Demigods shouldn’t fidget, they should stand or lounge with gravitas, communicating latent threat or promise; they shouldn’t fiddle with their claws in any way that wasn’t performative or menacing. At least, that was what Zephyr tried to remind himself of as he chewed his thumb claw. Morgan had to emerge from the water eventually, she would know what to do. All he could think to do was fidget and think and think and fidget.

  Death, his own at least, had become something of an abstraction to Zephyr. An unexpected and delightful part of his subsumption was the degree of control he could exert over the dimensions of his own body. Shape shifting a wound to a scar to smooth flesh was only a step removed from tweaking his height, musculature, or complexion. He was, accordingly, an incautious fighter. Not that he was particularly suited for battle. He was a lover if he was anything. But he was durable and his human friends were not.

  Boots slapped the stone behind him and Zephyr pulled his stare away from the pool of dark water as Fenn scrambled into the cavern shrine with his gun hand pressed against his bleeding shoulder. Zephyr dropped his hand from his mouth. He knew he could not leave the fighting to his temple guards. It was his shrine but they were his followers, more than that really. Priests was a strong term but they were not simple worshipers either. Zephyr strode away from the water and towards his bleeding friend while trying to portray a confidence he didn’t feel. Yes. He was going with ‘friend.’ Not that it mattered what he called them. He asked himself why he was worrying about labels. He wanted, no – he needed them to live. Fenn stumbled around the ring of supply crates they had arranged around the cave and Zephyr caught him by the arms to look him over, careful of the gunshot wound in his shoulder. A clean entry, Zephyr brushed his hand over Fenn’s back. It came away wet and bloody. At least there was an exit wound. He realized he had stopped breathing and hissed an exhale through his teeth. Fenn was saying something.

  “-need to go, now. It’s an inquisitor too, not just soldiers. I saw the flame uniform. Morgan, is the boat ready?”

  Zephyr looked to the back of the cave where Morgan waded up the rocky beach of the sea cave. The slight woman’s hair was tied back from her face, white strands standing out against the black like the streaks of shooting stars even in the dim bioluminescence of the cave. She was unclothed but Zephyr did not find that fact remarkable, why should she swim in clothing? The witch had returned with five fish on a string and a three-pronged spear long enough that she needed to angle it to avoid scraping the weapon on the low stone where the roof of the cavern sloped towards the beach.

  “It can be. I - Sweet Mother, Fenn, what happened?” Her voice drawing taut like a fishing line hooking a shark.

  Fenn’s eyes darted to Zephyr and back to Morgan, “It’s a raid, Republican army and inquisitors” his voice caught “The others are holding at the garden. We need to get out of here.”

  “Can you even make the tunnel swim?” Morgan adjusted the cloth sling holding her dagger at her waist, it was the only thing she was wearing as she carefully made her way up the algae slick steps to the shrine.

  Fenn winced, shaking Zephyr’s hands free and failing to wipe the blood from his face with his forearm, “it doesn’t matter if I can. You two need to go. I’ll hold them off. Where’s the other gun?”

  Zephyr tweaked the edges of his form. He added mass to his shoulders and stretched his height until he was just taller than Fenn. A brush of stubble rippled across Zephyr’s normally smooth jaw and his hair misted black before reforming in a tight fade with a jolt of straight blond on top.

  He cupped Fenn’s cheek with a soft hand looking like the man’s ideal. Zephyr thumbed a red smear from his blood splattered face and looked into those soft green eyes shot through with strands of blue he’d always loved. They looked dark in the low light of the cave but he knew they were there. Zephyr’s kiss seemed to take him by surprise and he felt Fenn stiffen. Then, as his chapped lower lip yielded, Zephyr rode the lightning where their mouths met. He reached for the capillaries and veins around the gunshot wound and stopped the bleeding. He pushed power into Fenn’s nerves and soothed the pain, taking the stabbing, searing left by the bullet and mellowing it to a soft hum.

