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The following story contains violence and strong language. Reader discretion is advised.

The Lava God's Journey

Chapter 2

The Goat of Stone Point

Light snow heralded the end of fall and the coming of winter. For the weeks since that first town I traveled through the woods along game trails. I stayed close enough to the road that I could continue to follow it but far enough off I could hide from the passing coaches of the Aurus, which were not infrequent. There were a few towns I came to in my journey. I would often stop in, complete a few menial tasks in exchange for some rations and lodging, and be on my way.

Now though, winter was setting in properly, and with it came great worry. The immortality I had been granted should make this a non concern, but I had no knowledge of the exact nature of the power and no desire to test it. If I died in the cold here would I awake back in that first barn? Or would I be transported to the latest most town by some logic? Or would I be revived in some position a few minutes prior to when I had expired, still in the cold, and potentially perpetually dying of hypothermia until spring? And there was the stone that was the cause of this all. What will it had I did not know. Perhaps it would deem me unworthy of its power and leave me lying there to frozen, awaiting the next traveler passing by to claim it. There was a high probability that would be a member of the Aurus. I could not allow them to gain whatever power this stone possessed. Throughout my internal musings the stone itself was silent.

I did not wish to stay in any town for any significant length of time. I could gamble on it. Throughout my tenure in that first town the Aurus had went from a rare occurrence to a common one as spring led to summer led to autumn. That suggested their modus operundi was to hoard what they could from the towns they harassed and store in what I presumed was a posh central city for them to weather the winter months in comfort. There was a decent chance, then, that I could make myself a guest in some town without fear of seeing them much, if at all.

But there was the lingering uncertainty. My actions in that first town had to have changed things for the Aurus. So I would not risk putting another town in jeopardy.

My best plan at the moment was to find some cave I could make my own and subsist on the wild as best my ability. Ideally it would be not too many miles from the nearest town so that I could seek the occasional extra supplies. Winter storms would bring damage and lost livestock. Those being repaired and returned, respectively, in the dark of night may lead to offerings left for the helpful spirit.

The effectiveness to which I could find such an ideal location combined with how well I could implement that strategy remained to be seen.

**

Fortune had different plans for me than my own. My direction of travel took into thick fog and the smell of the sea. The snow turned to slush beneath my feet. The warm sea air mixed with the frigid fog and wrought havoc on my senses. I had to trudge but cautiously through thick but slippery slush.

As I navigated the coastal land I felt watched. That feeling of being watched is a well known mental phenomenon. This was similar but carried with it a certainty. I knew that precisely two pairs of eyes were on me, and they could see me well through the dense fog. They did nothing more than watch, thankfully. Likely they were uncertain of what to make of me, or more to the point what to do about me.

They left me to my business, at least. Each morning I traveled along the shore whatever miles I could. Each afternoon I made camp. A simple shelter, a fire, and traps for whatever game was as foolish as I to be out in this weather. At night I fell asleep as exhaustion won out over fear and discomfort. All the while the eyes watched.

I did this for days I did not care to number. I had one gratitude for the fog and that was it hid my campsites from myself as I journeyed. I feared if it dispersed I could look back and plainly see all of those sites and learn plainly see what pitiful distance I made. Still, onward I trudged.

**

Luck found me when I found a large town on the coast. The place was deserted. Gray buildings cracked and crumbled filled the land. On an outcrop a lighthouse stood, though it could not have been more than one strong breeze away from collapse. Furthermore, the eyes that had followed me left as I entered this forlorn place. It was a great place to have found. This would certainly be a place where I could weather the roughest of winter.

A sensation grew though, that of being watched. Not like the before, though, this was more standard fare. Hushed whispers echoed about the stone walls. Wood creaked and clattered as doors opened and slammed. The settlement was far from abandoned as I'd hoped.

Citizens stepped from the buildings. They brandished rusted and cracked tools. Whispering grew more urgent. An otter woman with a jagged club pushed toward the front of the pack. I could not speak the language well, but I could understand a fair bit of simple words. "What the fuck do you want?" she demanded. That is a fairly close translation of what was said.

