It was a gamble.Violet and I were both running on fumes. Judging from all the Golems I’d seen, Duke Indri’s Gift was rather obvious. Violet had told me that her father shouldn’t have ‘had this much mana’ to begin with, but the fact remained that he did. He doubtless had other tricks up his sleeve, things I couldn’t account for had I been well, let alone now.

  The obvious solution was to let the blade take over.

  Danger.

  The blade whispered every time I considered that thought. My own Godblade was warning me not to pursue that. I chose to trust the divine weapon.

  Given that, there was really only one possible solution. We had to trick him. I understood the Duke’s obsession now, and so the plan had been to simply feed on it.

  “I missed you…I missed you more than I can say, Scarlet.”

  I’d kept Violet’s part simple. She wasn’t an actress. I’d kept mine even simpler. I had to mimic the girl, trusting that she resembled her mother. It had worked. Damn it all, but it had worked. I stiffened in the man’s embrace; his touch sent uncomfortable shivers up my spine. I steeled myself, extended my hand behind him, and tugged at the mental pressure in my hand.

  I had to turn my Gift off to use the blade. Pain shot through me, quickly ignored in the face of what I had to do.

  Brilliant white light filled the room. I stabbed him in the side, right where I’d thought wouldn’t be immediately fatal. Green plate coalesced between the sword and him. It was already cracked. On meeting my awakened Godblade, it shattered. The blade plunged through, stabbing him right in the side.

  The Duke stiffened for a moment. “What are y-”

  I twisted the blade. The man let out a grunt. The grunt turned into a howl. I stepped back, easily pulled the impossible blade back out. His eyes were wide, panicked, and confused. Something in the air shifted as he channeled mana.

  My Godblade was already at his neck. “Don't,” I gasped, the word wet and heavy in my throat. “Move another inch, and I take your head.”

  He stared at me. Into my eyes. He stayed like that for a long moment. “Not…not even a piece?”

  I could guess what he was referring to. “I don’t feel a damn thing. I am myself. Esra Veyne.”

  Something intangible inside the man seemed to snap at that. The pressure of his mana was gone as quickly as it had come. He staggered back, and then he fell down to his knees. “No-no, it can’t be. It- it can’t!”

  “It is,” I whispered. My fury was starting to rise again. “Your wife will never come back, you fool. Even if you had succeeded, even if I had become a part of Scarlet, I wouldn’t be her.” I snapped, slowly stepped away, keeping the blade level at his throat.

  “But she-”

  “Stop, Esra.” I hadn’t heard Violet slowly make her way over to me. She was limping without my help. I offered her a shoulder, but she shook her head. Her gaze was fixed on her father. For once, I didn’t see a snarl there. I didn’t see violence. I didn’t see…much of anything at all.

  “Father, you’ve been…turning children into Artifacts?” Her voice was low, cold. I had explained things to her, but I hadn’t expected her to just take my word for it.

  “It’s not what it looks like, my dear.” He said quickly. “The Artifacts weren’t the point!”

  “What was?”

  “Your mothe-”

  Violet’s hand cracked out, slapped her father across the face so hard he almost fell over. Violet almost fell over, too. I rushed to steady her. She raised a hand, keeping me back.

  “My mother,” Violet growled. “Died for this Kingdom. You think she would want other people to die for her?!” She was shouting now, the sound echoing off the walls.

  The man wilted, shrunk in on himself. Then, he rose again, his eyes hard. He channeled mana. I moved the point of my sword closer to his throat.

  “Careful,” I whispered.

  The Duke reluctantly stopped channeling mana, and the pressure in the air vanished. He still looked angry. “She didn’t die for this Kingdom. She was tricked into it. Forced into it. What would you know? You haven’t seen her!”

  Something inside of me twisted. What a cruel thing for a father to say to his daughter. I looked at Violet. Her expression hadn’t shifted at all, as if she had expected no different.

  “She was tricked?” Violet asked.

  Come to think of it, Duke Indri had mentioned something like this to me, had he not? Did…did he not mention this to Violet, of all people?