  Zephyr broke the kiss and looked at Fenn’s now glassy eyes. “Don’t worry. Stay alive.” He pressed a kiss against Fenn’s forehead and stepped back, shifting his height back to its default and rubbing his face as the stubble fell away. “He’ll be fine if you help him through the tunnel.”

  Morgan put a hand on Fenn’s uninjured shoulder and gave him a shake. Fenn smiled at her foggily. She snapped her fingers next to Fenn’s head and watched as he slowly turned his head towards the sound. Dissatisfaction and frustration swept over her angular features as she turned to fix Zephyr with that glare that usually made him weak in the knees. “How much did you give him?”

  “The pain block will last a week. The blood block will ease to a flush and coagulation in an hour. He will be fine if you can get him to the boat.” Zephyr broke eye contact and stared up the passage, listening to the crackle of gunfire, the screams, and the silence that followed. Fuck, Orrish and Gert.

  “A week’s worth? Do you even want him functional?” Morgan said.

  His voice was soft when he answered her. “I didn’t want him doing something stupid and heroic.”

  “Why? So you can do it instead?” Morgan snarled and poked Zephyr in the chest. “I can’t have you spending your life for ours.” Her anger held for a second before cracking to something resembling desperation. She had always had a terrible straight face. “You can’t do this, you-you’re the first successful subsumption in decades. Let’s just run now, all of us”

  There it was again, the excuse she used to cover the thing they left unspoken. It was an absurd idea. Their relationship was carnal, mystical, and ultimately transactional. It was not a matter of love, or any kind of deeper affection. It couldn’t be. She was his creator, having tied him to the magic of the land and elevated him from simple humanity. He was the conduit to her goddess, her magic, her power. She used him and he used her. That look in her eyes that made something in his chest ache terribly meant nothing. It couldn’t. The thing she’d made him kept it from meaning anything.

  Zephyr relaxed, slipping back into his default body; he didn’t want to have this conversation wearing someone else’s face. Besides, Morgan always seemed to prefer the more naturalistic elements of what he had become. He split the skin of his forehead, pushing forth his horns and curling them back into the loose shag of black hair that was rippling through the blond. It felt good to have them out, not nearly as good as his tail felt as it stretched and lengthened. He shook his head and rolled his shoulders as he slimmed them down. The process only took a couple seconds but even though she liked this form best, she didn’t seem to like seeing him shift. It was like a reminder that he had been a man, once.

  When he met her gaze again, she just seemed sadder, like returning to himself hadn’t helped. “Morgan, you can always make another one like me. Hells, Fenn could do it if you got him at the right time. Just take the vial and go with him.”

  Morgan took his right hand with both of hers. She seemed to be grasping for words “But I don’t want another conduit. Zeph, I want-”

  A metallic something rang off the stone wall before thumping onto the moss of the shrine’s floor and rolling to Zephyr’s feet. He regarded the smoking metal cylinder for a heartbeat before realizing what it was. He was durable. His friends were not. Zephyr fell on the grenade as he layered hard interlocking keratin scales thick over his torso. He curled around the weapon as it detonated, sending shock and flame and twisted chunks of metal into his toughened body.

  ***

  Zephyr could not remember the blast. He became aware of reality again with his face resting on the moss. That was nice. He loved the way moss felt, he loved the way it smelled. The quiet scent of greenery. Instead the acerbic burn of black powder reached his nose. He groaned and planted his left hand on the moss to push himself over. The hand did not feel right. Nothing felt right. Then he felt hands on his shoulder pushing him over onto his back. He coughed but struggled to fill his lungs. Morgan’s mouth was moving. He blinked hazily. She was speaking, it looked like she was screaming. Something was wrong. He heard her voice but like she was underwater. A double boom sounded soggily. Fenn had taken a knee behind a crate and was firing towards the corridor. He flowed power to his ears first.

  “Heal, please heal!” Morgan screamed.