Carefully, I bent down to pick up a broken debris and placed it on the crumbled wall it lay next to. Some slid back off but most stayed. I grinned and gestured, hoping my intent would be understood. I could help mend things.

I'm certain it was understood. They did not care. "You just get the hell out of here," she said.

I stepped backward, keeping my eyes on the crowd, then turned and darted through a doorway.

"After it!" the otter shouted.

I didn't have any sort of plan, I just did not want to go back into that cold fog. I dodged through the cracks and crevices of the town. As broken as everything was, there were plenty of options. However the locals were plenty aware of that already. Dip through a crack, slide down a corridor, dart down an alley, up a stair, a precarious jump to the next building, and down. Silence, I breathed a half sigh of relief, then heard, "He's near Gullshit Alley," from out the gaping hole my tired brain actually termed a window.

I ran again. The town was large, many places to hide and lose them in. But of course that also meant more places for them to pop out of. I had no goal, just find somewhere to hide for now. Wait them out. I couldn't maintain it forever, but maybe once the initial furor died down and I had shown myself to not be a threat. I could move on. But I did not want to go back into the fog. No, I would not be going there. I would make it work.

It slowly dawned on me that I may not get through this without having to fight. That I may have to use lethal force. While I had done so already, that had not been against presumably innocent people. While this lot was far from hospitable, I was not doubting they had their reasons. I hoped, if worse came to worse, I could scare them off by making myself more trouble than I was worth.

A corner turned and I plowed straight into a rabbit. "Wow, wheres ya goin in a hurreh?" As mentioned, I had become fairly passable at understanding the local tongue but had not heard his accent before. I was briefly intrigued by it until I realized it was not an accent at all. He was just really drunk.

The otter woman and her cronies turned down the street I heard them refer to as 'Gullshit Boulevard.'

"Hey, what the fuck are you all doing?" the rabbit shouted. I will forgo attempting to write phonetically but understand his speech was highly slurred.

"We're running that thing out of here."

"Why? He do you harm?"

"Not yet."

"Well then bugger off. He just trying to get safe from the world like we all are."

"If you keep it it's on your head. I ain't feeding it."

"Well, now you're just sending mixed messages. You say you want to get rid of him but won't feed him? Giving someone that so-called cornbread of yours would be the quickest and most painful way of offing someone I can imagine."

"Fuck you, Lyser," the woman threw her club. The rabbit slowly moved his head and it flew past and clattered down the street.

Lyser chuckled, "See man you got nothing to fear from this lot. Can't even hit a drunk man. Ha ha."

Hands from the crowd grabbed the otter to hold her back. Lyser put his hand on my shoulder. "Come on, let's get you home."

The rabbit led me through the run down city to his place. A large building that was the corpse of an ancient municipal building. Entering I felt heat. Pure, true heat that I hadn't known for a great long while. My campfires never came close. I could have sobbed for joy. "So, what's your name?" the rabbit asked.

My brain went blank. I had not thought of that in - how long? Never in this world, definitely. Nor in the void before, and how long had it been before that? I only thought of the moniker I'd given myself the last time someone had asked me the nature of my identity. "Uh, L.G." I settled on, sounds from my native tongue.

"Eljie, huh? I'm Lyser. I take it you're not from around here?" His eyes watched my with greedy interest.

"No," I said plainly.

He chuckled, "I thought as much." I had a strange feeling he knew exactly how I'd meant that.

I took stock of the place. It was a testament to my exhaustion that I had not taken note of the cause of the heat in the first place. The great building was full of large metal vats each of which flames burned beneath. I had no doubt the cause of the rabbit's inebriated state.

He followed my gaze. "Heh, where are my manners." He fetched a dark brown bottle from a cabinet and poured its contents into a mug with a broken handle and flecks of paint from its decorated past. "Wouldn't do to not offer you a drink."

I dreaded the substance, but I was far from in a position to refuse an offering.

"Thanks," I said, probably in my native language. I sipped. It can best be described as quality rotgut. Lyser knew what he was doing, one could tell from his setup, but he didn't have much to work with. Still, there was hope I wouldn't need the stone's resurrection to save me from this. I took a second sip.