  “Yes.” Duke Indri hissed. “Those bastards were afraid of her. They could barely contain her; your mother was so strong!” There was a gleam in his eyes now. “And then everyone knew she was on the path to Godhood. The first in a long time. Those bastards in the capital needed to stop her. Your mother had already risen far, and now a slave had the potential to be above all of them?!” He shook his head, trembling with rage.

  “They tricked her. Sent her into a fight she wasn’t even remotely ready for!” Duke Indri shook his head. He trembled from a barely contained rage himself. "Why don't you understand? I did this for her. For us. For you."

  Violet’s own face darkened. I reached out and slowly put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t brush me away; she only seemed to tremble more.

  “Father.” Violet took a deep breath. “I’m dumber than my mother, right?”

  Duke Indri paused, confused. “What kind of question is-”

  “I am dumber than my mother, right?” She repeated, her words cold.

  “You…Your mother was a smart woman.” Duke Indri said finally.

  Ah. So that’s where she’s going with this.

  “Then…don’t you think....” Violet’s voice went low. “She knew she was being sent to do something impossible, and she went anyway?”

  The silence hung at that, thick in a way even mana wasn’t. I tightened my grip around Violet. Her body was trembling, ever so faintly. Even the snarl on her face shook.

  “That…that couldn’t be.” Duke Indri muttered, staring down at himself. He looked back up at his daughter. “That is not what happened. They tricked her. I know it!”

  “Duke.” I cut in. “If Lady Scarlet was on the path to being a God, as you say, then wouldn’t she, of all people, have known just how hopeless her fighting the Sword God would have been?”

  He turned to look at me. Violet was looking at me too, her gaze unreadable. My own anger was boiling. I tried to suppress it. Violet had far greater a right to than I ever did.

  “Did you perhaps consider that there was something she was willing to die for, instead?” I whispered.

  His eyes slowly widened even as he shook his head. At that moment, he looked truly pathetic to me. His face paled, as if years of butchery and horror were finally crashing down on him in that one moment. “But…no. There was nothing like that. I-I did it all for her! What could she have possibly-”

  “Are you going to be a fool even to the end?” I hissed, my hands trembling so violently on the hilt that I nearly dropped it. Some of it was exhaustion, most of it was anger. “You said she fought soon after giving birth, did she not?”

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  Perhaps something inside the man finally clicked. He looked from me to his daughter. Fresh tears filled his eyes, even as his face paled and his body trembled. I had to move the Godblade back a few inches, lest he accidentally fall on it himself.

  “That…but…but that can’t….” He fell to his knees and held his head in his hands. “She would have wanted to- to raise her.”

  “Would she not have wanted to protect her first?” My own father had done the same thing to protect me at the Auction House, surely knowing his odds of beating that Hero had been slim.

  "Tell me, what happened after she fought the Sword God?" My eyes bored into his. He shrank away.

  "...he stopped. The war ended." Duke Indri admitted, the words sounding as though they were being pulled out of him.

  The particulars didn't matter. Perhaps Lady Scarlet injured this God by fighting him. Maybe something else had happened. The fact remained that she had set out to do something and had clearly succeeded.

  The Duke shook. I realized that Violet was shaking too. I looked at her, saw the tears running down her cheek. Something inside of me cracked, splintered, and shattered all at once. I didn’t know what to do; I just… didn’t want to see her look like that.

  The anger in her was warring with something else. I knew that feeling well. The bond between a parent and a child is a heavy, suffocating chain.

  My grip on the Godblade loosened a fraction.

  Is she going to forgive him? Would I have forgiven my mother if she had cried like this at the end?

  Violet smirked faintly before that smirk turned into a half-hearted glare. She wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned to regard her father once more. “You’ve shamed us, you bitch.” Violet hissed. “Even if what you were doing fucking worked, she would have first killed you, and then herself.”

  Violet chose violence over forgiveness. She kicked her father in the crotch. The Duke toppled and fell on his back, howling with pain. Violet swayed before I steadied her. “You did everything she tried to stop. How…how could you do this?” Violet sounded like she was genuinely asking and pleading now.

  Duke Indri groaned, looked up at his daughter, and looked off to the side. For a long moment, I didn’t think he would answer at all. “I…I don’t know. I’m sorry. I thought I was doing it...for us.” His words were a whisper.

