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The tower's roof was not the best choice of arena. It was wide enough that they had no real threat of falling off, that was good, but as Paean's lindworm servants put up their torches, on little stands, Raguel saw that the whole floor was the same smooth marble. If he was made to fall at the wrong angle, or if he missed a swing, he could break something.

He also had no idea how strong Paean was, or what he could do. The bright green snakes resting on his broad gold shoulders were a part of him - they weren't as big as arms, but they'd serve as extra limbs. Raguel could see that Paean's skin wasn't human: it was covered in small, smooth scales.

"I'll allow no biting, either," Paean said. "I promise."

Paean had given Raguel no reason not to trust him to keep to all these arbitrary rules except his general capriciousness. He was a serpent, too, which made measuring truth in his words impossible. Raguel wondered if there was even any law here - if Paean did anything as leader except as he pleased.

"What about killing?"

"You've an ungodly obsession with death." Paean walked around Raguel, measuring him up. They'd stripped, though there had been no point in Paean's case, as the tiny cloth around his waist didn't conceal anything - whatever his particulars were, they were internal. After a long few moments under Paean's eye, Raguel's caught something on the floor -- Paean's footprints had stopped, and a slow shuffling replaced them. "No, I don't mean to kill you."

"Paean," Raguel said, looking around his feet, around - "Paean, this has to be cheating."

Where Paean's legs had been, there was now a fat serpent's body, beginning where a pelvis would be - it thickened and then tapered, and covered a good deal of the floor around them. In fact, the majority of Paean was now this great snake. Somewhere in his journey around Raguel, he'd changed from walking to slithering.

"This is my normal body," he explained.

"You could have said that before."

"Could, yes. Are you ready?"

"This does not impress me, Paean."

"Get ready."

Raguel hopped over the many loops of Paean, convinced he was about to be humiliated or killed, and squatted down. Paean's body shifted to form a series of S-shaped loops behind his waist, arms ready. So, he would use his arms -- good.

"Whomever holds the other's head to the ground for a count of four," Paean said, gesturing to a sea-green lindworm at the roof's pillared edge, "wins our game. What that means, we will discover when someone wins. Pattle here will keep score."

"Hello," said Pattle. Raguel gave a masculine, but respectful, jut with his jaw, by way of saying hello. Raguel felt Pattle's opinion of Raguel sharply lowering, and before he could correct his mistake by saying hello back, the serpent broke eye contact pulled himself over to the pair with his two legs and tail.

Pattle held up his claw between them, then lowered it, and Raguel leapt out of the way of Paean's lunge. The patterns of his body shifted along his coils in a confusing wave as it moved, and a thick pile of Paean swung to knock Raguel off his knees.

Raguel saved himself with his hands, deftly leapt up, and secured his arms around Paean's chest from behind. He had wrestled monsters before, and either Paean was very in control of his strength, or he wasn't quite as strong as Isaac was.

The grip was unsteady, though. Paean's 'normal body' was drier than the sheen implied, but very smooth, to the point of being an uncanny sort of slippery. Raguel's attempt to squeeze him just led to him sliding and falling off. He gripped Paean's wrists correctly, and gave one hard pull, trying to get control - but he fell onto a pile of looping muscular rope, knees and ankles slipping inside. Paean secured himself, and started to twist round.

His smile was infuriating.

"Come on," he said, moving his wrists up and down in Raguel's grip, "you can do better." The end of Paean's tail slid from the pile and around Raguel's thighs, securing them together such that his ankles were forced further from each other, and Raguel's balance was then completely dependent on the snake around him.

Paean’s tail flowed in a corkscrew upwards, around Raguel, and Raguel held onto Paean's forearms as tight as he could, thrashing the rest of his body back and forth with decreasing vigour. Raguel had very much lost this game, and he knew it once the priest's coils tightened. As the softly moving gyre climbed him, the coils around Raguel’s body grew fat and heavy.