"Hope you find it passable. Ain't going to do any better around here." I did not doubt that in the slightest. He set about opening cupboards and jars, pulling out stored meats and vegetables. He chopped them various ways with knives that were likely as sharp as one could keep them here. He set things to cook by the fires of his stills. It took my brain a moment to realize he was prepping me a feast. I opened my mouth to stop him, but he cut me off. "Now, now, a new friend is always a cause for celebration!" I shut my mouth. I knew there would be no stopping him. Besides, I got the sense he had a wide list of things he considered cause for celebration. As if reading my mind he said, "And even if it weren't, if you wait until you have actual cause to celebrate to celebrate you'll be waiting a long damn time. And then you end up like Ms. Herringbreath out there."

Silence passed as he cooked and I sipped the liquor. "They're good folks, really," he said. "Just hard times all around. Get defensive in the winter. Stores are meager this year, not that they're ever not. Hence why your little show back at the wall didn't go over. Don't matter what work you can do if there's nothing to go around." My mind was too tired to catch on the implications of those last sentences. It would not be until looking back many years later that I did. "Besides, we've kind of given up on sprucing the place up," he winked.

"You should get out of those damp clothes," Lyser said. "I don't mind you being naked if you don't mind me seeing you. Otherwise I've got some stuff in the cabinet on the far end. It should close to fit."

I took him up on his offer without a word. Not the being naked part. Getting into clean clothes was as big of an improvement over my current state as walking into the warm building had been in the first place.

We had our feast together as Lyser prattled on with town gossip. The words meant nothing to me but the sound was a comfort. The rabbit's food was on par with his liquor. Not stellar, but as best could be done with the resources available. At the end of the meal he put together a pile of cloths for me to sleep on. "I'd offer you mine but you don't seem the sort to take it." He was correct on that. He had done so much for me I couldn't accept more. Besides, I could have slept on a bed of shattered glass at that point. "Since you're clearly the sort to want to work for your living, I'll be happy to put you to work for food and lodging. I'll make it work out. Always can use an extra arm to scrape salt," he laughed.

I was gone from understanding more of what was said. I slept the best sleep I'd had in a great long time.

**

The rabbit put me to earning my keep indeed. Lyser himself earned his own keep in the town with his skill in distilling. Aside from the spirits that provided minor recreation to the downtrodden city he also provided clean fresh water distilled from the sea. For my part, this involved hauling carts of sea-water laden barrels at high tide and scraping the spent salt from inside the stills. It was work that was far more grueling than any I'd done on the farm in my months there. Still, Lyser was clearly grateful for having his workload cut in half. I could barely fathom the difficulty of this alone.

Lyser accepted as payment for the water no more than what was offered, and typically less than that. The only time he raised his rates or sneered an extortionists sneer was when he was dealing with those he'd learned were making life harder for others, and even then the extortion was only levied at the luxury of the alcohol, not the necessity of the water. Unless you counted the earful they got from him as extortion. He was, as a result, not particularly liked by those who considered themselves 'in charge' around here, such as Ms. Esmerelda Herringbreath from my first day in town. It turned out that actually was her last name and not just an insult. A few had attempted to develop distilleries of their own in secret to circumvent Lyser's benevolent monopoly. The most recent, I had learned, was by a late Mr. Harold Cottington. His attempt was now colorfully refereed to as Gullshit Crater.

When we weren't scraping salt or fetching water we were searching the ruins of the city for wood for his fires. Old doors, shutters, tables and what have you would become fuel. Lyser was masterful at keeping his fires burning at precisely the right levels to keep the stills boiling but not waste fuel. There were old barrels as well. On very rare occasion we'd find one that was still intact. That lucky vessel would not burn but be purposed for hauling water.

The only other wood that we encountered that was not salvaged for the fires was the large panels and beams that blocked entrances to underground tunnels.

"Keeps Caprahema out of the city," Lyser explained when he caught me taking note of said barriers.

"The thing in the fog?" I took an educated guess.

"Yes," he said, noting the tone of my question. But he moved on to answer my next before I asked it, "A spell was placed on the city wall, or rather the path it took, that the thing cannot pass over the boundary. Of course it says nothing about passing under it, via these passages. So we're safe until the thing figures out how to dig."

