A familiar vibration pierced through the midnight veil, and Romulus awoke.

  He was once again in darkness, expansive and vast. His body felt hale and whole, and a cursory probe of his sternum revealed a distinct lack of sword-hole, and the familiar texture of cotton. His scalemail was nowhere to be seen, but given he wasn’t entirely sure he was actually in Eternus anymore—at least, not the continent—he wasn’t wholly surprised. His eyes shifted across the vast emptiness instinctively, and when they did, a System prompt lit his vision.

  “Hello, Darian. Or, should I call you Romulus, now?”

  Romulus snapped his eyes away from the screen at the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Lilith,” he returned wryly, turning to face the silver-haired goddess of Death and—between eyeblinks—suddenly finding himself in a throne room reminiscent of the one he’d freed her from, except this one had an enclosed ceiling and hanging chandeliers. “You’re a far better sight than that pompous nightlight you call a brother. Call me as you like.”

  Lilith laughed at his reticence, and he couldn’t help but grin at her reaction. It was nice when his humor was appreciated by a beautiful woman, no less. “I rather enjoyed that little showing, actually. Especially the part where you threatened to… what was it?” the Divinarch tapped a black-painted nail to her lips, then snapped her fingers.

  The action made her body shift very distractingly beneath her abyssal chiton.

  “Ah yes,” she said with a flare of her bloody eyes, “‘skullfuck’ his Autarch.”

  Romulus felt his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. “It sort of just slipped out.”

  “I take it that would be your version of taunting in your world?”

  “Something like that,” he said evasively, not wanting to explain internet trolling.

  “It was quite amusing, Romulus. In fact, I would dearly like to reward you for your courage in standing up to my brother…” her lips curled upward in a lascivious smile that made him think evil thoughts, “...but I fear we do not have the time. I must give you my Gift quickly, for Hyperion has put plans in motion, and you are in peril.”

  Great, that golden asshole is making my life harder after dying, too.

  Lilith approached him and placed her pale right hand on his heart, her left reaching up to brush his hair and cup his jaw. “I am so proud of you, Romulus. You completed your task with impressive alacrity. I had thought it would take great guile to infiltrate the Necropolis, yet you managed it with an ease that few could emulate. Your masterful handling of the Duke and easy befriending of the Wayfinder will return to reward you in time.”

  “I really just got lucky and had some nice incentive,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

  “Indeed,” Lilith replied coyly. “And I hope that incentive continues to guide you. For now, however, you must focus on your immediate circumstances. You have just arrived, and yet already our time grows short,” she lamented with a tantalizing sigh.

  “There is much you should be aware of,” Lilith continued, “but what time we have left will only allow some small summation. First and foremost, you will leave here with the attention of the entire Pantheon. Your days of innocuous existence are done and behind you. You are about to become the Dark Autarch, with all the power, infamy, and burden that represents.”

  The Divinarch released him to rise to her full height after she spoke.

  “The truth is, Romulus, that I am at your mercy now more than ever,” Lilith said with candor while her eyes captured his own unblinkingly. “If you abandon me or are taken from me, it will be centuries before I can muster the power on my own to create a new Autarch—and they will have none of the very sparse advantages I have granted you. We are in this together, as I promised you. I need an Autarch, now more than ever.”

  “As long as…” Romulus swallowed while staring at the Goddess, and trying not to let his mouth go completely dry, “...I can do things my way, as we agreed.”

  “As I said, so it shall be,” the Divinarch agreed with a full-lipped smile. “Build the world you wish to build and restore my Faith the way you believe is most beneficial, my champion. I shall revel in your actions no matter their nobility or villainy.”

  The sincerity of her words was both comforting and mildly disconcerting if he were honest. The proclamation of blind acceptance of his actions, so long as they adhered to rebuilding her Faith, implied a truly amoral apathy toward ethics that was at once liberating and harrowing.

  There would evidently be no conscientious counsel from his Divinarch patron.

  He alone would be the measure by which the nobility of his faction was judged, and that was quite the daunting realization.

  Lilith’s right hand extended while Romulus watched her, and a massive scythe appeared out of nothingness. Its silver blade was etched with blazing scarlet runes mixed with black-purple abyssal force, and Lilith held it like it was an extension of her body—comfortable and familiar.

  With masterful precision, she twirled the weapon and shallowly sliced the side of her neck. It was not a deep enough cut to be of grave concern, but was made in such a way as to allow a small curtain of vitae to leak from the thin black line marring her otherwise perfect skin.

  Voidlike blood aglow with radiant silver rivulets stained her pale flesh immediately.

  “Come and take your gift,” she said breathlessly. “You have earned it.”

