A botfly sat on the wall and watched the battle unfold. Its presence in the chamber, effectively a rotten swamp framed by stone, would have been unsurprising on Earth. In this world stripped of life worth exploiting, even the parasites were an uncommon sight. Although Arkeidos and the queen of steel were occupied with one another, the double-headed eagle circling above them could have noticed the tiny spy.

Still and clad in enchantments, the fragment of the Horned Rat remained. The god himself leaned against the other side of the solid rock, isolating the arena from the rest of the chamber. Rodents scurried around his feet, squeaking, occasionally melding with his body before peeling back out of his skin. Each passing moment, he learned a little more about the layout of the structure.

While the legion of lesser wills in his being scouted, he continued to observe Lydia’s efforts.

The queen of steel held a rapier that had been reduced to a fully translucent blade. All but the necessary minimum of its materials had been drawn from Strimata and formed a flexible wall that Lydia whirled around. Arkeidos was always on her trail. It was a merciless display of dominance, interrupted only when Reika used her ability to boost Lydia’s power.

‘Two to twenty seconds… not a reliable pattern,’ the Horned Rat thought, following the battle patiently. There was nothing to be gained from intervening ahead of time. Lydia’s survival was advantageous for his future schemes. He had an agreement with her. The Horned Rat did not go back on his contracts. He was a schemer, a trickster even, and those had times when they could be trusted. There were harsher words for those that could never be believed.

For the time being, Lydia survived on her own. It was a rare opportunity to see the goddess of emperorship in action, even if her true power was yet untapped. Information of Lydia’s battle prowess was easier to find. A renewed evaluation of his asset was appreciated.

Lydia stepped to the side. A blade of torrenting water sliced the stone. One careless step, and it would rend her flesh from bone. The blue tyrant pursued, step for step. Each dominating gesture, the world responded to. Water rose, arc for arc, brackish and dark, and spilled over the corridors. Assemblies of a millennia of wealth, covered in filth.

More and more, the tyrant ramped up his efforts. Commanding waves turned into aggressive, near dancing steps. Continuously, the auburn-haired queen skipped backwards. Water hammered down where she had been. Narrow, narrowed, until the slamming muck ripped her off her feet.

All of the water pulled back rapidly. Both hands raised, Arkeidos commanded it into a tidal wave that gathered before him. Reika cried; Lydia’s speed visibly increased. A truly predictable panic reaction, already countered by the sheer scale of the flood unleashed.

The tsunami spilled around Arkeidos’ form, the blue unfazed by the force of the rancid fluid. All of it collapsed on top of Lydia. She tried to run, to reach for Reika’s feet. The foaming torrent swallowed them both, hiding them from all eyes. All but the smoothest or heaviest of objects in the decorated hall were torn away by the force of the water.

The wave spread over the basins, tainting all walkways that previously had been naked, clean stone. Shoring against the border of a pool, Lydia came to a sudden and doubtlessly painful halt. A few metres away from her, an eagle with drenched feathers slid over the mud.

Lydia bowed over, spitting out filth, struggling to rise. The water around her flowed through grids, fed into the system of designed stagnancy. Heavy footsteps approached, then stopped. A large, clawed hand grabbed the queen by the arm.

“And who – or what – would you be?” Arkeidos asked, beholding the one-armed creature raising his opponent.

The Horned Rat tilted his bare head. Teeth creaked, red eyes flared. A long, wet tongue lashed through the air, tasting the extent of the rot. “I’m what you don’t know, tyrant of your world,” the god responded with hate and ridicule in his voice. “The might behind and beyond many conquerors, the one who pulls all strings.”

Bowing down to Lydia, the Horned Rat beheld her expression. The stoicism almost managed to mask the mixture of relief and disgust reflecting in her eyes. Her red lips parted, spitting a blotch of something rotten on the floor. Before she could address him, the Horned Rat turned his attention back to the Emperor.

“I’m the mind that controls from afar. Beyond your grasp, grasp so weak. I’m a true ruler, with no vassals, only puppets eternal. All I hold, I hold through understanding, not might.”

“And that puts you beyond a conqueror? A ridiculous notion.” Arkeidos raised one hand and the waters obeyed. All that had spread out after the wave was pulled back into a pillar of filth.

The Horned Rat turned from it, turning his back and the stump that remained of his tail to Arkeidos. “Be useful,” he hissed at the two-headed goddess on the ground. A burst of arcane energy dried her feathers. She shuddered the crust off, while the Horned Rat’s remaining left arm bulged, the present muscles swelling beyond all reason.

With incredible force, he threw Lydia. Her human limbs flailed while she cut through the air gracelessly. The Horned Rat forced his skull into a sadistic grin. Slowly, his horned head hanging as his hunched back twisted, he raised his deflating arm towards Arkeidos.

The tide of brackish muck collapsed on top of the Horned Rat. Blue and purple mana flickered around his fingers, breaking the water, until he willed different magic channels into his flesh. Nerves fired with pain as flesh was rendered anew. White flickered through the blue, soon overtaking it entirely. The unsteady, magical barrier became a solid shield. Like a predator on the prowl, the Horned Rat advanced through the tsunami.

Without warning, the water resistance vanished. The four armed simulacrum broke through the remainder of the animated liquid. Arkeidos pelted the surface of the shield in attacks, until he broke through. One of his fists – ‘CRACK!’ – smashed into the Horned Rat’s head, forcing the god to tumble backwards.