I nodded. A thought crossed my mind and I started looking up. An old bell tower, possibly a church in its past life, caught my eye. "What are you doing?" Lyser asked with a note of worry in his voice.

I ignored him and set my target in my mind. The building had a rickety old staircase. Wooden, too, so that would be a double benefit of coming here. It was careful climbing with a very unnerved Lyser right behind. At the top of the tower the old bell still hung from wooden beams. I touched the wood to indicate it. "Lots of fuel here," I said, hoping it would assuage the rabbit's fears.

"Good thinking but that's not why you came up here," he replied.

He was right. I waited without a word. I did not wait long. From the fog those eyes found me again. They stared. I could not see them, but they could count the pores on my face.

Lyser knew what was happening. His demeanor became one of someone who'd had their worst fears confirmed.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nebus's pet."

I nodded in understanding instead of asking the next question. The rabbit relaxed an iota but knew I didn't know who Nebus was.

We headed back down and finished our wood gathering in silence.

The next few days little was said to me other than plain instructions. I guessed at what would come and took steps to prepare. Lyser had his head elsewhere and didn't notice that not all of the collected barrels of water ended up in the still. I stashed a handful of extras in a nearby building, I was grateful when a full cartload was stashed, as that was what I would need.

It came two days after completing my theft, Lyser announced that he was feeling under the weather and asked if I could fetch the seawater on my own. He trusted I could accomplish the difficult task on my own, after all he had done it for years prior to my arrival. I accepted. Of course he'd asked me to do this at low tide. We normally did the hauling of water at high tide to save us that extra handful of yards. He now wanted those extra handful of yards to keep me away for an extra handful of minutes.

Of course that would not be a worry for me. I laded down the cart with the barrels I'd stowed next door then waited to see whom he selected to meet with about me. It was Esmerelda Herringbreath.

"So, what'd you find out from him?" the otter asked teasing gossip from the rabbit.

"Not much. Just as we'd expected. Caprahema has lots of interest in him."

"Then kill him. He'll bring ruin on us all."

"I, I'm not going to do that," Lyser said.

"Caprahema has treated us as a curiosity, nothing more. If it wants him it will get in. And once its in it won't stop until its killed us all. You have your whole goody goody routine of making everyone be nice to one another. What good will that be if we're all trampled under its hooves?"

"I don't know," Lyser admitted.

It was time for my interjection. "I will leave in the spring. I will not be a threat to you for long."

"I told you to fetch the water," Lyser said.

I hauled the heavy cart into the chamber. Water sloshed in the barrels. Lyser knew I'd preformed some trickery, but had not the strength to suss out what.

"And? Will that be long enough?" The otter pusher her snoot into my face. My brain decided to classify this the most adorable telling off I'd ever received. "It may find a way in before then. Besides, even then, would you really chance heading off into the fog? Facing the thing again? Or will next spring become next summer become next year?"

"Going into the fog is suicide," Lyser said.

"Well, it is death by your hand or its, I will spare you the weight on your conscious," I told the rabbit. "Besides, if you really fear this thing I may as well face it."

"Face it?" otter asked.

"Fight it. Slay it, if I can."

"Hah! It will kill you as easily as it breathes!"

"Then you won't have to worry of me luring it in anymore. Either I dies or it does. Either way, you shall be spared."

"And when will you face this thing?" she asked.

"Two days time" I picked a suitably close time for preparation.

She laughed again. "Oh, this shall be a joy to see." She wiped a tear of mirth from her eye. "The gods finally do us a favor and send a threat that is too dumb for its own good." She laughed all the way out of Lyser's home.

Lyser said nothing for a while. "Who is Nebus?" he asked.

"What?"

"Nebus, the one whose pet Caprahema is. Who is he?" Lyser stared at me, daring me to answer.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"How about Aurus?"

That I knew. "They're the people in the coaches. They enforce laws and stuff on the people."

Lyser laughed. He doubled over laughing. A true laugh of one who is so exhausted that laughter is the only way to face the horror.

He poured himself a drink from one of his stronger alcohols. He offered me as well, as no matter what else he was a gracious host. I accepted.