  Romulus hesitated as he watched her, swallowing down the initial sense of shock at seeing a woman cut open her own neck. He looked at her glowing eyes, and then back to her bleeding neck in concern. “I…”

  “Do not hesitate,” Lilith urged him. “You have earned this, Romulus, by your own merits and actions. You must learn to take what is yours, especially when freely offered.”

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  Romulus bit back another objection and cursed his hesitation. The natural revulsion for the idea of actually drinking blood held him stationary, and he forced himself to his feet. The human understanding of what was and was not permissible held no place in Eternus Online, and he knew that. It was a holdover of his own sense of normalcy, dampening his willingness to engage in something he consciously expected to be revolting.

  I have to leave that sort of thinking behind while playing this game.

  A steady breath in and out steeled his nerves, and he marched forward before he could second-guess himself again. His arms extended, he took the shorter woman—the Supreme Power—within them, bent, and closed his eyes against what he expected to be a horrible experience before pressing his open lips to the wound on her neck.

  The moment he did, his eyes shot back open in wonder.

  Her blood was the most wonderful thing he’d ever tasted.

  Nothing in his life, not a single thing, could compare to the flavor that was her blood. He couldn’t even put an association to what it was he was experiencing. The nearest comparable thing would be ambrosia, the mythical drink of the olympian gods of Earth. A guttural moan escaped him as he swallowed Lilith’s offered Gift, and his eyes closed once more, this time in pleasure, as he greedily drained her.

  He drank for moments, or perhaps hours—he had no idea—before she spoke again.

  “That’s enough,” the Divinarch whispered under him, her hands clutching his chest.

  Romulus didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. Her blood was pleasure distilled into liquid.

  “Champion,” Lilith said more emphatically.

  He needed more. More! A hunger such as he had never known roared to life within him.

  “Romulus!” she rasped in a panicked voice. “Stop!”

  Clarity abruptly returned at the mild panic in her voice, [Indomitable] flared to life, and he tore himself away from her neck in a stagger of motion. His breathing came in heavy, vicious gulps of oxygen, and he licked his lips instinctively, barely noticing that his entire body was shaking.

  “I… I’m sorry,” he said shakily while looking anywhere but at her neck.

  “No, Romulus,” she murmured while brushing her fingers against her neck to seal the wound, and then approaching him to take his cheeks into her electrifying palms. “It is alright. You are just far stronger than I thought. Far, far stronger… Your hunger is terrifying, overwhelming, savage…” her cheeks blushed red as she said it, and the goddess seemed short of breath for a moment.

  A second later, she cleared her throat.

  “The Gift has been given, and you are Anointed,” Lilith said in a stronger voice while her eyes fixed on his. “You will return to the mortal realm in a few short moments. I have done all that I can within the limits of my power, and I am still weak from the lack of Faith. Survive what is coming, my Autarch. Conquer your foes, found your dominion, and revel in your lusts. Overcome the machinations of my self-righteous brother.”

  The Divinarch smiled at him when she finished, again becoming the coy seductress. “Gather me ten thousand Faithful souls, and you shall reap the first of your rewards. I vow it.”

  “Ten thousand souls, huh?” Romulus asked in a mild daze. “Deal.”

  “Romulus, one last thing…” Lilith said as his vision started to darken.

  “Yes?” he asked with a sudden onset of tiredness. He felt as if he’d run a marathon.

  “Remember my words: revel in your lusts, and take what is offered,” Lilith said with precise and deliberate emphasis on her words. “I can offer you no further hints. Good luck, my Autarch. I will be watching you with hope and longing.”

  Lilith stood on her toes to kiss his forehead, hands on his cheeks. Romulus shivered in pleasure at the lightning-like touch of her lips, and his gaze blurred as the Power and her throne room faded into darkness.

  The world seemed to spin around him for a moment.

  Romulus opened his eyes with a start a moment later.

  He was seated on something hard and resistant, and when he shifted, he heard the tell-tale clank of metal. His head also felt strangely weighty, and when he lifted a hand to investigate, he froze at the feeling of cold steel blocking access to his skull. Heart racing, Romulus looked down at himself and realised he was sitting on the Revenant-King’s throne. Lightsbane was on his lap, and his body was encased in a suit of armour that felt more comfortable than anything he’d ever worn.

  His scalemail was nowhere to be seen.

  Before he could investigate further, a System message filled his vision.

  Romulus stared at it in confusion momentarily before he barked a strained laugh.

  Of all the things he had expected, what he read was certainly not part of the equation. The more he looked it over, the more he wanted to laugh, curse, dance, and groan in equal measure. The System definitely had a strange sense of timing and humor both, and reading the screen, he could only guess at its intentions.

  Whatever they were, ‘peace of mind’ seemed to be excluded.

  Concept Art of Lilith