"So much better," Paean whispered. "Can't you, Raguel?" Raguel growled, and Paean's eyebrows - or the stripes of black scales passing for eyebrows - raised up, like an impressed parent. Paean's tail crept under Raguel's chin and around his neck, over his ear, through his hair.... and down, somewhere else. Raguel squeezed his chin down, trying to trap or hurt Paean there, but Paean's frictionless scales allowed the helix around him to just keep thickening and tightening. Raguel was almost choked.

Almost. The tail constricted him further, tight enough that it would normally have caused some pain, but not above the neck. His head was merely held. They were over his ears, too, so he couldn't hear what Paean was saying. He could feel Paean's heartbeat, or his pulse, wherever the monster's damn heart was, all over him.

The bands of muscle shifted a little, freeing his left ear but tightening the grip over his head. It was a bizarrely pleasant feeling, being engulfed like this, like when sleep pulled back at you on waking up. With every breath out, he felt the world shrink.

"I was supposed to tell you something while we fought, Raguel." Raguel let go of Paean's arms and banged his fists on the still-slithering tail around him, struggling for dear life. Somehow it managed an iron grip on him, but was too slippery to be effectively resisted at all. "You're not tired yet, are you?"

Raguel tried to say, 'Get it over with,' but he couldn't move his jaw for the tail around his neck.

"All right. Struggle, though. Struggle first, then I will speak to you."

Raguel's hands clenched into fists, and Raguel twisted himself with all his strength, an effort he had not made with anything before. He had killed demons with his bare hands - their physical forms, as opposed to possessing spirits. He had controlled an errant bull on his father's lands when he was a boy. He could not get out of Paean's hold: in fact, all he was really moving was his hands.

Paean gingerly took them in his own.

"Now," Paean said, nose close to Raguel's. "Are you ready to hear what I have to say?"

Raguel tried to spit, but drooled instead. The sliding of Paean's great body over him had slowed, and the grip grown so tight, that he let out a long, slow groan from released tension.

Though he wouldn't have discussed it, the way Raguel was squeezed was pure pleasure. It did not feel like pain at all. After months of travel, climbing, and carrying his armour and equipment, the pressure Paean put on Raguel’s strained muscle was the opposite of the torture it could have brought another man.

"Good lad. Now. Look at me." With Herculean effort, Raguel opened his eyes. "There are things about we Hierophants you were not told, Raguel. We know the Order of Saint Parthos intimately - you see, we founded it."

Raguel squirmed. Well, he thought that he squirmed, while he went limp with a very gentle sigh.

"Well – well, I say ‘we founded it… We did. After a fashion. You'll understand eventually." That smell was everywhere now. It was all Raguel could breathe. The scaly skin enclosing Raguel did not get more or less oily as time went on, as the night grew inexplicably hotter around them, so it wasn’t the smell of Paean’s sweat. This was confusing. "The school of sorcery your order uses against monsters was not particularly effective against anything not created by Satan. Through great effort and sacrifice, we began to attract the attention of your god, divine his will, and perform it, and this helped with more mundane things less directly related to Christian mores. A relationship was forged. Knowledge was exchanged, in dreams and omens, and our miracles grew strong."

Raguel was unsure how to really absorb what Paean was saying. That the founders became apostates was popular gossip among the folk of their territories, but nothing like this.

Paean's lidless eyes glanced down, perhaps over Raguel, perhaps over a memory. His thumbs idly stroked Raguel's palms. His coils were ever so slightly looser than they were before, and Raguel could breathe, slowly, deeply.

"They - we - erm. We ended up hearing more than we ought to have." Paean sighed. "We worked out how to get more information than the omens were meant to give us. A ritual was created, rather than received. A miracle of beatitude and ascension. We decided we were going to become powerful with the light of the lord, suffuse our bodies with it, so that we could conquer all your god's enemies whenever they came out of the Earth, wherever they were. Vainglorious, we wanted a new Empire for Christ, the power to force others to his side."

Raguel's hands held Paean's, now. He told himself this was for balance. He was starting to enjoy the smell. Woody, and nearly sour.