  He looked down at his body. Even braced and armored the explosive had done horrific damage. Zephyr groaned and pushed to his right elbows as he surged power into repairs, pushing his guts back into his torso with the remnants of his left hand, he fished a twisted half-moon of shrapnel from the wound with his right, the rest of the smaller shards would have to wait. This was going to use most of his reserves, Zephyr thought as he hastily started resealing his abdominal wall. He fell back and fused the shattered remnants of his hands back together. He looked at his hands as digits regenerated and the freakish split between his left middle and ring finger sealed. He left his wounds fresh, barely scarred over, doing only minimal repairs to preserve power. Satisfied that he would not spill important organs across the now equally scarred moss of his shrine, Zephyr rolled to his knees as shots rang from the corridor. Fenn was still knelt between Zephyr, Morgan, and the shrine’s entrance but small red holes were appearing on his back even as he returned fire.

  Horror rose with realization, they were shooting Fenn but he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t notice the bullets that pierced his body because Zephyr had doped him up. Enough for a week.

  “Fenn, get down!” Zephyr yelled, reaching for his friend’s shoulder when a shot cracked across the room and whipped Fenn’s head back.

  Fenn toppled like a building, slowly then all at once. Zephyr caught his head before it hit the floor as Morgan scrambled for the revolver. The bullet had taken him in one of those perfect eyes. Zephyr took in the remaining, blue iris as it went slack. He closed with a gentle hand and lowered Fenn’s head to the ground. Morgan returned fire once, twice and before he heard the hammer of her pistol click against a spent casing.

  “Hells.” Morgan hissed ducking as bullets she could not answer cracked over her head. She crawled behind the crate that held her more nefarious supplies. She looked up and locked eyes with Zephyr, speaking low and fast as she tore the lids off of several bottles of kerosene. “Buy me some time, I’ve got an idea.”

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  “Morgan, please just run. I’ll come when it’s safe.” It seemed a vain plea. She wasn’t given to cowardice. Zephyr saw the defiance in her eyes and heard her chant begin. She chanted a whisper but a whisper he felt in his soul. The air in the cave chilled, his breath swirled in front of him and he watched as the beaded seawater on Morgan’s skin turned to frost and crystalline ice. “Run and I’ll find you.”

  She shook her head and turned from him, continuing her chant while dumping kerosene across the floor.

  Zephyr cursed her but he was durable and she was not. Keratin scales rippled forth again, patchy and discolored where fresh scars scrawled across his torso. He thickened the layers over his forehead and face and twisted his horns longer and stranger. The inquisition would have come looking for a monster and it would find one, he would give them one. He stood as his claws emerged, sharp and dripping the same venom that lingered in his saliva.

  Zephyr jerked as the first bullet slapped into his chest, cracking through the scales and flattening against a rib. He pushed it out and shaped the hole closed. The twisted bit of metal fell to the moss at his feet as gunshots continued to rip through the room.

  “Inquisitor up! Demon in the open!”

  Zephyr looked to the corridor, soldiers fired at him behind a low ridge of stone where they were spreading out into the room.

  He braced himself as more bullets struck his chest and arms. Black mist wreathed about his torso and face, cut through with flashes of red lightning as he repaired and armored himself. It was just a heavy rain, nothing more. Zephyr twisted his hands into clawed gauntlets and brought out the barbed edges of the spade that ended his tail. He looked down at Fenn’s body, at Morgan huddled against a crate, fumbling for the gas. He had already failed Fenn, Gert, and Orrish. He would not fail her.

  Rage, anguish, and panic put speed into him as he charged the formation of soldiers spreading into the room. They were close but he still closed the gap in a flash. He fell on the first man as the soldier was raising his shotgun. The weapon went off in Zephyr’s gut like a hard punch, lead pellets cracking his already brittle scales. He gasped for breath and coughed, grabbing the man by the throat, he closed his fist, slicing his claws through skin, sinew, and arteries.

  An explosion to Zephyr’s right blinded him. His head rocked hard to the left and he instinctively brought his hands to feel the damage. They came away bloody and holding the curled length of his shattered right horn. He looked right and snarled as the tall soldier with the revolver. The gangly man’s face was drawn with fear and the revolver was shaking as he shot Zephyr in the chest. Zephyr winced at the impact and lashed his tail across the neck of the soldier that had just shot him a second time. The man fell to his knees, clutching the wound spilling his life down the front of his green army uniform. Three bullets struck his back. More, more to kill. It was all he could think to do.

  Zephyr turned and pushed off the gurgling soldier in a lunge that nearly carried him into a second shot gun, instead he brushed past the next man, relying on speed and moving low to the ground. His tail did the lethal work, trailing behind him as he wove between soldiers. There, that one looked like an officer. Each slash of a tendon or nick of the spade administered a dose of venom. By the time he had plunged his claws into the officer’s chest and side, slamming him into the cave’s wall, his venom had the blood of every member of the squad.

  “Cease fire! He’s got the Lieutenant!” A hoarse older voice called behind him.

  The lieutenant’s face contorted in a grimace as the soldiers behind stopped shooting. Zephyr’s torso continued to blur with the black mist that spun off whenever he was making major changes or repairs. He’d have to leave the horn shattered for now, it was mostly cosmetic anyway. Zephyr struggled for rationality while the lieutenant weakly scrambled at his claws. Zephyr felt for the strains of venom in the men behind him. They were moving to get a clear shot at him.

  “You lead these men?”

  The young officer nodded frantically, as if unable to believe the monster killing him would pause to ask a question. It was like he thought cooperation would spare him. No, not after Fenn, and Orrish, and Gert.

  Zephyr snarled and pumped venom into the officer, a lot of venom. “Then you shall watch them burn.”

  He reached for the nerves again, golden nets spread behind him and twisted. Screams answered, the gunshots stopped as he danced on their nerves flooding exposed pathways, setting each and every one alight. Zephyr watched the pale officer’s eyes widen as he used the power designed to heighten sensation to maim and torment.

  A single shot pierced the screams but Zephyr didn’t feel an impact. Instead, one of the nerve nets behind him went dark. Another shot, another dark net. He broke his stare into the lieutenants' eyes, withdrew his talons and turned in time to see a third man, a boy really, place a pistol under his acne scarred jaw and fire. Zephyr stopped, horrified. He released the remaining nerve nets and watched soldiers slump to the ground. The room was silent but for the weak panting of men released from hellfire, clouds of breath marking the living in the freezing cave.

  Zephyr released the lieutenant and staggered forward. He stopped repairing his body and looked at his claws where the red of the lieutenant’s blood mixed with golden drops of his own against the slick black chitin of his gauntlets. Turning his palms up he watched as a single drop from his head wound fell into the pool of crimson collecting in his right gauntlet. He had never wanted to be a monster. The thought flashed and Zephyr relaxed his claws, fading his bloody talons back to the hands he had known as a man. The hands that had been his were now slick with the blood of many men. He stared at them even as the lieutenant’s boot crushed his tail into the moss and pain seared across the base of his spine before driving beneath the thin scale armor on his back and into his lung.

  A soft “ah!” escaped Zephyr’s lips as a hand seized his remaining horn and pushed him to his knees. His tail - his tail was gone but his horror at that realization could not match his pain deep in his side. He had to get the dagger out but his strength was fading, his claws flashed and faded, he had nothing left, just the faintest wisp of power to try to staunch the bleeding. It was his turn to weakly struggle at the grip on his horn and the arm pushing a blade into his back.

  “Valliant’s blood but you made a hash of it Lieutenant.”

