Tiffany knew the moment it happened. She could feel something crumbling beneath her, something that had supported her since she was a child, shaped her into the person she was today. A bedrock shattering. A family home collapsing. She clutched at her heart and cried out, once, and the other Furies turned to stare as she stumbled out of the war room. She held on to the wall for support as she made her halting way to her bedchamber. Tiffany collapsed on her bed, weeping openly for the first time in her life, knowing she was the only one who would truly mourn him.
The next day, the news came to Valdreth’s Keep. A steed made of holy fire carrying a rider clad in shining platinum armor thundered toward the gates. When the undead guards drew their swords, the rider waved a hand to dissolve them into dust. Tiffany, seeing this from the top of the keep, screamed for the guards to let her in and ran to the stairs to face her. Her armored boots threw up sparks on the stone floors as she skidded around corners in her hurry to reach the paladin. She drew her sword as she passed under the huge stone arch of the courtyard. To her surprise, the Platinum Defender had no battle-axe in her hands. Far from being ready to face her archrival’s lieutenant, she had removed her helmet and was removing a black-wrapped bundle, longer than a spear, from her saddlebags. When she saw Tiffany, she turned towards her, an expression that Tiffany could only describe as apologetic on her face.
“Save me your pity, coward,” Tiffany spat, bringing her sword to bear on the paladin. “Were you the one who struck the blow? Was it after you had already succeeded, no doubt by his hand? I suspect treachery doesn’t count if your ally is evil!”
Gemma flinched at the woman’s words, shaking her head and holding the bundle in front of her. She was twisting her hands in its tattered fabric, seemingly nervous, but her gaze met Tiffany’s unwaveringly. “Darius died a noble death, Theophania. He died saving us all from Asmodeus.”
Tiffany spat at Gemma’s feet. “And why should I believe you? You’ve killed him a dozen times already. Why would it bother you to do it once more?”
Gemma shook her head. “I swear by Bahamut himself, he died by Asmodeus’ hand. The god unmade him, destroyed him body and soul, and-“ she clenched her hands in the fabric of the bundle to steady herself- “he sacrificed himself to save us all. It was because of him that we were able to destroy the evil god. I’m- I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath, blinking away tears, and held out the bundle towards Tiffany. “He wanted me to pass this on. For the strongest, he said.”
The weight of the bundle was immediately familiar in Tiffany’s hands. Slowly, reverently, she unwrapped the torn cloth from the long shape to reveal Darius’ scabbard, hand-painted with the same red sigils that had adorned his armor. Tiffany hefted the massive zweihander in one hand, squeezing her eyes shut to fight back tears. The cloth flapped around the handle and Tiffany removed it, recognizing it as Darius’ cape. She turned her back on the paladin, hands clenching into fists around the scabbard. Her shoulders hunched as she bent over her master’s sword. He would never have given it up if he had any ability to return, nor if he had gone on to Hell as a general- he had ways of returning it to himself even through the veil of death. It had to be true, then. There was no denying it. Darius was gone forever.
Behind her, she could hear Gemma take a shuddering breath, as if she was holding back a sob. Tiffany’s grief was instantly burned away by white-hot anger. She turned back to face the paladin, who was wiping her broad face on the back of an armored glove. “Save your tears,” she hissed. “I have matters to attend to now, but trust that I will destroy you when next we meet.”
A look of unfathomable weariness crossed Gemma’s face, but was quickly replaced by a careful neutrality. “I suppose we will find out then.” Tiffany saw how her shoulders slumped when she took her horse’s bridle and turned to lead it out of the courtyard, how her hands shook on the leather straps, how her head hung low, and spat again. Weakness.
Behind her she heard the sound of daggers being unsheathed. She threw herself into a roll, just barely dodging the poisoned arrow that bounced off the cobblestones near her feet. To the strongest, he had said. Tiffany knew who that was, but apparently the other Furies did not. It was time for them to learn.
The business of running the army was not difficult for Tiffany. Darius had prepared her well for the position, after all. The remaining Furies who’d had sense enough not to challenge her knew that their loyalties lay with her, and the officers and soldiers followed. A few lords who’d sworn fealty to Darius bristled at the change in leadership, and some even sought to bring arms against her. They quickly learned that Tiffany would not bend to them. One particularly rebellious lord was mounted on the keep’s walls as a warning. The rest renewed their oaths soon enough.
The main trouble, as Tiffany saw it, was the cult that had sprung up in the lands to the west. The kingdom they had been driven out of less than a decade ago was now under the watchful eye of the Platinum Defender, and more and more lands that had previously been undecided were moving to join with them. Even the great kingdom of Rialdra was starting to lose land to the peaceful conquest, with nobles offering their loyalty and protection to the so-called great paladin. Worse, there were rumors that the paladin herself had been deified. There were those who claimed that in order to fill the void left by the killing of Asmodeus, his slayer had been made a god. Those in Tiffany’s presence knew better to mention these rumors in front of her after the first person who brought it up nearly had his head severed from his shoulders by the zweihander. It was all nonsense, of course. If anyone could have taken the power of the dying god, it would have been Darius. As he had told her many times, Gemma had no ambition, no drive for greatness, and certainly no desire to be regarded as a god. She would never have accepted such a position. More likely that her idiotic idealists had spread the rumor to encourage others to join their moronic crusade. Tiffany told herself this over and over as her spymasters continued to receive reports of the growing power of Gemma’s kingdom. She was not a god. She was not perfect. She was a traitor, and she was weak, and she could be dethroned. Darius could be avenged.
But one night, when Tiffany had just finished her nightly prayers to Moloch and returned to her bedchamber, there Gemma was, sitting on the end of her bed. She raised her head when Tiffany came in and offered her a smile. It did not falter when Tiffany pressed a dagger to her neck.
“Give me one reason why I should not drive this through your throat and end your miserable existence,” Tiffany hissed, balling a fist in the neckline of Gemma’s tunic. The fool had come to her unarmored, and there was no sign of a weapon on her.
Gemma huffed out a laugh and shrugged her shoulders. “I think you would find it a futile exercise, but you are welcome to try.” As Tiffany’s initial rush of adrenaline faded, she felt a buzzing along the parts of her skin closest to the paladin. The hairs on the back of her neck raised, and she recognized the feeling at once. She had been in the room when Moloch appeared to Darius to summon him for his final mission. Then, the god’s presence had been overwhelming, an unstoppable wave of fear that had filled the room and brought all but her master to their knees. Even after that wave had subsided, her skin had prickled with the closeness of a deity, and she had not been able to get the feeling off of her skin for days. Gemma’s presence was equally tangible, but felt different. It felt almost as if she was trying to hold it back. A deception? Not the usual style of the paladin, but Tiffany would not put anything past the woman who claimed to defend all yet had let Darius be destroyed.
Tiffany stepped back from the paladin and let her arms fall to her sides. “The rumors are true, then.” Gemma nodded, looking weary. “You took the god’s power for your own when you killed him.”
“No, it was never like that,” Gemma protested, her face almost pleading with Tiffany to believe her. “I never- this was not my goal. The power to help others was offered to me by my god when I was young, and I took it then. It was offered to me again a month ago, and I took it again. I had no intention of this happening.”
Tiffany scoffed at her. “So noble of you. And you came here to gloat?”
The god seemed to crumple, passing a hand over her face and sighing deeply. Tiffany felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as more of the paladin’s power seeped out of her. Her knees began to buckle and she took a step back, crying out and raising a hand in front of her face as if it could stop the waves of force rippling out of the god before her. Gemma’s head snapped up, her eyes locking on Tiffany’s frightened face, and immediately the power that had filled the room subsided. Tiffany could feel her legs wobble, and she rubbed at her arms, trying to get the feeling of ringing bells out of her skin.
“I apologize, I have not yet gotten used to suppressing myself,” Gemma said. Tiffany took another step back, her fingers itching for Darius’ zweihander. “Please, don’t go. I am sorry for that, really.”
“Why did you come here?” Tiffany spat, keeping her distance.
Gemma twisted her hands in the bedsheets. “I wanted to give you a chance. A chance I was never able to give Darius, when he was still with us.”
“Do not speak his name!” Tiffany yelled, venom in her voice. “You, who killed him a dozen times! You, who failed to save him from utter destruction! You are the reason he is no longer with us, you hypocrite!” Tears fell unheeded down her face as she raged at the deity. “What possible chance could you have to offer me? The chance to die as he did? There is nothing you have to offer me that I could possibly want!”
Her words hung in the air for a long time before the god responded. “Perhaps another time, then. I am sorry for disturbing you.” Then, without so much as a whisper to mark her departure, the god was gone.
Tiffany dropped to her knees and sobbed in impotent rage. Anger boiled in her gut as she clenched her fists, knuckles white on the fabric of her trousers. She tilted her head back to scream wordlessly, then fell to her side, curling into a ball and shaking with emotion.
Her skin rang for weeks afterward.
Months passed. The legend of Gemma’s cult only grew, and the opposition to the armies of Valdreth grew with it. One of the lords on the edge of their loyalists pledged himself to the armies of the Platinum Defender, and the incursion they sent to bring him back into the fold was soundly rebuffed. Tiffany took to pacing the halls with Darius’ zweihander resting on her shoulder. She found it calmed her. She found it put the other inhabitants of the keep on edge. That calmed her too.
She knew that it was only a matter of time before full-scale war erupted again, and she intended to be the one to strike the first blow. Not now, though, when her armies were weakened and low on morale. She would need some grand show of force, first, to remind the cowardly nobles that the armies of Valdreth were still a threat. The first order of business, of course, was retaking the treacherous fiefdom. That would send the weak-hearted lords scurrying back under her banner, and destroy the people’s faith in the Platinum Defender to boot. A major loss like that, of a territory that had risked much to leave its dark master, would destroy the fledgling cult before it spread too far. Of course, it would also begin the largest war since the Panhead conflict, but that was no trouble to her. She knew her armies could be made ready soon enough, if they were given victory to whet their appetites.
Her war-table convened daily until they were certain it was time to strike. That night, Tiffany made her prayers to Moloch with anticipation in her heart. When she returned to her bedchamber, however, her anticipation was replaced by rage.
“How dare you return here,” she screamed at the god sitting on her chest of clothes. “Have you been spying on me? You are no longer the commander of your former forces, you have no right to interfere! This is no longer your war!”
Gemma smiled at her, and Tiffany’s blood boiled. “I have not been spying, Theophania. You are correct, I no longer command my forces. I did not come here to harm you.”
“Then what? Is your holy domain so small that you have run out of things to do? Do you have so few followers that all their prayers have already been answered?” Tiffany balled her fists at her sides and stood, glaring at Gemma.
Gemma spread her hands, palms open before her. “I come with the same offer I brought before. No threats, no deception. Only an offer.”
Tiffany sneered. “That so-called chance? Let me guess. You want to save my soul.” She pulled a mocking curtsey. “Should I feel blessed, for a god deigning to visit me personally? Should I fall before you on bended knee like one of your lack-witted disciples?”
“I did not come here to convert you, Theophania.” Gemma’s gaze was perfectly steady, her calm brown eyes piercing into Tiffany’s skull. “I only came to offer a choice. This war will not go well for you. Lords may swear fealty, but their people fear to march under the banner of an evil god. A nation can only be suppressed by fear for so long.” As Gemma spoke, Tiffany could see flashes of her knowledge- a blood-choked battlefield, a group of soldiers fleeing a camp under the cover of night, an obsidian statue crashing to the ground. “This need not come to pass. These evil deeds you have planned need not occur. Turn back, Theophania. All empires must wane, and the empire of a despot wanes faster.” A wall of spears crumbling before an unstoppable tide of soldiers. A shattered sword laying on the torn earth. “If you continue on your course, all that you worked for will crumble before your eyes.” A man screaming, being blasted apart by arcane power. A smoking ruin of a bone-white fortress. Tiffany fell to her knees, clawing at her head in agony. “Many will die, Theophania. You may be one of them.”
