“Well, that went well.” I said with a groan, feeling a bit ashamed at how I had acted.

  “Mmhmm.” Elendria hummed, crossing her arms and glaring at me. “Well, what are we going to do now? We’re on a world we know nothing about, no sense of direction, have no supplies, and we can carry at most 1/8 of a cubic meter of stuff. And you went and alienated the one person who could probably help us. Hell, we don’t even know the language.”

  “I’m sorry.” I said, hanging my head. “I don’t know what came over me. I was frustrated with our battle with that damn snake, then he basically suggested I had it easy, and the spells weren’t working. I just.”

  ‘I know, you got exasperated and took it out on the one person you shouldn’t have.” She interrupted. “That’s fine, we’ll deal with it. At least we aren’t enslaved starting out this time. But we have a food issue, and who knows how long it’ll take your wings to heal so we can’t just fly around. Plus it might look a little suspicious. So stop moping and make a plan.”

  “Food first then.” I said, looking back to the snake. “We can at least get that taken care of easily. I’ll slice and dice up this snake here, can you grab enough firewood to smoke a lot of meat?”

  “I suppose I could, but this makes me uncomfortable Sean. I don’t think we should be eating anything that soaked with Apophis’ power. Can we try finding something else?”

  “That’s actually a good point.” I reluctantly agreed. “Can we at least fill this dinky storage bag with some bones and the fangs? We can fold up a good bit of the skin and make a rope with the clothes from the priests to tie it together.”

  “Sure. I’ll get the clothes, why don’t you use this time to practice making a magic blade and cutting the skin off.” While she sauntered away, I got to work. Getting the mana to flow wasn’t that difficult, but I ruined several chunks of skin and scales when the output fluctuated. Each failure ended with a slightly longer and deeper breath, trying to keep my frustration at bay. I did notice that nothing was draining my spirit, and what I felt like my mana reservoir kept refilling as soon as I used a bit. That would probably change as I started using more costly spells, but it was good to know that even if I couldn’t keep track of mana, the regeneration I had built up was still there.

  While I focused on my tasks, I didn’t realize that Elendria was standing off to the side and looking over the entire body. As I progressed up the body, she was busy removing as much flesh from the bones as she could. She laid out a portion of the less than perfect skin, then froze some ribs to the sides. A few ribs through the bottom, with small bits of ice created a nice floor. Spine sections created some legs, and a triple set of ribs at the base of each leg created runners. A few walls created the same way as the floor, and we had a makeshift wagon ready to go.

  About an hour and a half later, and even I had to quit for a bit. Standing up strait and stretching out the kinks in my back, I finally noticed the finished sled and the second one Elendria had started. “Why do I have the feeling that I’m going to be pulling those?”

  “Oh, you’ll be doing more than that dear.” Elendria retorted with a malicious smile. “See, you need practice. So this’ll be the distraction, and you will have to create small shields beneath each of the runners so they are easier to pull.”

  “Are you sure we can’t summon the wolves or the frostlings?”

  “Very sure. