I gaped at the city before me, my head turning right. It was the oddest-looking city I’d ever seen. The ocean roared to my left, seagulls cawing on the wind. Unlike the frigid hellhole I’d come from, it was pleasantly warm, almost hot to my cold nose and freezing hands, and the soft sea breeze had a pleasant smell. That was normal enough.

  No, what was weird was that the city looked like it had been placed within a giant ribcage, the spine starting in the earth and curving upward, arching through the center of the city and leading into a mountain. Figures dotted it, like they were using it as a road. Skeletal hands, enormous in size, grasped what I presumed were the gates, which were enormous and currently swung open.

  The buildings were somehow even weirder. They were…geometric? They reminded me of crystals, perfectly ordered, with odd angles. Squares, prisms, triangles. There were no uneven buildings, or anything my grandmother would’ve fondly remarked ‘had character.’ The structures had even been carved into the mountain itself, leading up to a particularly large prism with a pyramid on top.

  All of it was white. Perfect, pristine white.

  I stood on a road that was narrow, small, and somehow empty. Heavy trees bowed under the weight of their branches, putting most of it in deep shade. Directly before me, I saw a wide, paved road, and it was chock full of people going both ways. Donkeys brayed, and people in colorful tunics roared greetings, or squabbled with enthusiasm. Leading from the city to docks, I imagine? Was New Sins a trade port? I mean, it probably had to be. What coastal city wasn’t a hotbed of trade?

  I stepped forward. Wait, my stomach. I looked down.

  The gaping hole in my armor remained, rust and decay having eaten through most of it, but I was whole again. The wound was gone. I crouched, setting Cato down again. He hadn’t woken up, but I was going to try to bring him back to the land of the living. Mostly because the bastard was still covered in a mountain of viscera, and I didn’t fancy getting food and a nap at an inn with a man who looked like he murdered for funsies slung across my shoulders.

  To be honest, I didn’t even know if that would have been an incorrect assumption. Something in Cato’s expression when he had pried that man’s ribs open...yeah. No, don’t think about that Teddy. Hell. I didn’t have anything left to vomit.

  I set about yanking off the defiled armor. If it was anything like those people who had helped me, it would crumple to dust. I looked down at my shirt and blanched. It and my cloak were suffering a similar fate. Fuck. I yanked the two off. My breast binding hadn’t been touched, which was nice, because I needed it.

  Speaking of needing things, my shovel--

  Was on the ground next to me. It was decaying, but unlike my armor and clothing, which were rapidly becoming dust, the shovel’s rusting had stopped. I swallowed. Did I want to touch it?

  I reached out, tentatively grabbing the wood.

  A little notification popped up in the center of my HUD. CURSED: Visit the temple of Fides, God of Faith, to be purged. Blessed weapon will be unusable until that time.

  Okay. I clasped the shovel to my belt. Good to know. God of Faith, huh? What had Pietho said? She was the ‘Goddess of Speech’ in the Raid’s ‘lore,’ but in actuality, the AI cursed with the ‘preference of propaganda.’

  Didn’t understand what the last bit meant, but I was savvy enough to grasp that the Gods seemed to be the AI from previous Raids. Did they just pop into the game and then out of it?

  Did I really want to meet another of Cato’s siblings? Also, again, did I really have a choice?

  Yeah. There was also that. Cato was an AI. Fuck, that seemed surreal. I was trying my best to avoid thinking about it too hard, or else my ass would panic, and my ass had done enough panicking recently to last me a lifetime. He was the AI this whole fucking Raid seemed to revolve around. He seemed human enough, in my eyes, other than the ‘rip a bitch’s heart out for a lark’ bit. Then again, if he was a true AI like the kind you’d find in sci-fi novels and TV shows and movies…why wouldn’t he feel human?

  I could accept that. What I didn’t understand was why he was even here. Wasn’t he supposed to be the end boss of this Raid, or something like that? Like the big turtle dude the little guy in the red hat fought? I needed a lot of answers that I just didn’t have.

  Well. I’d figured out what Cato was lying about.

  Now, I needed to see if I could get him to actually explain, now that I’d caught him in the lie. Could we really not go our separate ways, for one? If not, what the fuck was a Limiter? What was I actually supposed to do? Why had I been yanked from two thousand years ago and reborn here and now, just to follow Cato around?