The vision let her go, and Tiffany gasped, shuddering as the god’s power left her. Her vision swam as she took deep breaths to calm her pounding heart. The god waited silently, sitting on her clothes chest as if they had been having a perfectly casual conversation. “Why… why would you tell me this?” Tiffany managed, raising her head to the paladin. “What care you for my life? War is coming whether I lead it or not. Even if I were to summon my lieutenants this very instant and order them to lay down their arms forever, it would do no good.”
Gemma shook her head. “Nothing is written in stone. All is choices. There are worlds upon worlds spun from decisions made eons ago that would never have existed otherwise. Even if you believe that the war itself cannot be stopped, you still have your choice. You do not have to make the same mistake others did before you.”
“And what mistake is that?” Tiffany asked, pushing herself up to stand unsteadily before the god.
“The mistake of inevitability. You can change, Theophania, if you wish it. You can turn back from your dark path and choose a new life.” Gemma’s voice was calm, measured, as she stood and walked toward Tiffany with outstretched hands. “I give you this chance because I believe that you are worth it. You have so much before you. Please, don’t throw it away for someone else’s dream.”
Tiffany’s face hardened. She took a step back from Gemma, shaking her head. “The only thing I am throwing away is foolish sentimentality. I will not give up my dream for some platitudes and some false visions. Nothing is set in stone, as you said. No defeat is certain. I will take my chances with the path I have freely chosen, and you cannot stop me.”
Gemma sighed, a deep exhale that seemed to reverberate around the room. “I cannot persuade you on this, can I?” Tiffany shook her head, and Gemma smiled ruefully. “So be it. If you change your mind, though…”
Tiffany blinked, and the god was gone. Her hands shaking, she walked over to the clothes chest where Gemma had sat, picking up the folded white cloth that had appeared there. The silk unfurled easily, revealing a carved wooden disc. The simple disc was carved with the image of a shield framed by a sunburst picked out in thin gold leaf. Tiffany turned it over in her hand, then strode to the fire and hurled it in. She watched, unblinking, as the flames consumed the holy symbol, and did not look away until it had crumbled into ash.
The war was not going well.
This was the report Tiffany received the most often: a battle-hardened horde of soldiers, their casters trained for years in necromancy and evocation, their officers schooled in the most advanced strategies and techniques, had been defeated by an army half their number. These defeats usually involved a last-minute rally on the part of their opponents. If not, then the defeat came from a sudden uprising of the local populace, rallying under the banner of the Platinum Defender and defeating a battalion of trained warriors with little more than sheer numbers and knowledge of the land. And sometimes, most insultingly, huge swathes of the army would be destroyed by small parties of adventurers. How these ragtag bundles of rarely more than five people managed to defeat squadrons of soldiers was an eternal mystery to Tiffany, but she had her theories.
Temples to the deified paladin began popping up around the kingdoms. They were usually ramshackle affairs of wood and brick, nothing like the obsidian edifices that Darius had erected to Moloch during his reign. The armies of Valdreth were instructed to tear them down whenever they came across them, but this only seemed to increase their popularity. The inhabitants of Valdreth’s Keep learned not to bring up the fledgling religion around Tiffany.
More times than she could count since the god’s last visit, Tiffany had taken the swath of white silk out of her chest where she had stored it. She would clench it in her hands, twisting the sigil embroidered on it as if she was wringing the god’s own neck, tearing at the fabric with all her might. It had never torn, and she had never managed to throw it out. Now, nearly a year since the war had begun, Tiffany retrieved the unwrinkled silk and spread it on her desk. She lit a candle and placed it on the center of the holy symbol. It flickered as she closed her eyes, exhaling deeply and hoping that Moloch would not take this the wrong way.
The candle flared up, startling her into opening her eyes. She looked around the room for any sign of the god. There was nothing. Nothing near her bed, her chest of clothes, the case for her armor, the window. Tiffany even stood up and checked around the door, but there was nothing in the hall either. She sighed, leaning on the doorway in a brief moment of weariness. What had she expected? That an actual god would come at her enemy’s beck and call? Not even Gemma, that soft-hearted fool, would risk so much for someone who hated her, and she was an idiot for thinking-
A soft cough from inside the room caused Tiffany to spin around, hand flying to the dagger at her side. A woman was sitting in a chair in her room. Neither had been there previously. The woman- who could not be more than twenty-five- was wearing a simple tunic embroidered with blue and green, and she was rubbing the hem of it between her fingers. Tiffany could see powerful muscles shifting in her bare arms as her hands moved. Her green skin was unmarked by age or scarring, and her dark hair was loose around her shoulders. The woman smiled, gesturing at the chair near Tiffany’s desk.
“Gemma?” Tiffany hissed, almost unbelieving that this smiling, youthful woman could be the same person as the aged and sorrowful paladin she had fought against.
The god before her nodded. “I apologize for my changed form. I was worried you would not recognize me, but I thought I would be more approachable this way. I am pleased that you called for me, Theophania.”
Tiffany sat down heavily in her chair, glaring at Gemma. “Do you know why I did so?”
Gemma shrugged. “I suppose it is too much to hope that you were seeking the pleasure of my company?” She chuckled, and there was not a trace of sorrow in it, only a warm rumble of amusement that Tiffany had never before heard from her.
“I assume you have been overseeing the war,” Tiffany said, tapping her fingers on the desk in an irregular drumbeat.
“Not directly, no.” Gemma sighed at the return to business. “You know as well as I that gods cannot have a direct hand in the affairs of mortals, no matter how important the cause. But I will admit to having… inspired certain groups. Visions and the like, signs and symbols stirring heroic souls to action against a foe much greater than they.”
“The stuff of legends,” Tiffany sneered.
“Precisely. Nothing they would not have been able to do themselves.”
“I’ve had to deal with armies half their opponent’s size succeeding against impossible odds almost every month! On the rare occasion that my armies do succeed, they are expelled by the peasantry almost immediately!” She banged her fist on the desk, making her papers and the god jump. “Your plucky bands of adventurers have been decimating my supply lines, desecrating my temples, and destroying my armies!” With every point, she jabbed her finger at Gemma’s chest for emphasis. “There is no way that you have not done something! My armies are a thousand times better-trained! They have the strength to destroy any kingdom that stands against them, and yet they have not been able to roust their enemy as they should!”
Gemma shook her head, a slight smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Strength is not everything, Theophania. The people can only be suppressed by fear for-“
“I KNOW!” Tiffany stood up, slamming her hands on the desk between them. “You go on and on about strength of heart and goodness winning over evil and it’s BULLSHIT! “The world has never worked that way, and it never will! There is no possible way that your poorly-equipped ragtag idiot soldiers could win just because of- of the power of friendship!!!” She glared down at the seated god, breathing heavily in her anger. “It just isn’t possible!”
Gemma was silent for a long moment. She looked down at her hands, twisting them together as she thought. When she spoke, it was without amusement, but with a softness to it that made Tiffany uneasy.
“How did you first meet Darius?”
Tiffany sat back down, folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t see how that is any of your business.”
