As for the rest of my party, they all went to rest. I wandered the streets of Aith well into the early morning while my party slept—all of them except Isu.
“It’s a strange thing to get used to, isn’t it?” she remarked as we walked through the strange, silent streets, while giant spiders perched on high towers watched us with their compound eyes. “Not sleeping, not needing to sleep. Wandering the world like a lost phantom while everyone dreams...”
“Do you miss it?” I asked.
She chuckled softly and shook her head. “Truth be told, I don’t. When you first took my divinity for yourself, it was rather difficult for me to adjust to being mortal again. Needing to sleep, growing tired, having all these limitations placed on me. But after hundreds of years of being a goddess, I’d come to realize that I missed all these things. I now enjoy a good night’s sleep and feeling refreshed when I awaken. For the longest time after I lost my divinity and you became the new God of Death, I was angry. I resented you, and I plotted ways to take it back. But I couldn’t bring myself to complete any of my schemes. It was clear that you were a better, stronger Death deity than I ever could have been… but there was more. I felt—feel—something for you, Vance. I lost a part of myself very long ago when I first became the Goddess of Death. I forgot what it was to… to love a man. Until you came along.”
Now, this was something. Isu had gone from being a cold-hearted killer to saying that she loved me? I wasn’t sure how to respond, but before I could say anything, she continued.
“I don’t expect you to love me in return.” She smiled softly, and her violet eyes glistened with happy tears. “I imagine it would be quite difficult to love so many women at once.”
I took her by the hand. “I have a lot of love to give.” I wasn’t sure whether I could explicitly state to Isu that I loved her, but this felt like the right thing to do. I could be a cold asshole to my enemies, but I would always treat my women well.
“Understood,” Isu said as she squeezed my hand. “I did have feelings of jealousy to contend with for a long time. To be quite honest, such feelings made me a nasty bitch a lot of the time.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” I said with a laugh, and Isu narrowed her eyes before chuckling sweetly.
“I’ve accepted that sharing you with the other women is the best way to love you, because it’s loving you for who you really are.”
“Thank you, Isu,” I said. “Everything you’ve said... it means a lot to me. You gave me everything, and I’ll always owe what I am now to you. I won’t forget that.”
We both stopped walking, and she looked up at me with something I’d never before seen in her eyes: warmth. Genuine affection. She kissed me on the cheek, something else she’d never done.
“I’ll always be here for you, Vance.” She gave my hands another squeeze. “Always. But come, enough of this talk,” she continued before I could say anything else. “We need to determine how to lift the curse my younger self so rashly placed on this city all those years ago. I have a hunch you’re going to need Layna with you in Yeng, and the only way that’s going to happen is if we can break the curse.”
“You cursed the city using your newly acquired Death powers,” I said to her as we strolled along a deserted cobblestone street, wispy spiderwebs fluttering like pennants on the tops of buildings in a sudden night wind. “I’ve never done anything like it, or wanted to either. Why don’t I have this skill, if, as you say, I’m a more powerful Death god?”
“I’ve been pondering that question myself. And I think it’s because you and I are quite distinct types of gods.”
“I’m the God of Death, you were the Goddess of Death; how’s that any different, aside from what’s between our respective legs?”
“What hangs between your legs sets you apart from most men, let alone women.” Isu shot a hungry glance down at the bulge in my crotch. “But as for you and me, you’re a deity drawing from the same pool of power that I used when I was a goddess—Death—but you’re implementing it in a very different way. You’re a warrior god, a fighter using your Death powers mostly for combat. Your skill tree is leading you in that direction, the direction of a mighty conqueror, a leader of armies. When I was a goddess, my skill tree led me on a different path. I possessed a few skills that were useful for fighting, but the bulk of the skills I developed were not for that. Laying curses on people and places was one of my specialties, in the same way that you have some exceptional skills in battle, like corpse explosion spells.”
“Then how do I lift this curse?”
Isu thought about this for a while as we walked along in silence.
“Perhaps you don’t need those sorts of skills to lift the curse,” she eventually said. “After all, you don’t need to be a tailor to destroy a dress. You only have to be a tailor to make a dress. And you don’t need to be a surgeon to kill a human being; you only need to be a surgeon to repair a person’s body. You just need to be able to see it. You’re the God of Death, Vance. All you need to do is look in the right place, see the curse, and dismantle it. You have the power.”
I
