Passiat Pass had changed again. So many parts of my little empire had been too distant to visit before I got access to the old divine teleportation. The walls had been expanded again, massive gates now occupied the entrance, and they were patrolled by serious-looking nomads and Huskar.

The towers along the cliffs above had been joined together with their own walls, creating a massive industrial fortress. I imagined the nomads weren't terribly happy about it. Safety to them was the ability to move on, to drift deeper into the grasslands where they were dominant and unchallenged, but this place was too important to be abandoned if it came under threat.

I'd used my aura to hide myself, walking straight past the guards and into the tunnels that led down to Velkit's Source. The ringing of hammers striking metal echoed back and forth; the noise was a constant both inside and out. The whole place was dedicated to mining, smelting and smithing, with all the sound and smoke that went along with primitive metallurgy.

Sulk had his shirt off as he hammered away at a glowing lump of metal on Velkit's forge. The aura of the god permeated the air around me, a sense of work, sweat and heat mingling together to create both death and beauty.

"What are you working on?" I asked, then ducked to the side as Sulk spun and through his hammer at me.

"Mond! By the blue moon, you scared me." He reached for another hammer and turned back to resume his work. I picked up his projectile and carried it back to the rack of tools next to him.

I couldn't identify the metals they were made of. None of his hammers or tongs had the dull grey of steel or the orange of copper and bronze. He'd been upgrading his equipment as he went along.

"I'm working on a handle for the doors to your library. Needs to be big enough for Huskar to use, and those bastards have fat fingers. So it's lots of silver."

"You're not using one of the more exotic alloys?"

"For a door handle? No, Mond, I'm not. What can I do for you? The last shipments were above expectations, so the army should be well supplied soon enough."

"We're on the other side of the Worldspine now. It will take a while for the Huskar to carry it over, assuming they even can in this weather."

"It's cold out there. The others complain when they come to collect my work."

"When was the last time you went outside?" I asked, suddenly worried the mad old smith had been sealing himself away at his forge for months.

"A week or so? Kayla set us up some rooms in the tunnels and keeps me fed."

His skin was flushed with the heat and his efforts, but he was pale where he wasn't pink.

"You should get some sunlight every now and then, Sulk. Vitamin D."

"Wassat?" he asked absently as he continued to hammer at the soon-to-be-handle.

"Your skin makes it when the sun shines on you. You'll get sick without it."

"Never sunny anyway outside. Always cloudy and snowing. I'll go back out in the spring."

I sighed and decided it wasn't worth the hassle of badgering him about it. "I'm going to go and see Velkit. Seeing as you're his chosen, I wondered if you wanted to come along."

"You can't just pop in on gods, Mond."

"I can." The aura around me had been enough to give me a feel for his domain, and I opened a portal on the other side of the anvil, in front of Sulk. A wave of heat and power rolled out, and the sense of hammers striking glowing metal filled the air. "Want to come say hi?"

"I can't…"

"Sure you can. Come as my guest, please."

Sulk shifted uncertainly, his hammer held hovering over the work in progress. His discomfort was clear. He didn't think he was worthy. Perhaps it was something else, something that frightened him.

"I can keep the fumes off you. You won't go mad."

He nodded hesitantly, setting the tongs down on the anvil and sliding his hammer into a loop on his belt. "Then I'll come."

I stepped through first, flaring my aura to announce myself, then wrapping it around Sulk as he stepped through to shield him from the worst of the pressure.

Velkit's world was not what I'd been expecting. There was nothing primitive or medieval about the place. Mechanised assembly lines and forges were hard at work as far as I could see. The sky was a cloudy orange, lit from below by the smelters and forges, and the air tasted like metal and smoke.

We moved forward, passing machines that would look at home in any high-tech factory back on the old world. 3D printers, massive in comparison to what I remembered seeing available, were hard at work laying down the forms of parts and devices.

"What is this place? It isn't a forge," Sulk muttered as he limped along beside me. His eyes were wide as he looked at what to him must seem like alien technology.

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"Velkit embraces modernity, I reckon. This is… weird even by the standards of my home. It's too big and too advanced, but the principles are the same. Aresk's world is like an homage to Homeric epicness, marble and bronze, with floating weapons and armour hovering over plinths. This is like a massive industrial complex that a tech magnate would be familiar with."

"A what? Homeric?"

"Never mind. I can feel the void. We should head this way." I guided us to the left, following a series of narrow passages between machines that showered us with sparks as we threaded our way towards the seat of his power.

Thick cables ran alongside us, and they grew more and more numerous as we neared our destination. Eventually, we found an open space with a raised platform in the centre of it, the destination of all the wires and tubes. They spread out from it like a spider's web, giving Velkit ultimate control from his throne behind a control panel.

"Thanks for announcing yourself. Most of us are a little bit nervous about you."

"I wouldn't steal power from my allies. You are my ally, aren't you?"

"I am, boy. Aresk said you'd grown arrogant. Sulk, how is the forge?"

"Lord, it's wonderful. What is all this?" The smith waved a hand at all the technology around us.