The paladin met her gaze unflinchingly. Tiffany stared back, unafraid of the god’s power. Gemma’s eyes were brown, unremarkable, the kind of eyes that Tiffany had seen a thousand times. Yet there was a stillness to them, like looking into a pool of deep water undisturbed by wind or wave. The god’s eyes drew her in, and she felt herself floating in their perfectly calm depths. Inside those pools there was deep wisdom, born as much from experience as power, a perspective that stretched for all eternity. It was a knowledge of the fullness of life, the threads that bind the planes together and pull mortal lives along their mortal coils. The knowledge was a weight, too, binding against action just as it enabled understanding. Tiffany could feel the edges of that terrible weight creeping in around her consciousness, and even this brush with the divine caused her to curl in on herself, hiding from the vastness of it all. The knowledge was too much for one mortal, and she was drowning, drowning in the dark pools of Gemma’s eyes, struggling to breathe as the impossible weight of divine wisdom pressed on her chest.
Gemma blinked, and the sensation was gone. Tiffany was back in her wooden chair, hands gripping the armrests so tightly that it ached to unclench them. The god was still sitting before her, not spread across the entirety of existence, but Tiffany could feel a quieter power radiating from her now. It felt nothing like the waves of force she had felt a year before in her presence or the ocean of agony she had faced from Moloch. This was a power that was controlled but immense, with nothing flashy or overpowering about it. Tiffany shuddered and took a deep breath.
“I was sixteen,” she began, looking away from Gemma. “I was in a tavern, picking something up for a friend. Some men- drunkards, wastes of flesh, and blights on the town- decided that a sixteen-year-old girl was to be their target of choice for the evening. They made advances on me. I bit an ear off of one of them.” She smiled, grinning at the memory. “Unfortunately, there were more of them then there were of me. It was causing quite the scene, and nobody stepped forward to help me… nobody except for Darius.” She closed her eyes, summoning up the memory. The men looming over her, hands going for their swords, and then the crunch of the hilt of Darius’ zweihander hitting the side of the largest one’s head. The way they had tried to face her, and how he had cut them down one by one, leaving them a groaning heap on the tavern floor. The tavernkeeper had asked him to leave, nervously wringing his hands as if terrified of Darius turning his blade on him next, but Darius had only shouldered his zweihander and winked at her, saying that they should probably get out of there before the guardsmen showed up. “I went with him that night. He said he needed help with completing a quest, and that I owed him for saving my life. I had nothing better to do, so I gathered a pack of supplies and set off with him.” The quest itself had been simple, stealing an artifact from a hidden temple under a mountain. The temple was barely defended once they had solved the maze that surrounded it. All Darius had needed for her to do was carry it back, as he claimed he could not touch it without suffering great damage. At the time she had assumed it was a curse he was under or something like that, and had carried the small glowing stone out of the temple with no difficulty. Now she understood the item to be a powerful symbol consecrated by Sarenrae herself, a stone with the ability to heal even the most grievous of wounds at a touch, a force for good that Moloch had charged Darius with desecrating but that the man could not touch without it detecting his evil soul and trying to destroy him. After she had left his company, Darius had dedicated it to Moloch, tainting its essence through evil ritual and turning it into an artifact for the channeling of negative energy. But at the time, she had known none of that. All she had known was that when they had made it out of the labyrinth he had clapped her on the shoulder, beaming at her in a way that stretched the scar on his face, and had told her they were having venison for dinner to celebrate.