  “You think a fucking sorry is good enough?!” Violet raised her leg.

  “Violet!” I lightly pulled her back. “You’re…you’re using mana. Don’t, please. Please.” I felt it in the air. It was thin.

  Her face was paler than when we’d started, despite all the anger. She was running on fumes, and now she was going to waste some of those fumes on someone who wasn’t worth even stepping on.

  Violet glared at me. Something in her glare softened. Odd, that a glare looked somehow soft at the same time. She clicked her tongue. “I don’t have anything else to say to this bastard. Can we fucking do this already?”

  “I…are you sure?” I asked. “You won’t have another chance.”

  Duke Indri chose this time to try speaking up. “What are you two-”

  “Shut it.” I hissed, pointed the Godblade at his crotch, its tip inches away. “If you fucking move, I’ll make you wish we made this quick.” I turned back to my friend, who was smirking at me now.

  “Yeah. I don’t want him to fuck with my head anymore.”

  That…that was something I understood all too well. I didn’t think I’d have wanted to hear anything my mother had to say at the end, either.

  “Then can I?”

  She tilted her head curiously, shrugged. I smiled gratefully at her, then turned to her father.

  “I have a few questions first. You are going to answer them.”

  Duke Indri stared at me, a mix of confusion and horror on his face. “What are you-”

  I stabbed the Godblade to the side, piercing through his thigh. The feeling of resistance was faint, barely even there before it snapped under the weight of the divine blade. The Duke shrieked, his body bucking as I ripped the blade free.

  “Answer me,” I forced out between ragged breaths, my chest heaving.

  Whatever last little resistance the man might have had inside of him gave in at that. He weakly nodded as he nursed his wound.

  “Who was that woman? The one with silver hair?” From what I had gathered, she and Indri seemed to be something akin to equals in whatever this was. I had explained the details to Violet, though she'd confessed she had no idea who that woman was either.

  “I don't know!” he groaned, clutching his bleeding leg, his eyes darting wildly around the room as if expecting the woman to step from the shadows right then and there.

  I moved the blade over towards his crotch. “Your death might be ordained, but it doesn’t have to be an excruciating one.” Though, honestly, if Violet wanted, then I would have gone with whatever she asked for. This decision, I felt, was really up to her.

  “I’m not lying!” He shouted. “I…I just know where she’s from. I don’t know who she is or who she works with. She only called herself ‘Silver.”

  Truly the most obvious of pseudonyms, that. “Where is she from?”

  “Alestia!” He babbled. “Some faction or other. I don’t know.”

  Alestia was a Kingdom to the West. I knew little about it, save for the fact that it was apparently always between one civil war or another. In just the last five years, they’d had three of them, and they were currently embroiled in a fourth. It was also , a far more powerful Kingdom than my own.

  “They helped you?”

  “They set me on this path.” Duke Indri said hurriedly, apparently having recovered himself at least slightly. “They…gave me the hints. They got me the Transmutation Circle. The last thing I needed. I didn’t think they would…get it in the way that they-”

  “Don’t you fucking dare blame someone else!” Violet hissed, raised her leg, and slammed it down on his right thigh.

  Duke Indri flinched, groaned. I couldn’t say anything to her, considering I’d wanted to do the same exact thing. I had figured out this chain of events by now, but hearing it spelled out was another matter entirely.

  “Why did they help you? You must know, surely.”

  “They…they wanted my notes. Everything I did. Every experiment. Details on every single Artifact.”

  I had thought it might be something to that effect. “And you gave it to them?” I hadn’t seen Silver again, presumably because she’d gotten what she came here for.

  The Duke faintly nodded.

  “You are a fool,” I whispered. “On top of everything else, you are a traitor as well. Do you have any idea what you might have done?”

  He didn’t meet my gaze.

  Violet lightly yanked me towards her. “What are you talking about?”

  I almost tipped over. The girl didn't know her own strength. “The way to make Artifacts again won’t die with this bastard now. It’s in the hands of the Gods only know who. They'll do fuck only knows what with it.”