  He’d come and found me, on second thought. He’d known where I was, when I hadn’t a single clue.

  Too much shit. I needed to prioritize. I grimaced. I was glad it was warm, because I didn’t have any spare bits of clothing. Hopefully, the breast binding read more like a sports bra and less like a crime.

  I looked down at my chest and frowned. Yeah, there was little hope of that. I’d been cursed with giant tits. I’d avoided going on sports bra-like adventures on the rare occasions I’d gone to a gym because just having honkers made the damn bra look inappropriate. Shit was unfair.

  Well, hopefully I didn’t get tossed in a medieval clink for public indecency.

  My infection had spread, which was worse news by far. It had made steady progress, almost doubling in size, looking increasingly like I had a black spider web of veins placed beneath my skin. Well, shit. It didn’t hurt, at least, though it still pulsed at odd times, and I had a compulsion to scratch at the skin.

  I pulled up my HUD. My health, for the first time in a while, was at 20/20. The scroll flashed in the bottom corner. Huh. Bet I’d gained levels post murdering the Herald. Wonder what that meant, long term. Something to sort later. My Freezing debuff was gone, and my Exhaustion stacks had hit 7. The Inevitable debuff hadn’t changed at all. I allowed my HUD to fade away and rubbed at the goosebumps on my arm.

  Okay, so I couldn’t fix my clothing issue right now. I could maybe fix my hunger, and a place to rest. I didn’t have any money, but I’d be surprised if White-hair was broke.

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  Right, so my first order of business was getting Cato to wake up from his post-murder nap.

  I crouched next to him and poked his arm. Predictably, no response. I shook his shoulder. Nothing. I reached for a handful of his gore-drenched hair and gave it a light yank. Bastard didn’t even twitch.

  His heart had healed itself. I’d watched that happen before my very eyes. Besides, I’d gone from being dead to topped off due to my deal with Peitho, and she’d promised to heal both me and Cato.

  So, why wasn’t he waking up?

  “Hey. Hey! Cato, buddy, my man. Dude. Bro,” I called, raising my voice. “You in there?”

  Nothing.

  “Fucker. Asshole? Dickhead. Cocksnuggler. Wigglebitch. Speedypenis.” I poked him in his side. “You gotta wake your sorry ass up and talk to me, because I think we’re both sick of carrying each other.”

  His eyebrow twitched. I grinned.

  “So you are listening to me. Man, I bet you hate that. Cat-shit-on-a-stick. Tapdancing-dick-wick.”

  Slowly, one golden eye opened. It glowered at me, baleful and tired. “Take that wretched temerity of yours and use it to perish, lest I finish myself off from the agony of your ridiculous, nonsensical insults.”

  I laughed, half-relief and half-real humor. “The Yap-man returns! Hey, White-hair, how’re you doing?”

  The single golden eye narrowed. “Why are you without sufficient clothing? Unless you crave thrusting your chest tissue out into the open air?”

  “Do my ginormous honkers offend you?” I grinned wider. It lasted a few seconds before it slid off. “So, uh, after you got shot twice and completely lost your shit, I might’ve gotten gutted by the Herald. I’m fine now, but my armor and cloak and tunic didn’t survive the flagrant murder-touching.”

  “That is a ridiculous title for your bosom,” He sniffed, lip curling. He was, bless him, the most predictable of assholes. He opened his other eye, and then his brow burrowed. Abruptly, he snapped up at the waist.

  This was unfortunate, because our skulls promptly conked together. I yelped and fell back on my butt, rubbing at the pained spot on my skull. “White-hair! What was that?”

  The man seemed entirely unfazed by the immediate agony he’d put both of us in, and instead he shoved a finger in my face.

  “You were gutted by the Herald?” he said. “Ridiculous, we could not be--”

  His eyes swiveled around him. For the first time, I think he realized we were no longer in a snowy forest. I had the rare pleasure of seeing the Yap-man himself struck speechless. I rubbed my head for the final time and leaned forward, crossing my legs and letting my hands dangle loosely between them. He’d speak when he wanted to, and I wasn’t particularly keen to rush him for the lecture.