"That wasn’t what happened. We performed the ritual, certain we would become angels, or something. I remember light, and agony, and then an absence. Some of our souls - and the part of us that was in your god's divine image - ascended, and absorbed the power of the angels, and became something like angels themselves, strong and bright, and free from sin. I and my two brothers were left behind. You see - those angel-selves, the ascended we, they left for Heaven once they sensed it. These great heroes, that we were, gained heavenly grace and used it to reach and rattle the gates of Heaven, demanding entry, demanding eternal life, for three hundred years. They could have had it by waiting another forty-two years. They have slain not one demon, saved not one soul."

He emphasised the word ‘they’ bitterly. Maybe he missed that part of himself. Paean was now whispering into Raguel's ear, now, and Raguel leaned in, as much that he was capable of in Paean's amiable stranglehold. Despite being naked, being wrapped around, Raguel felt a bizarre need to be closer to Paean, to offer something that would comfort him.

"Me - and my brothers - my brothers and I, I should say, were left behind, as I said. Shells, then. The world itself filled what had been divine with the primordial. We are now magical, but fleshly. Pagan, in that we have each changed our views on theology, on the world, on morality... I am no longer empty, little Brother, but changed."

Pattle was getting impatient, as no wrestling had taken place for the last while, but he felt too awkward about viewing the intimate scene to interrupt.

"But," Raguel tried to say. Paean courteously released his friend’s neck. "You saw God. Part of you did. You have seen demons. Killed them. That shows you that the lord your God is real, that Hell is real, and that His --"

"It doesn't show that, not in the way you’re thinking," Paean interrupted, in a conspiratory tone. "The command that you worship no other god but him is not evidence there are no other gods than him, nor that the world was made in six days, nor any of that. The being is real. His scripture needn't be. I have left his service, and not being human, he wouldn't want it anyway. Now, Raguel. You have allowed me to tell a secret I have held close to myself for three centuries. Defeat me."

"What?" Paean's coils loosened more and more. Raguel adjusted himself so he was able to lean against, stand on, sit on whatever of Paean was still there, not wanting to lose the smooth touch so soon.

"Hold my face," Paean said, quietly, and Raguel obeyed, his hands shaking. "Push me to the ground and count to four."

Raguel laughed, and he shook his head, his sweat-slicked hair swinging like so much seaweed. The coils still gripped him up to his waist, holding him just off the ground.

"No, please, do it. Win."

Pattle tutted. That brought Raguel back to himself, and he smiled, and gently wriggled his legs free of heavy but compliant coils, pushing Paean slowly down to the floor.

Raguel counted, panting, sweating, and when he was done, Pattle spoke:

"That's you done. Can I go?"

Paean nodded, and mouthed an apology to the gold-eyed wyrm.

Raguel didn't see the obscene gesture the referee serpent gave in return, as he was happy lying where he was.

Paean's coils returned, but as a pile again, covering the two.

They slept like this, happy and - in Raguel's case - exhausted. This was the best way to absorb the information Paean had given him. Sleep.

-

"There's a plague of worms in our lands," Raguel explained - a long last - at dawn. "We believe the Lord's favour has waned, or that you three have conspired to send it."

"Would you believe that I have no ill will towards humans? Towards Christians?" Paean stroked Raguel's cheek. Raguel still lay on top of Paean's human body, with the provost's black, brown and gold coils covering them both. "'Worm' is occasionally the word for us, but I do not create parasites. The spider-folk sometimes birth parasitic creatures by accident, but they're always man-sized..."

He kneaded his fingers into the back of Raguel's neck, thinking on the problem. Raguel did not remember anyone else's voice, lying there with him.

"My great skill as a holy witch was healing, though half of my victories were luck," he said, absently. "My sons and daughters - like Ghum, whom you met - all have some healing power. I can give you some of it - without making you one of my brood, of course, your Order would kill you if your teeth were wrong. I do not think it would solve the problem of demon worms, but what do I know, anymore?"

A thought struggled to the fore in Raguel's mind. He wanted to go back to sleep.

"Will I be taken further from God by your power?"

"No more than that ankh does. Your god is not as forgiving as he claims to be, but he does forgive. I'll teach you some of my healing spells before you leave, Raguel, since I could not offer a cure. I apologise."

Raguel looked up.

"Apologies aren't allowed on the roof, though."

"Shut up, Raguel."