"Come up here and I'll show you." The crippled god rose to his feet and waved us over. When we got there, he pointed at the screens and keyboards he'd been monitoring. "This isn't unfamiliar to the Killer; it is largely based on my influence in his world, although that has waned there as well. Bloody atheists. The control panel allows me to monitor the automated processes, making sure each part of the machine is functioning as it should."

"Where are the workers? The men to work the bellows, carry the ore and the finished pieces?" Sulk muttered as he stared at the flickering screens in wonder.

"I would have thought you'd have gone for a more medieval vibe, personally," I added.

"I have plenty of adherents on Urth, but more on your homeworld. They are drifting from me, though. Have you noticed how innovation seems to be drying up? Everything is just iterations of the old, now. A new model, never a new idea."

"It's been a while since I was back there."

"You should visit, see how things have changed in your absence."

"That… had never occurred to me. I can go back?"

"Not yet. When you fully ascend, you'll be able to. All the processes you use men for, Sulk, are handled by machines in my world. All controlled from here." He ran a hand over his console lovingly. "You have so much to relearn on Urth."

"This is all miraculous to me," Sulk scowled at the complex machines around us. "Why not just use helpers?"

"Time and effort. And cost, although that doesn't apply to me here. Raymond, you wanted to know if I would stand with you against Poseidon. I will."

"I'm glad. There was something else… I need a knife."

"I assume this is to be a very special knife, if you're asking me for help."

I held up the best blade I had managed to conjure. Black stone blade, bone handle, held in place with pine resin and sinew.

"Primitive. Tezca has his preferences. You want it to be able to strike Poseidon down."

"I do. But also to steal her power. I want my friend to take over her domain."

"Tricky. Siphoning isn't easy." The dagger floated from my palm and spun slowly before his lopsided face. He glared at it, and images floated around it, complex diagrams and mathematics that I couldn't fathom. "The edge is keen, but it's got internal flaws. Atomic misalignments, hidden fractures. It's not bad, but I can make it better. Your friend has a way to accept the power?"

"He does. I stole a little of her domain and taught him to control it."

"I bet he fucking hated you for that!" Velkit chuckled as Sulk glanced back and forth between us in confusion.

"I don't think I should be hearing any of this, Lords." He was suddenly deferential to me in a way he had never been before. I was chatting with his god like we were equals, which was probably a shock, but the angry old smith had been nothing if not irreverent. Now he was another person who would never laugh and drink with me in comfort. He would always see me as different.

"It's fine. Just don't talk about it outside of the Source Forge. You've got his domain in you as well as my own; they'll guard your mind from the others," Velkit said, still looking at the dagger I'd made. "I can effect a siphoning on it, once I fix the molecular structure. It will take me some time."

"Days or weeks?" I asked. I had a deadline.

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 72% complete

It had slowed considerably, and now I was able to hold it for nearly half an hour before the pain overwhelmed me. But it was still ticking up day by day, and I hadn't mastered it yet. My gains had become incremental, improving by only fractions of a second. It felt like I was close, nearly there, and soon I'd be able to take control of the new source completely, but the final step eluded me.

"Days. I'm the god of smiths, lad, not some amateur. No offence, Sulk."

Sulk just blinked. I think he was realising that he knew very little of the craft he had considered himself a master of.

"That works. Do you want to have a chat with Sulk in private, or should I take him back?"

"I'll return him after we talk shop for a while. You can let yourself out," the crippled god said with a chuckle. "Now the thing is you've got to pay and feed your workers, right, so by automating the process you can do away with that cost. The waterwheels are a good example, they work the bellows and drive drop hammers, but the things you can do with electricity are beyond your wildest dreams…"

I smiled at Sulk's bewildered expression and opened a portal to my tent, stepping through to find it empty. Heading outside, I found Kos and Jandak bickering with Kril by the central fire.

"–it doesn't matter, you old bastard. We need to move fast to meet Mond's deadline."

"We need to consolidate. The strongest Beauties have set themselves up as kings and queens. The kill team has retreated to resupply, but they are still out there, and they're banding together to block our advance," Kril argued.

"We can cut through them. They're nothing to us. Without a Shikrakyn backing them, they're just petty wizards and everyone we kill is irreplacable."

"Jandak, they have the home advantage, and they're sneaky. The infiltrations have increased. We're having to test all our barrels on the animals before we drink, and we're losing aurox."

"We should find a place to offer battle, if they'll come to us. Or force them to defend a place," I offered.

Kril leapt into the air and spun around to glare at me. "How long have you been there? You didn't use to be so sneaky!"

"I've been… embracing what I am. It's only going to get worse. How can we force them to battle? We need safe supply lines before we march on the Veil."

"Bran-Jung. Outside of Jeremy's capital, it's their primary source of recruits and income. If we threaten that, they'll have to fight," Kos muttered, glaring at Kril.

"Then that's where we go. But for now, quit bitching at each other, and let's have a drink by the fire like we used to." I produced a jar of yalk and settled down on the damp earth, waving the demijohn at them. It wouldn't last, but for now at least, these three were just friends, and I intended to make the most of our time together.

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