  Still, without talking, he stood up. His eyes swept around, focused on New Sins, on the coast, on the people on the main road in the distance. I put an elbow on my leg and a chin on my palm, waiting.

  His eyes unfocused in a way I’d realized I’d seen happen several times earlier. I wondered what he was doing. Accessing the equivalent of an internet, maybe? I was regretting my insufficient tech knowledge, but to be honest, I didn’t know how much 2016 tech would help me in 4328. Probably very little.

  Those eyes of his refocused, and his nostrils flared.

  “What have you done?” he hissed. “How long did I sleep?”

  I scratched at my cheek. “An hour, maybe? And I figured out what you were lying to me about, and made a deal with a devil. One of your sisters?”

  Cato stared at me. I’d struck him speechless twice, in the same conversation. I think that meant that I was winning.

  I waggled an eyebrow at him. One of his hands clenched into a tight fist. He actually leaned down, and my amusement faded. His eyes were losing their whites again. Well, shit.

  “You will explain immediately what has occurred, in appropriate detail,” he said, softly furious, the sort that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

  I swallowed and grimaced. “You failed our quest. Tore the heart out of the dude who attacked us in your post-I-got-shot-and-I’m-pissed rage. Remember that ‘divine intervention’ you told me about? That happened, right when you and I were both getting murdered by the Herald.”

  I decided to not tell him that I’d killed the Herald. Couldn’t imagine that conversation going smoothly, either.

  “You claim I have lied,” he said sharply. “And that whatever entity entered the world was kin to me?”

  “Yeah.” I raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me what a Limiter actually does, since you’re a--”

  A blood-covered glove snapped over my mouth. Those round pupils of his had become cat-like slits behind his glasses again, and he trembled in veritable fury. “If you have any sense in a single yoctogram of your body, you will employ it thusly. Do not speak either word aloud, lest you crave the violence that brought us to this accursed point.”

  I tried my best not to gag. Human blood was across my face, and my stomach did a couple backflips at the thought. I nodded vigorously, and Cato withdrew the hand, flicking it in that way of his. How I was more disgusting than the gore he was carting around, I had nary a clue, but I wasn’t asking, either.

  I rubbed the back of my arm across my face. Alas, no cloth to clean myself, other than my pants and makeshift bra binding, and I wasn’t gonna take either of those off.

  “Which one did you encounter?”

  “Of your, uh…” I trailed off. “The gods?” I said, finally. “Peitho.”

  He laughed. Then, that weird, snarling echo that made me want to back away slowly. “Of course, that I should be so well and poorly-favored. The exact terms of your deal?”

  “They sucked, but it was either that or die.” I said.

  “Enumerate them to me, immediately.”

  “She gets to ask me to comply with four of her requests, following them to the letter, and in their intended spirit.”

  Cato turned away from me in a snap. I saw his hands clenching and unclenching, and he took careful, perfectly-timed breaths.

  Actually, I bet they really were perfectly timed, down to the millisecond, or whatever. Probably smaller, but I didn’t really know the super tiny versions of units.

  “You realize the magnitude of what she can demand?” he said, abrupt. “That she will call upon you to perform the worst of crimes, and you must endeavor to do so, or perish in the way intended?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I do not think you do, or you would be begging for my absolution,” he snapped, turning on me, his robe flaring around him.

  I bristled. “I didn’t fail that quest,” I said. “You did. I tried to stop you. I tried to save you--”

  “What did you think should occur upon my taking two bolts to the heart, with no healing to waylay the damage?” he hissed. “I had a fail-safe that activated, instead of being in the capable hands of a functional Healer, and now both of us pay the price for your fear and failure.”

  I swallowed, and glanced away. He was…kind of right, unfortunately. I’d been given a God-awful hand, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d handled it all real poorly. On the other, I didn’t exactly know how to conquer the fear I had. To my memory, I’d burned to death….what, a few days ago?

  I took a deep breath. My shoulders hunched. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Yeah, Cato was being a massive dick about it, and he owed me several apologies himself. However, I wasn’t getting those, and him owing me apologies didn’t affect the amount of apologies I owed him.

  “Will your apology change anything of value?” he said, sneering. “No? Then spare me the expenditure of air and sound waves.”

  “Are you sure we can’t go our own ways?” I asked.