Miquella's warm, springlike smile made Skyl give him a strange look.
"If I refuse, are you planning to rewrite yourself into some unforgettable part of my past too? Fair warning, don't try the femme fatale routine on me."
The smile vanished from the blond boy's face. With genuine sadness, he said, "I'm only begging for your help. I would never dare threaten you."
"You chose this path yourself. Why do you regret it now?"
"Because I failed. Blood... there are wounds everywhere. Wounded soldiers tremble, wounded civilians cry. Poisoned blood filled with pain pours from their injuries. Their bodies burn with fever, their minds become delirious. One mind after another breaks. One soul after another screams. I can't bear it. I can't find salvation amid all that suffering. I need help."
Miquella spoke with the childish voice of a young boy, yet every word carried grief deep enough to carve itself into the bone.
Mountains of corpses appeared before Skyl. Blood continually flowed from every body piled upon them, becoming nourishment for ambitious men and their Orders. Ordinary people whose lives meant no more than those of ants, expendable soldiers cast into war like weeds, died before his eyes. Their faces were frightened and confused, bitter and unwilling to accept their deaths.
The sheer weight of that grief numbed the heart.
It was enough to make even a god weep.
There were no fairy tales in the Lands Between.
Skyl had seen far uglier things.
During his final confrontation with Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge had projected countless atrocities from mortal history into his mind. They came from a universe that had undergone cycle after cycle beyond counting, accumulating horrors and distortions of unimaginable scale. Later, when Skyl assimilated the souls of the Marvel Universe, he witnessed wars between civilizations across planetary surfaces and wars between civilizations among the stars. He saw countless acts committed in war that were ten thousand times more vile than anything most people could even imagine.
He had shared the feelings of every victim trampled into the dirt.
He had also shared the minds of every schemer looking down upon them from above.
Compared with what Skyl had endured, Miquella's grief was almost insignificant.
But that wasn't something worth boasting about.
Skyl himself never willingly revisited those memories.
He saw ordinary soldiers who had been secretly destroyed by the Mohgwyn Dynasty during the Shattering. Their courage, flesh, and bones alike dissolved into filth beneath cursed blood. As death approached, they groaned from sickbeds inside military tents, their consciousness fading into delirium.
Their admiration for heroes was gone.
Their dreams of glory were gone.
Every passionate feeling they had once carried had been ground into dust.
No matter how many times Skyl witnessed such things, it still hurt.
Even so, Skyl didn't trust Miquella's story.
The Empyrean was nowhere near the end of his rope. On the contrary, the nourishment of blood had made him stronger than before. His original Order of Abundance had even expanded to encompass part of Blood's divine portfolio.
The only real problem was the danger of being assimilated by the Formless Mother.
Miquella wanted someone else to do the dirty work.
He wanted Skyl, the stronger god, to eliminate the Formless Mother's influence for him.
"What makes you think asking me guarantees I'll help you?"
"Because I understand you."
Miquella walked toward Skyl one step at a time.
As he approached, his long golden hair gradually lost its color, becoming a strange pale silver tinged with violet. His features grew even softer and more delicate, his lips red, his teeth white, his long lashes intertwined like creeping vines.
The figure now standing before Skyl was St. Trina.
Not merely the form she used in dreams, but St. Trina's true appearance.
As an Empyrean possessing two identities, Miquella and St. Trina existed much like Radagon and Marika, two souls within one being.
Most of Miquella's attention was currently entangled with the Order of Blood.
The one who had remained truly active and in control of the dream all along was St. Trina.
She was even more beautiful than Skyl had imagined.
"You're kind. In Caelid, you saved an innocent girl. Her name is Millicent. You helped her without asking for anything in return. All you wanted was for her to find happiness."
St. Trina stopped before him.
"Miquella is much like you. The two of you are almost the same. You can possess his Order and gain everything he has. There would be no distinction between us anymore. We could remain together forever."
"So you were behind it."
Skyl finally understood.
Millicent's birth was connected to Miquella.
The mission that had always lain buried within her heart, the desire to restore Malenia's dignity, had also been given to her by the Empyrean Miquella.
Throughout the long journey that had carried her from one end of the Lands Between to the other, Millicent had always been a piece on someone else's board.
"Don't be angry. We never intended to deceive you. It was simply our first meeting, and there were many things we couldn't explain beforehand."