  I saw the realization spreading across Violet’s face. She snarled at her father and kicked him right between his legs. Duke Indri howled and rolled on the ground. I had to pull Violet back from doing more.

  “Violet! I…I still have one more question.”

  Violet’s rage slowly faded. She huffed and stood back. “Go ahead.”

  I waited for Duke Indri’s rolling and groaning to stop. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. His gaze fell on the Godblade, as if he was measuring whether there was anything he could do in this situation.

  “At least die with some dignity,” I muttered. “At least give her that. Both of them.”

  His resistance crumpled again. He faintly nodded.

  “When you did…what you did to me. You said my father betrayed you. What did you mean by that?” That had been a small itch that had bothered me more the longer this conversation had gone on.

  Duke Indri hesitated before answering. “He wasn’t there. He should have been…with us. He promised.” It was a lot of vitriol, to put in one word.

  “Where was he?”

  He looked away again. Muttered under his breath. “If only I knew.”

  “You aren’t lying to me, are you?” I raised the Godblade high. It didn’t sound like he was, but it never hurt to be too sure.

  “No- No I’m not.” He said frantically.

  I nodded, turned to Violet, and paused. “Actually, there is one more question. How many people in this manor know? About what you did? Is it…only the people still here?”

  Duke Indri nodded. “I…I couldn’t trust anyone else. Even…even they don’t know much.”

  “Did they know about the children?”

  “No. That-that woman helped me.”

  That was enough then. I sighed, turned to Violet. “Sorry. That took a little long.”

  Violet snorted, moved forward, reached behind her back, and found nothing. “Shit.”

  Ah. Well, that did make things a little difficult. I looked around, saw the much more intricate warhammer, . “There is that.” I pointed.

  “What are you two talking about?” Duke Indri sounded panicked. We both ignored him.

  Violet glared at me. “You think I can pick up a two-handed warhammer right now?”

  Point taken.

  I moved my arm towards her, offering her the Godblade. Violet stared at my hand, reached out to touch some of the exposed hilt.

  The Godblade’s warning shot up my arm. Loud. Very loud. I winced, trying not to stumble. Violet looked at me with…concern?

  “Sorry…I don’t think you can touch it.”

  Violet clicked her tongue. I moved forward until I stood right on top of Duke Indri. His eyes looked…calm. Perhaps he had realized what was happening, in the end.

  “Violet, come here,” I murmured.

  There was a shuffling sound, the sound of dragging feet. “What are you-”

  I lowered the Godblade until its tip kissed the thin silk over the Duke’s heart. My right arm screamed; the broken bones ground together. I locked my elbows anyway.

  “Hold my hands.”

  A heartbeat. Two.

  Calloused, shaking fingers slid over mine. Violet’s palms were fever-hot, slick with sweat. Heat poured into my skin from hers.

  “I…whenever you’re ready,” I said

  Her breath hitched -once, twice.

  Violet’s hands shook. I looked and saw her trembling. “I can do it, if this is too much.”

  Violet glared at me.

  “M-my daughter.” Duke Indri spoke up. “I just want you to know that I’m-”

  The Godblade sang.

  Violet’s arms drove the blade down.

  Resistance - a wet, as the blade punched through cartilage and bone. Then nothing. The blade went right through him.

  Whatever word the Duke had died on his lips, in favor of a gasp. His eyes opened wide. He seemed to tremble. A thin trickle of blood escaped his lips. His wide eyes slowly started to glaze over, some immaterial fire behind them fading.

  For one strange second, his hand reached up, towards Violet. Violet stared at it. It fell back down to the ground.

  Duke Indri's breathing grew more ragged. Slowed. Went still. He was dead.

  There was a silence. A heartbeat. Two.

  Violet let out a scream that shook the room. Her entire body trembled violently, and tears leaked freely from her, down to our joined hands. I dismissed the blade and reached out to steady her. We fell. I fell on my side, and she fell on top of me.

  She started to weep, burying herself against me. I winced from the pain, forced myself to ignore it as my right hand burned. I brought it around anyway to hug her as best I could.

  I held her there as she wept, not saying a word. Not even knowing what I could say. What words had anyone ever said that could do anything here?

  Blood pooled beneath us. We stayed like that for a very long time.