“After we had succeeded, we camped for the night. It was an isolated area, and neither of us expected trouble, so we didn’t bother to set a watch. But we were ambushed in our sleep, by common bandits who had happened upon us by pure chance.” Tiffany had woken up first and had grabbed Darius’ sword in her panic to defend herself. She had swung wildly at their assailants, but the zweihander was longer than she was, and not balanced for someone of her size. Luckily, the shouts had woken Darius up, and he had managed to wrestle the bandit leader to the ground and hold him at knifepoint until the others backed off. Then he had calmly walked over to her, retrieved his sword from a shaking Tiffany, and had beheaded the captive bandit, sending the others scurrying into the woods. The moonlight had played tricks on her vision, and she would have sworn that his eyes had flashed red when he turned to face her, his features obscured by the splash of red across them. “Darius and I defeated them, and the next day we returned to my home town. He bought me my own sword and shield as thanks.” He had also made her an offer. Entirely separate from the sword and shield, he had said, laughing as he helped her pick out a blade balanced for her arm. He claimed he was recruiting talent, and that he had seen potential in her during their quest. He told her of the fame, fortune, and glory that he had won during the Panhead war, alluding to his involvement in the heroic action by a small mercenary band that had led to the end of the conflict and his company being hailed as saviors of the realm. He had told her that it would not be a job for the squeamish or the moralistic, which was why he had left his company- they were good people, he had said, which was rather the problem. When she had asked him for details, he had chuckled and said that he did not pass those out lightly, but that he could guarantee a greater glory than could be found living an ordinary life in a rathole town like this. She had not given him an answer then, but he had told her where to find him should she make a decision.
The next day, she had been back in the tavern, buying a meat pie with the gold Darius had given her. The same drunkards, one of them now missing an ear, another with a bandage covering a grievous head wound, accosted her, telling her that she would pay for what the man had done to them. Calmly, and without a second thought, she had slain them, her sword becoming a perfect extension of her arm as it sliced through their miserable necks. She had not needed the tavernkeeper or the guardsmen to tell her that she needed to leave. She had simply packed her things and left town. A day’s walk away, in a shady copse of trees, she found Darius sleeping with his arm over his eyes, his zweihander cradled in his arms like a stuffed bear. She had kicked him awake and told him that she wanted to be a lieutenant, and that if he had any sort of evil powers she wanted them too. He had grinned, breaking into a full-throated laugh, and had offered a hand to her. She had taken it, grinning back at him. Months later he had carried out the grisly ritual Moloch required of him, and she had assisted him with no hesitation. When he rose from that pit of fire, his eyes glowing with an unholy light, she had handed him his sword and swore her fealty to him. She had been his loyal lieutenant ever since.
A soft cough brought her back to the present. Gemma was looking at her quizzically, eyebrows raised, and Tiffany realized that she had been crying. She wiped her face, angry at herself for showing weakness in front of her enemy, and Gemma still said nothing. Tiffany took a moment to compose herself, breathing deeply and banishing the creeping vines of memory from her heart. Darius was gone now. There was no point in getting sentimental about it.
“Why do you bring this up?” she asked Gemma, her voice rough. “What do you gain by knowing this?”
“You didn’t join him because he was the best fighter you’d ever seen,” Gemma said, ignoring Tiffany’s question. “Surely you’d seen brawls before, and beheadings. Yet you never pledged your eternal loyalty to the executioner.”
“That isn’t the point,” Tiffany snarled. “Darius was the first person who saw anything in me. Nobody in that shit-pile of a town had ever amounted to anything in their lives, but Darius was better than them, and he knew I could be too. That-“she jabbed her finger at the god, who blinked, “is why I followed him for twenty years. That is why I lead his forces even now.”
Gemma smiled, and Tiffany realized what she had just said. “So you do understand.” She spread her hands wide, and Tiffany swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry at the sight of the incredibly powerful muscles rippling under the god’s skin. “All that you do now is because you were given the strength to live your life in a new way through the inspiration of another. Because of him, you were able to accomplish feats that you never would have been able to do otherwise. And yet you wonder how people who truly believe in their cause can be so successful against soldiers who live their lives in fear?”
Tiffany shuddered, crossing her arms over her chest. “I never thought a god could be naïve.”
“Believe what you will, Theophania.” Gemma shrugged, placing her hands back in her lap. “But you cannot say that I did not warn you.” This time, when the god disappeared, the only thing to mark her passing was the snuffing of a candle-flame.
Author's Notes:
I wrote this back on 4/23/2017 and I think it holds up pretty well. Did you know that Tiffany was originally a nickname for Theophania, and is a historically-accurate medieval name? Now you know!