  Zephyr jerked his gaze towards the new voice. The man swaggered into the room dressed in white. The flame cloak, a metallic, scale armor with its red fringe a bloody black flashed in the faint light of the bioluminescent moss. Gold buttons gleamed on the double breasted, high collared tunic beneath. White trousers with crimson stripes along the seams tucked into high black riding boots. A red leather sword belt slashed across his middle as if to draw attention to the weapon and the gleaming silver shackles hanging at his hips but Zephyr found himself fixating on the man’s face, or rather the mask covering it. Clear goggles protected the man’s eyes and a mix of pale leather and cloth wrap covered the man’s face and neck. He didn’t appear to have a single inch of exposed skin. Spear in hand, the masked inquisitor picked his way through dead and nearly dead soldiers.

  “Fuck you old man, I took him alive didn’t I?” The lieutenant’s grip on his horn was, how was it so strong? Zephyr felt for the man’s nerves, and lamely pawed at the hand on his horn. He’d dosed the soldier, hadn’t he? He reached for the net that should have danced just behind him and found nothing but a faint glow.

  “That’s right, beast.” The lieutenant sneered behind him. “And I didn't even need any fancy tools.”

  The inquisitor laughed softly. “yes, you just needed to kill-” he looked around the cave “-most of a squad of the Republic’s finest.”

  “They earned glory. A soldier can ask for nothing better and the beast can’t heal if you keep a blade in him.” The man twisted his knife as if to prove the point and Zephyr whimpered as his scales melted away. He tried desperately to shape the wound cut by the blade closed but the sawing twist of the weapon kept it open.

  “I am glad to see you at least skimmed the book I lent you but if you had used one of my ash blades, you could’ve simply left the weapon in and achieved a wonderful paralytic effect. You took my advice about the cocaine and poppy, yes?” He paused and seemed satisfied when the lieutenant grunted positively before continuing, “A pain killer to deaden the nerves as a prophylactic is always a good idea when fighting these particular beasts, especially if one insists on eschewing the proper protective equipment.”

  The inquisitor squatted to meet Zephyr’s gaze. Pale grey eyes met Zephyr's golden glare through the glaze of the goggles as the demigod tried to muster a defiant expression. The inquisitor looked as much like a bored clerk as he did a religious fanatic. “An excellent capture nevertheless. I don’t think one has been taken alive and this intact in my lifetime”

  “This one will work, yes?” The lieutenant sniffed.

  Those grey eyes shifted above Zephyr’s head as the Inquisitor answered. “It will do. I assume you cleansed his followers too?”

  Zephyr kept his eyes locked on the Inquisitor's mask, a fixed point of focus in a sea of pain and worry. Even though he knew it was in vain, he sent a brief prayer to Cybele that Morgan had slipped back into the water during the fight before he stopped healing the stab wound and funneled power to the hand he was using to keep the dagger from plunging deeper. As blood started seeping into his lung and his body convulsed against the sensation, the first cough ripped loose even as the claw on his index finger reformed. If he could kill or incapacitate the inquisitor, Morgan could get the drop on the soldier. But he was still dying and even as he weakly swung at the inquisitor, Zephyr knew his doom.

  The inquisitor rocked back on his heels as Zephyr’s claw hooked into the leather of his mask ripped it free. Zephyr tried to spit at the inquisitor's freshly exposed face but instead started coughing from the blood flooding his lung. Even as the lieutenant pushed him forward into the mist that swirled at his feet, Zephyr knew failure. A gloved hand snatched his extended wrist and then it was wreathed in fire. He smelled kerosene and wondered for a moment if they had applied a torch or lantern to him and his scream turned to an agonized coughing fit as he fought to raise his face to look at the new source of his torment, a silver shackle. The lieutenant helped the inquisitor bind him in burning, burning silver.

  A pistol cracked the cave and the inquisitor’s cloak jerked at the impact. The man spun to face the threat as Morgan advanced from the crates, revolver in one hand, sealed glass flask in the other. Zephyr could only watch as the metallic cloak danced and Morgan, beautiful, terrifying, furious Morgan fired shot after shot, driving the inquisitor to a knee. Steam swirled and her body seemed to radiate even as Hope soared through the haze of agony when Morgan leveled her weapon at the Lieutenant.