Part of the bone around his right eye crumbled. Shards bounced on the soaked floor, yellow tinged white that looked appropriate next to the ground. Screaming, the Horned Rat covered the eye with his sole hand. Through fingers peered a brown iris amid naked, wrinkly flesh.

Teeth parting wide, the Horned Rat mutated the mana channels in his throat. Among acid spit, a crude blast of red arcane slammed into the Emperor. It continuously pushed him back, while the Horned Rat’s skull continued to crumble, revealing more and more vulnerable meat under the bone.

His teeth slammed shut, abruptly ending the beam. “This would be over already if I had both of my arms,” he growled at the tyrant. “Too bad, bad indeed. That piece of me is busy devastating your little underground settlement.” He laughed in a devilish tone. “Quite the impressive magical circuitry you have built. It was a pleasure dismantling it. Jevaine should be dead by now.”

Arkeidos instantly reacted. Two of his arms commanded streams of water to slam into the Horned Rat. One, then the other, they connected, throwing the large body of the god off balance. Then the Emperor was in front of the trickster god, his remaining two hands raised and about to descend.

A new shield of silver mana blocked the attack. Arkeidos, knowing he had previously broken through, kept pressing. The colour of the shield turned from translucent to opaque. For several seconds they struggled.

With a squelching sound, a renewed arm shot out of the shoulder socket. Slick with a clear, slimy fluid, like a freshly hatched bird, the limb turned at the chest of the tyrant unable to see its creation. Only when the fingertips carved into the semi-liquid armour, did Arkeidos notice it.

Pressure on the shield diminished only after the Horned Rat discontinued fuelling it. His left ripped through and grasped Arkeidos. “It is always easiest to manipulate the desperate,” the god growled with deep seated contempt. The arcane power he channelled into the fingers of his right arm broke through the back of Arkeidos.

Creeping his claws through the surface, the Arc Rays of silver continuously cut through armour and crystal. The back of the Horned Rat boiled, spider legs bursting out, their hardened tips ready to prevent the Emperor’s attempt to escape. Any such attempt was foiled not by the god’s preparedness, but a series of unexpected shocks.

A flicker of brown came first, spreading through the blue mist the simulacrum exuded. The control of the armour visibly seized up for a few seconds. An effect the Horned Rat had seen before, had felt himself, the magical discharge punishing a spread consciousness for the death of a part of it. Half a minute passed before the more fascinating effect occurred.

At different parts of his body, fractured memories burst from his form. Like geysers, they exploded out from within, images on cascades of stained glass. They were gone too quickly for the Horned Rat to make sense of the small images. After seven of such explosions, a green flicker followed.

Capitalizing on that second loss of control, the Horned Rat discarded all defensive measures. Massive arcane energy tore the remains of the lich’s soul crystal to pieces. From one moment to the next, the animating will was gone and the Poseidury reverted to its natural liquid state, blasting outwards in a cone.

The Horned Rat shook his hands, cleaning them of the remaining metal. The most nightmarish elements of his appearance withdrew under the skin. With no more use for the deception, he regrew his tail. ‘That was easier than it should have been,’ he thought and covered his injured eye again. Concentrating on the injury, he admitted to himself, ‘For the most part.’

When the animal eye was replaced with the malevolent flicker of red once again, the god turned around. With terrible leisure, he strolled towards where Reika and Lydia had landed. When he was in speaking range, the disciplined asset complained, “Was it appropriate to throw me like that?!” Her voice betrayed true anger, the way she held her shoulder that she had lodged it back into place.

“I decide what is appropriate,” the Horned Rat responded with pure amusement. Both the queen and her patron goddess stared with disdain at the amalgamation of bad omens. ‘As it should be,’ the skull-faced schemer thought. “Regardless, it appears three of his bodies are dismantled, and I expect a cascade to follow. The rebounds and that fascinating damage done to his soul – yes, yes, none of the other combatants would miss these opportunities to deliver decisive strikes.”

Still holding her shoulder, Lydia rose to her feet. “It’s a disadvantage of strategies hatched and executed by single minds that they have flaws unfixable by the one.”

Cackling, the Horned Rat lowered his head down hers. She did not flinch, not even when his breath hit her. Admittedly, the foulness he could conjure did barely match the vile gunk she was covered in. “Are you commenting on his strategy or questioning mine?”

Lydia elected not to answer that. Perhaps she had learned that, even if she was in the right, he was the greater rhetorician. More likely, she did not care to give him advice that would aid him. Theirs was an alliance of convenience, aimed at a singular goal. Trust went as far as interests aligned.

“Arcanely gifted as you are, Richard, certainly you must be aware how to continue our path?” she asked instead.

The Horned Rat rubbed his chin and hummed as if he had to contemplate. Already, he had deciphered the layout of these arenas. It was fairly simple, really. When the surrounding enchantments, responsible for the flow of the respective elemental flow, were active, the walls around were in a non-definitive position inside the fortress. When they went inactive, the tunnels opened, allowing segments of them to be moved elsewhere.

Most importantly to their current situation, these rooms had to be accessible from the outside by foot in some other way. Pompous as he was, even Arkeidos must have had a way to move around inside his fortress without spending the mana necessary to move these kilometre sized segments around each time.

“How about we use the door?” the Horned Rat suggested after thinking long and hard. He pointed at a double-winged gate of metal, at the far-end of one of the walkways.

Lydia sighed and took the lead.