"Aurus is the chief god around here. The Golden God. Head of the Golden Pantheon. The Fourth Pantheon," Lyser announced. "You've either been living in a very deep cave all your life or come from a world beyond this one to not know that."

"Nebus?"

"God of fog," Lyser gestured at the air. "The coaches are Aurus' theocracy. Enforcing his tyranny on his subjects.

"Aurus doesn't take kindly to outsiders. A prophecy of some sort. Heh. Legend says that the Third Pantheon had whole government institutions set up to integrate outsiders into society. You came here a few myriad years too late for that," he drank. I sipped.

"Caprahema is always wandering about the walls of the town. Glancing in, staring down folks. There was a point recently when it disappeared, though. It doing things different is not calming. You showed up shortly after. We all figured it had been watching you. Others have made it through the fog, but none have caught its attention as much as you."

I nodded, agreeing his suspicions were correct.

"We knew you were different the moment you arrived. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt because, well, that's what I do. But now I don't know." He said nothing for a great while. "Are you really going to fight it?"

"I have no choice now," I said.

"Mmm," he had fear in his tone. Fear that I would be killed, or worse.

**

The next day I set about making preparations. Lyser handled his work without me and without disappointment in my truancy. He had done this many times before me, after all.

I had no idea what I was facing, so I prepared as best I could. The ruins of Gullshit Crater provided me with plate metal with which I could work. An old smithy provided tools. I would not waste any fuel on fire for my work, as Lyser would need what he could for his own. I just made use of the tools available hammering and cutting the plate metal into the most unaesthetic suit of armor ever crafted. But it fit, sort of. I bashed a metal strip straight and cut its ends to leave the sharp edge behind. The most crude sword ever managed. Some of the smith tools would come with me as well. I scrounged up a few small knives. Those were probably my best hope of actually doing damage to this thing.

When the short winter day had ended I made my way back to Lyser's distillery. I was far from confident in my work, but I hoped it would do.

**

The next morning Ms. Herringbreath was there to see me off. The fit of laughter at seeing me in my armor showed any fears she had of eating craw were wiped away.

Lyser himself did not show any confidence in my ability. Many of the townsfolk came to watch me walk out of the city. Many laughed at the sight of me. Others stared trying to figure out if it was suppose to be a joke. A few had worried looks that the repercussions of this were to be far greater than expected.

I said nothing to any of them. I just marched north through the rubble of the crumbled city wall and into the fog. It watched me. I walked further out of the town. It still watched. I stopped when I felt I was far enough removed from the town. It circled slowly, just watching.

"What? Are you scared of me?" I asked. "Boo!" I shouted.

It accepted the challenge. Hooves clacked on stone, louder and louder. It became visible through the fog. Pet of an evil god had not been an exaggeration.

Goat was the closest animal to it. It was as tall as my chest; its pelt a sickly green color. Four red eyes adorned its face. That explained a few things. It had four horns, spiraled and twisted about one another. It snorted. It scraped the ground with its hoof.

"Well, come on then," I said.

It charged. I thrust my sword forward. The blade crumpled like thin, weak tin against the charging goats head. The animal plowed into me, its horns speared into my metal armor. We tumbled together across the rock. I pulled free and climbed to my feet. Many, many bones were broken. I had no time to take stock of them. The goat charged again and I leapt. It speared me again, its horn shoved straight into my pelvis. I stabbed a knife down into its back. My wrist turned and sprained as the blade glanced off the hide. I screamed my pain.

It forced me to the ground. It stomped on my chest. It stomped again. With what little strength I had left I forced myself up and thrust my second knife straight into its eyes. That worked, at least. It screamed. It reared up, it brought its hooves straight down on my head.

**

I lay in my makeshift bed in Lyser's distillery. I pulled myself up. My makeshift armor clanked. I checked myself over. The armor is pierced where the goat had impaled me. The stone had not mended my armor as it had my clothes in my first battle, likely as haphazard as the armor was to begin with there was no way to mend it in any meaningful sense of the word. I have no wounds, and my wrist is unbroken as well. I tap my pocket. The heavy stone is silent. But this answered many questions about if and how my regeneration would still work. Or rather it sort of answered them.

