“Exactly!” Eliza butted in. “You should trust me more. I come from the same world, the same country as you! Perhaps we even have met before.”

  “Look, I don’t want to kill you. I want to believe that you aren’t after my head, but you have to understand, it’s too dangerous to leave someone like you around unchecked. You have the same advantages that I do, to a point. There is always the chance that you could kill me.”

  “Have her sign a System contract,” Edgar suggested. “That will ensure her honesty.”

  “No!” Eliza shouted. “I will not become a slave to anyone. Malaraxia already beat me into submission with her aura alone. I’m done cowering in the dirt. It’s time I stood up for myself.”

  Before Jonathan could reply, he felt something stirring within him. Sarnakthros, for the first time in months, spoke. “I can feel the taint of my sister’s influence upon her. Her mind and Divinity is tainted, and her connection to the Void, severed. Even now, a kernel of death is forming within her, in response to her rebellion.”

  Jonathan tilted his head. “I can feel the ruin of your deserved power that Malaraxia created.” For now, he decided to keep the fact that he was a host for one of the gods secret. “It is killing you, slowly but surely. You will never be allowed to blossom into the truth of your potential.”

  “Tell her I can fix it,” Sarnakthros said to Jonathan. “It will cost me a good deal of power, but it is worth it, if we can convert another Outsider to our cause.”

  “I possess the means to repair this,” Jonathan added. “But tell me, do you wish to be healed?”

  Eliza’s mouth opened slightly, and she looked at him, lost for words. Then she regathered herself. “That’s what she did to me? No wonder you’re so strong...”

  Jonathan felt power gathering within him, his Divinity pool diminishing, draining into his right hand. Sarnakthros was doing something with it, and Jonathan let him. A flame of black and red appeared, radiating an elemental energy type foreign to Jonathan. It was clearly a new ability of the god that made his body home, likely unlocked by him reaching Tier 4.

  Prompted half by instinct, and half by a subconscious impulse from Sarnakthros, Jonathan reached forwards, and laid his hand on Eliza’s forehead. She didn’t move, instead closing her eyes. In this situation, there was hardly anything else she could do, other than fight a futile battle that would simply end in her death. Better to see if she could be saved than to do such a thing. If she died, well, it was bound to happen anyway.

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  Jonathan felt a tendril of Sarnakthros’ Divinity aspect worming its way into his own, a strange conceptual mix of fire and darkness. It entered Eliza’s energy channels, searching for something within them. Jonathan’s eyes forcibly closed, and he found himself looking at an overlay of Eliza’s mana channels, superimposed over a rough outline of her body. In the very center was her Divinity, spinning gently. Immediately, Jonathan could tell that something was wrong. Rather than a rich golden color, the fiery orb was a light silver, and almost transparent in places. Surrounding it was a barrier of far purer Divinity, likely Malaraxia’s. Coming from it was a pervasive aura of the boundless heavens, of strength unchained by the tug of mortality.

  “You will need to assist me with this,” Sarnakthros said. “My sister limited her power to avoid killing Eliza, but it is still far purer than my own. I am but a shadow of my former self. All I can offer is expertise.”

  Jonathan nodded, and let Sarnakthros continue to draw his Divinity out, shaping it into a spear of light that blossomed into being within Eliza’s corespace. With a shout, the weakened god thrust the ethereal weapon into the shield. There was a flash of brilliant light, and suddenly, two icons formed in the middle of Jonahan’s vision, vying for supremacy. An eagle, with wings crafted from lightning and feathers of clouds, held one wing protectively over itself, repelling the weapon of a titanic knight, with armor of fire and ruin. Sarnakthros’ Divinity aspect was faded in places, and Jonathan could tell the difference between his and Malaraxia’s. However, as the god drew upon Jonathan’s own Divinity, the avatar grew in strength, its spear growing, the shaft coming into focus. Twisted sigils formed along its length, and a crossguard made from bone appeared behind its head. With a rending noise, it began to sink into the eagle’s wing.

  The avian avatar screeched, the noise echoing throughout Jonathan’s soul. He felt his Divinity reserves bottoming out as Sarnakthros continued to draw upon it. The armored figure grew fainter, and the spear grew more concrete as the god directed the power into the tip of the weapon, the only part that mattered.

  With a sharp crack, the spear broke through the shield, the eagle fading into nothingness as if it had never been there. Then the spear sank into Eliza’s Divinity core. Veins of crackling golden lightning played across its surface, and the color of the entire orb changed, becoming deeper in color. A few moments later, it looked much like Jonathan’s own, a gold as deep, or deeper than any he had ever seen before.

  With a boom, the orb sent out a pulse of energy, blasting Jonathan out of the corespace and into his own body. He stumbled backwards, fatigue filling him as his body came to terms with the complete drainage of his Divinity reserves.

  Eliza’s eyes opened, flashing with the golden light of her Divinity. She rose to her feet, and summoned a flame of gold to her hand, watching as it danced across it. Her skill looked far different than before, dancing with a new vigor that was reinforced by its far deeper hue of gold. Jonathan smiled. It had worked.