  “Get. Off. Him.” Her words were halting with rage, “and take your knife.”

  Zephyr felt the blade draw from his back and heard it thud into the moss next to him as the weight of the lieutenant on his back vanished. He resealed his lung, shaping tissue and capillaries closed as he pushed himself to his knees. The world was starting to swim. His vision was becoming hazy. He needed - he needed Morgan. She consumed his vision and his mind as she prodded the inquisitor with the barrel of her gun while looking behind him at the Lieutenant. He looked at her even as the Inquisitor threw back his cloak, knocking aside the revolver and stabbing his spear into her chest as he rose, lifting her into the air even as she fired uselessly into the ground. Zephyr watched on his knees as his world collapsed.

  Morgan did not scream as she smashed the glass flask against the inquisitor. Somehow she only grimaced and spat before softening her face and looking at Zephyr. A crack as the spear shaft snapped and she fell to the ground with the weapon’s blade buried in her chest. Zephyr ignored the burning at his wrists and lunged towards her. He threw himself over her and struggled to get the spear out. It was slick with blood and when his fingers grazed the blade they burned. Silver and ash; he could hardly touch either but his hands wrapped around the broken weapon and pulled it free as the metal burned, searing the palms of his manacled, sizzling hands. He tossed it aside and cradled her head in his lap. Her body steamed, nearly vibrating with power even as life oozed from her.

  Somewhere at the edge of his awareness he heard the inquisitors’ annoyed voice, “That is why you check for followers, you fucking child.” The older man began coughing, hacking as mist swirled thick and cold through the room.

  Zephyr’s lips met Morgan’s even as her eyes fluttered. The coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth as her nerve net spread before him, golden threads going dark even as the deep clouds of her power built. Panic bubbled in his chest as he grasped for her blood. But he couldn’t just shutter veins or arteries, too much was damaged. If he closed them she would die if he let them flow she would die. He opened his eyes and looked into hers again. Violet, almost jewel-like. They hadn’t always been that way. They had been brown, nigh black once. Then she made him and they changed.

  She smiled sadly before moving her lips in another, silent chant. Words he could no longer hear that he knew would mold the world. The air warmed, heating as though the door to an oven had suddenly opened, the scent of kerosene filled the newly heated air as the spilled liquid began to evaporate and Morgan’s body cooled.

  “You can’t.”

  She shook her head weakly at his objection. “Zeph, you’ll make it even if I don’t.” The violet glow in her eyes seemed to submerge, sinking back into the earth that had been. A gem returning to the soil.

  An idea flashed and Zephyr bit his tongue hard, going in for another kiss, hoping against hope. When she raised a shaking hand to his face as color and strength faded from hers.

  “It won’t work like this.” Morgan’s voice was weak, halting, barely audible above the shouting argument and that was filling the room but it was all he could hear. She smiled at him, sad and beautiful, everything sliding into nothing. Her body growing shockingly cold.

  “Morgan, I-” Zephyr stuttered as tears fell from his face to her. The words were snatched from his throat by a hard blow to his back. Zephyr tried again; he finally had the words but couldn’t speak them. Why? He wondered looking down at the splintered spear shaft sticking through the center of his chest. Zephyr blinked stupidly at the sharp, gold slicked length of wood and was watching the spiral of inky black radiating from the wound when Morgan’s hand fell from his face. Her eyes were black in the dying bioluminiscence, looking at him but looking nowhere. Her index finger glowing, a single point of heat crackling with power.

  His body would not answer. Not when he tried to rise. Not to fight. Not for vengeance. It knelt unmoving as his soul thrashed and keened. He willed himself to battle and but remained as he was, knelt at her side. He couldn’t pursue the fleeing soldiers as Morgan’s gas swirled around him. He couldn’t move to blink tears away even as they blurred his view of Morgan. Then her finger sparked and the world flashed brilliant before the black welcomed him.