Well, at least I knew what I was up against now. I headed out into the street to face the crowd. My mind was on the beast. It was one of those impenetrable hide beasts common in myth. I thought through the myths and legends of how such creatures were defeated. I doubted I had the strength required to choke off this thing's airways no matter how the workout of hefting water barrels had buffed my arms. Also it did not seem to breath fire and I didn't have a ready supply of lead anyway. I did have a plan in mind, though, by the time I came to the crowd. They were watching my direction already. They'd need to be deaf not hear me clattering their way.

"You're alive!" Lyser beamed.

"I managed to get away," I said. I wasn't about to tip my hand to the truth if I didn't have to.

"You ran away!" Herringbreath cheered. "You're a fucking coward! I knew it!"

"I just had not known what to expect going into the fight," I said. "Now I have a better idea of what I'm up against."

She wasn't about to buy the discretion being the better part of valor argument. "A. Fucking. Coward."

"I heard it scream like I'd never heard it before," someone said from the crowd.

"I managed to stab an eye out," I realized this added to my story. "Part of how I was able to get away."

Herringbreath was stone still and silent at that. I knew what she feared. I addressed her. "If you still want me to slay that thing, I will do so at the next full moon."

She weighed her replies. Disdain for me won out, "Let's see it, then. You'll just run away again."

"Very well," I replied. I headed back toward the distillery.

Lyser caught up. He looked over my uninjured form, and the placement of the large holes in my armor. "How did -,"

I cut him off, "I got lucky." He would get no more than that.

**

The fog around the city meant you not see the sun, let alone the moon. On some days it was thin enough that you could make out when it was in fuller phases, but there were other ways to tell the phase around here. I did not have many days, but that was more than enough. I needed but two things. Most importantly was a long rope that I tied a wooden block about the end of. This would be one small bit Lyser would not be getting for his fire. I stuck a few bits of metal scraps on the end as well. They were not needed, but they might make things easier in the end.

The second thing was just to pound the dents out of my armor. I didn't worry about the holes. They'd be more trouble to fix than they were worth. Besides, I was beyond the point of thinking this was to protect me. I had a different plan in mind.

**

Lyser was even more worried when I headed out for my second battle with the beast in the early evening. Herringbreath had worry on her snout as well. So did a lot of the town. A few attempted to heckle. I said nothing to the lot as I headed east out of town. The winter air was cold.

The beast found me in short order. It snorted as it came out of the fog. It glared with its three remaining eyes. I swung my block about my side. Pity it had shaken the knife free from its gaping eye hole. "One down, three to go," I insulted.

It charged. I threw the block. It bounced off the head with no effect. I leapt aside just dodging the charge. Can't expect it to go right the first time. The goat skidded and turned. It charged again. I threw again. I missed. I dodged. It spun.

The third throw the rope snagged on the horns. Success! It rammed into me. My breath was gone. It's horn impaled my belly. But that very impalement held the rope in place in the horns. I clung to life and the back as the goat thrashed me about. It was hard, all things considered, but my hands worked to tie that rope around the horn. Success. I let myself be thrown to the ground. I pulled the top of my armor off. Blood poured from my wound. I didn't have much strength left, but I would make that little bit count.

It charged. I leapt forward. Its horns speared through the metal and into my chest.

**

I was back in the distillery, in my bed. I stretched and yawned as though I'd been asleep the whole time. I still had the bottom pants of my armor on. I removed them. They wouldn't help me with the next bit. Besides, I needed to sneak out.

**

I made my way to the wall skirting the crowd with torches as they peered into the darkness hoping for a glimpse of the action.

They could hear as well as I the clattering of wood on stone as the goat thrashed about. Good, it still had that thing tied.

I slipped to the shoreline through the cold dark fog. "Hey, fucker. I'm going to tie the next one around your balls."

The sound stopped. I felt the three eyes staring me dead. It charged. I braced myself. It came into view, that metal chest plate still stuck to its horns as well, as I'd hoped. It reached me and I leapt high. High enough to avoid the points of those horns, but their hard curls still pounded into my belly. The jagged metal of my chest plate cut my flesh. I tumbled over the thing's back and hooked my arms about it. It stumbled with the sudden shift in momentum. The rope caught under its legs. It tripped. We tumbled down the rocky slope into my true weapon of the evening; the sea.

It scrambled for purchase in the frigid water. I paddled outward, pushing us back. Not much, but enough. I had picked this time so the high spring tide would work to my favor. Every moment I kept the thing at sea the further shore would get. It scrambled, it fought, but it had nothing to purchase on. The metal stuck to its horns and the rope tangled about it confused and panicked it all the more. As I'd hoped. I had to hold out against the hypothermia long enough. A fire welled in my belly forcing me on.

I kept my arms clasped around its torso as it thrashed. Seawater stung its wounded eye. It shrieked its horror and pain into the air. I laughed as best I could against the salt water splashing into my mouth.

It forced its muzzle up to the air for a deep breath. I leapt on its head, forcing it down. The goat got a big lungful of salt water. It coughed and spurted under the water but I held it down. I wrapped the rope about both of us. I clung to consciousness just long enough to feel Caprahema's fade. I still somewhat wonder whether hypothermia or drowning got me first.

**

Again, I was back in the distillery in my bed. The deed was done. I had one last thing to do, but that would wait a little while. I rolled over and went to sleep.

**

In the morning, at low tide, I snuck down to the shore. I looked out over the water. I feared this would be more of a challenge and require more regeneration than I expected. But fate favored me this morning. Not long before the meager morning light glinted off the metal I'd tied to the block. The wooden block bobbed on the surface just a few yards from shore. I retrieved it, and pulled the rope to haul the carcass of the Caprahema to shore. This had been the true reason for the block and rope. I needed proof the thing was dead, and that would be hard to come by if it was lost to sea. The rope aiding me in tripping and restraining the beast were mere side benefits.

I hauled the carcass into town. Most of the townsfolk had given up and went to bed but a handful stayed. Many of them jumped and cheered and ran to me when they saw. The children were especially joyful, offering a few disrespectful kicks to the departed beast behind me.

Herringbreath and Lyser were horrified, though. I knew why. I'd known the only thing they feared more than the beast was it not being there. With it here Aurus' goons didn't bother with the town. They figured Caprahema would keep everything in check. They'd eventually learn it was gone, and they'd be here to begin their particular brand of tyranny. And if this was indeed the beloved pet of a ruling deity, there would be extra repercussions for that. I didn't simply kill a monster terrorizing a town, I killed the prison warden. And now the wrath of those who'd put that warden in charge would come down.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?!" Herringbreath demanded.

"I did what you requested," I said pointedly.

She was flustered in her rage. "Get out! Go! Leave! Never come back!"

"As you wish," I said. I walked toward the distillery.

Lyser followed. He didn't say anything, but I knew what he was thinking. I gathered my meager things.

"Here, I'll make you some provisions," the rabbit worked wrapping up cheeses, meats, and breads. He stowed in a few bottles of his liquors as well. I had a pack that careful rationing of would keep me alive for a fair few weeks. "I'll, uh, show you a way out as well."

He led me through the city to one of the old barricaded doors. He started prying the wood off. I helped, of course.

"Why are you helping me like this?" I asked.

"Killing that thing, it will make our lives harder in the end, really," he said.

"I gathered."

"But, well, as you might guess, I'm no fan of Aurus and his buddies. And there are prophecies," he looked in the direction of where the Caprahema lay, "And you did kill that thing." He paused. "Good job on that, by the way."

"Thank you."

We'd worked a hole large enough for me to squeeze through.

"This goes underground a long ways. When it comes out it'll be on an ancient path. It's mostly grown over by now, but hopefully it can still be followed. It will take you to the city of Goldtower. I'm assuming that's a place you'll want to go."

"I have no idea," I said.

He chuckled. "Of course not. But, I hope your good luck holds out."

**

I headed down into the dark abyss. I lit a small torch for guidance. The stairs were stone, no, brick going down into long stone tunnels. A horror dawned on me as I realized where I was. There were iron rails in sunken grooves. This was a subway system. This world had had that level of technology at one point. I asked myself what the hell had happened, but of course I knew the answer. Aurus.