St. Trina stepped directly in front of Skyl.
She looked like Iphigenia, the innocent daughter of Agamemnon offered as a sacrifice to Artemis, lamb-like in her helplessness, her tragic fate enough to inspire pity.
Skyl wasn't angry.
As long as he was around, nothing terrible was going to happen to Millicent, and the journey itself had benefited her greatly.
Besides, while Miquella had manipulated Mohg, he had also caused the Lord of Blood to fall into slumber. The atrocities committed by the Mohgwyn Dynasty had decreased accordingly.
That was a good thing too.
"I don't need Miquella's Order. Don't wave divine essence in front of me like bait. You're only an Empyrean. What happens if the bait gets eaten before the fish ever reaches the hook? How are you supposed to control anyone then?"
The tears gathering in St. Trina's eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a brilliant smile.
"Thank you, god from another world."
Skyl laughed inwardly.
This guy really was the Lands Between's resident succubus.
Poor Mohg had been played like a fiddle, and he was far from the only one who had fallen for it.
"Why not ask your beloved sister Malenia for help?"
"Because it isn't time yet. It still isn't time for her and me to meet again."
"Fine. I'll help you once, as a greeting gift for a new friend."
Skyl raised a hand and pressed it against the top of St. Trina's head, a peculiar smile appearing on his face.
"One more thing. Don't use this opportunity to sneak into my memories. You couldn't survive them. Curiosity killed the cat, kitten."
The moment he finished speaking, the dream around them shattered.
It broke apart like a mirror dropped onto stone.
Darkness swallowed Skyl.
There was nothing beneath his feet, no gravity, no sense of direction.
Then a bloody fissure split open in the depths of the darkness.
Crimson light erupted from it like a miniature Big Bang, revealing the surrounding world.
Skyl found himself standing in a layer of blood nearly two inches deep. Beneath his feet, the surface felt elastic, like muscle stretched taut.
Rows upon rows of iron thorn trees rose from the vast empty plain.
Full-bodied human figures hung from their branches, their pale flesh pierced through by the thorns as they screamed in agony.
Lead-colored clouds crowded the sky.
Scarlet light flickered through the gaps between them like ten million blood-soaked eyes.
"Pretty impressive atmosphere."
Skyl casually looked up at the sky.
He could feel the magicka within his body again.
Apparently, this meant they were going to fight.
The clouds above converged, forming something resembling an enormous egg.
Then its shell split open.
A tornado descended toward the ground.
When the whirlwind dispersed, a pair of blood-red wings spread wide.
A godlike blond man appeared before Skyl.
His nearly perfect body was covered in long, narrow wounds, each continuously leaking polluted blood.
He carried a spear.
Without warning, he charged.
Blood streamed from the spearhead, and anyone struck by it would undoubtedly suffer a terrible fate.
"Miquella of the Order of Blood. Is this supposed to be the hidden boss?"
Skyl shook his head and laughed.
"All flash, no substance."
He raised one hand and pointed toward every wound covering Miquella's body.
"I command your Doors to open wide. Hide nothing from me."
The central divine portfolio of the Silver Order activated.
Skyl had been capable of defeating the Formless Mother herself. Naturally, expelling the influence she had imposed on Miquella posed no difficulty.
Every wound across Miquella's body became connected to extradimensional space, transforming into Doors of the Tower of Tomes.
At Skyl's command, every Door opened.
The wounds exploded simultaneously.
They swallowed the intact flesh surrounding them.
Miquella's body vanished piece by piece as though it had fallen into countless wormholes, every fragment being transported elsewhere.
In an instant, he was torn completely apart.
Not even a scrap remained.
Clang.
The spear fell to the ground.
Its surface was covered in perfectly smooth cuts where the opening Doors had caught it.
As a weapon, it was completely ruined.
It had been a fight that could scarcely be called a fight.
A clash between divine portfolios could last an eternity, stretching all the way to the end of the universe.
Or it could end in an instant.
The principle of wounds could not overcome Doors.
The outcome had therefore been decided immediately.
"A magnificent battle."
An androgynous child's voice echoed around him.
"God from another world, we are deeply grateful for everything you've done. At last, we can free ourselves from this curse and move toward the future. We will not forget your help."
Skyl released a long breath.
Then he withdrew from the dream and returned to the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum.
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