Ashinaro was paralyzed with shock and horror at what he was seeing.

  His thoughts simply ground to a halt.

  He was pretty sure he’d stopped breathing, but he couldn’t even be certain of that.

  Nothing made sense anymore.

  Joy was feeding on her Ascendent.

  It was the only explanation that made any sense, and yet it made no sense whatsoever.

  It was counter to everything he’d ever been taught.

  Blasphemous.

  And yet, it felt as though a weight had been lifted, a further veil removed—the truth he’d always known but never dared believe.

  Even before the recent unexplained increased cynicism he’d felt toward the gods, he’d always held an unnerving mistrust of them that others did not seem to share. A deep, ingrained suspicion that something wasn’t right.

  Now it was obvious why: the gods he’d always known were corrupt.

  For if Joy, Exalted of Fayteraus, was corrupt, all the gods of Fayteraus must be.

  Now it all made sense, all the disparate pieces clicking into place.

  That discomfort, the unsettled feeling he got when thinking about them—that was gone. All he felt was revulsion, and vindication. Like some profound truth that he’d already known, but somehow forgotten, he’d once more recalled.

  The gods of Fayteraus were not benevolent.

  They did not look over humans and protect them.

  They deceived them.

  They fed on them.

  The gods… were monsters.

  The beam displaying Maris cut out, taking her screams with it, and the priests all slumped as one.

  Even High Priest Vershik went to one knee.

  There came a loud snap from above into the sudden silence.

  Zanas, still in his naked humanform of Vershik, fell toward the kneeling high priest.

  Along with the crystal cauldron of molten metal.

  Ashinaro had completely and utterly forgotten about the skeleton.

  The goddess hadn’t detected Zanas, even here in her temple. Or if she had, had chosen to say nothing to her priests.

  Before Ashinaro could process this, cauldron and humanform doppelg?nger both slammed down onto High Priest Vershik, spilling molten metal across his body and catching his robes alight.

  But the priest was a Sovereign Champion, and reacted quickly, swinging an arm out and sending Zanas flying to crash against the far wall, his head popping off along with one arm and both legs. Which looked particularly gruesome with Zanas in the form of the high priest, even though there was no blood.

  The other priests were already scrambling away from the burning metal, which did not seem to be cooling as it seeped over the stone floor.

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  Vershik screamed and writhed as it ate away at his robes and flesh, his battleform’s scales no match for its heat.

  Ashinaro lurched into action. He activated his Flesh Frenzy’s relic, sending his flesh golem rushing into High Priest Vershik, barb in one hand, poison vial in the other.

  To his surprise, the illusion of the jester’s mask worked on his golem, and it now looked like another of Vershik’s twins was attacking him.

  Molten metal burned his golem and his blood drained faster than it ever had to heal it as the golem grappled the high priest and slashed the arnaphen barb across his throat.

  But the speed of a Sovereign Champion was not to be underestimated, and in the moment before the golem slammed the vial of poison into the wound to shatter it inside Vershik’s neck, the priest jerked to the side.

  Instead of going into his neck, the vial went into his open mouth.

  His screams cut off as he choked on it.

  But broken glass wouldn’t be enough to cut into a Sovereign Champion’s mouth.

  Ashinaro stumbled as his blood rapidly left him to heal the constant damage the molten metal was inflicting upon his golem.

  With the last of his concentration, he made his golem grab for the scepter.

  Though the priest was now burning and choking both, he didn’t release the scepter, and Ashinaro’s golem wasn’t strong enough to wrest it free.

  Unable to keep the golem animated any longer through the blood loss, he called his flesh back, steadying himself on the statue of Joy as his vision went black and his ears rang.

  He shook himself, focusing on the high priest, who now writhed on the floor. His scepter had vanished.

  The other priests had all scrambled back, pressing themselves against the walls, though whether to get away from the priest or molten metal, Ashinaro couldn’t say.

  Then Vershik went still, his battleform fully exposed as the final shreds of robes were consumed, his scales burned through down to bone in places.

  As the last of the flames upon him died, he began to glow.

  The glow brightened, lighting up the entire chamber.

  It looked dangerously like he was about to explode.

  “We need to get out of here,” Ashinaro mentally told Zanas, and was about to do just that when a bright light erupted from the priest, slamming through all present.

  It felt like Ashinaro’s essence had been scoured.

  He stumbled, then fled, picking up Zanas’s parts as he did, which dissolved within him much like the mask and scepter had back in Unar’s Tower.

  Then he sprinted up the stairs

  As he exited the secret passage, he tripped over the chair he’d left in front of it.

  He scrambled to his feet, slapped the chair down the stairs with his tail, and fled the temple.

  Ashinaro ran through the city, hoping he didn’t run into a guard, turning down alleys and breezeways, the priests of Joy in pursuit.

  He kept checking for Zanas, but the jester was once more unresponsive.

  Options raced through his mind, but he rapidly discarded one after the other.

  None of them would work.

  None of them would save him.

  The priests who pursued him were Champions, all of them.

  He was a Lesser Defender.

  He didn’t stand a chance.

  If it weren’t for his storm sash, they would have already caught up to him.

  Even with it, he was unable to shake them. He could hear them behind him, shouting for him to halt, shouts of people they knocked over in pursuit.

  If he didn’t think of something soon, they would catch him.

  He turned left down an alley and realized he was unconsciously heading back to his room above Jarnik’s smithy.

  But that was the first place they would look for him if that penetrating light had seen through Zanas’s mask and revealed his identity to the priests.

  He changed direction, altering course, but clung to the hope that this wasn’t the case, that the priests didn’t know who he was.

  The goddess hadn’t warned her priests of the intruders, after all. Everything he thought he knew about the gods was suspect now. Perhaps they weren’t so all-knowing, even within their temples.

  They certainly weren’t benevolent.

  He reached the west edge of the temple district, the city wall looming before him.

  A dead end.

  But he’d known that.

  Perhaps the priests knew who he was, perhaps not. Still, it was worth attempting to throw them off his trail. Which was why he’d used Zanas’s mask to take on a different identity the moment he’d exited Joy’s temple.

  Now he turned to face his pursuers.

  The priests slowed, seeing they had him cornered.

  He smiled at them with someone else’s face.

  “You’ll be coming with us now, heretic,” one of them said, stepping to the front of the group.

  Ashinaro gave an exaggerated bow. “What a fortuitous encounter. My apologies, you’ve called on me at an inopportune moment and I must be going. May Rage fill you and find you wanting.”

  Then he activated Flesh’s Frenzy and Whirling Rush in quick succession. His flesh shot out from him, directly overhead toward the top of the city wall even as a mist of blood bloomed out from his body, concealing him as he was pulled up behind and then into the rising golem.

  Just as he reached the apex of his flight, he felt an odd sting.

  Then he was falling.

  Not back into Argalis, but out into the Blighted Wilds.