention of approaching until it became wholly necessary, and the collapsing ruin of the inn behind us. In another hour, it would be as dust, an inhabitant of memory alone.

  “There lies not a soul within close reckoning, other than the Herald itself, and while daylight burns, it dares not tread. Likely it slunk in before the dawn had truly made entrance.”

  “Stripping for a guy is real weird.” she said after a moment.

  Both of my brows rose before furrowing, my lip curling. “Surely you do not mean to accuse me of slavering at the merest hint of your breast tissue?”

  The thought was repulsive for a wide variety of reasons. Human obsession with the means of reproduction, while it made biological sense, was foul.

  The Limiter’s smile was brief, and wavering, small and bitter. “Yeah. Dumb comment.” She promptly began the work of unhooking her breastplate, revealing the stinking, dirty yellow tunic beneath, which she pulled it up and off. She had bindings, which she desperately required. My lip curled. Either way, she did not need to unbind them. I saw it. Blackened veins pulsed beneath her skin, above her heart.

  She stared at it, struck quiet. She shivered violently in the chill, though the wind had calmed. She raised a hand as if to touch it. I clicked my tongue in a sharp, snapping sound, and she glanced up at me.

  “Do not touch it, lest you make it worse. It is an infection of a curious kind. It can spread.”

  She pulled her hand back. “So…I’m gonna turn into a Herald.”

  The infection pulsed, violent and bright, and expanded before my very eyes. I inhaled, a harsh noise. “For the love of--no! Control your thoughts, words, and emotions, Paladin. Your Conviction will slay you the moment you let it rule you.”

  She blinked at me. “What--”

  “Fear,” I hissed. “You have made Doubt your ruling power--if you should believe the infection can not bring you harm, you would delay it substantially. To fear it is to grant it greater powers than it had previously. You have chosen a Conviction where it better suits you to be ignorant. I should have lied, if you would just comply, instead of fighting me on every singular occasion.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m cold.” She then pulled the blouse back over then the chainmail tunic. I did not stop her. I had witnessed what was necessary, and there was little point in my attempting to delay it at the moment. I had not the time, and it had not spread so far that it required my immediate intervention.

  She finished reaffixing her breastplate before pulling her cloak tight. “So, how do I avoid dying?” A pause. “I really do need a snack. And water.”

  Her stomach growled. I glowered at her and turned, striding away with as much dignity as could be managed in snowshoes. I reached for the secondary awareness, searching for the direction to New Sins. “I will give you sustenance, if you require it. Come.”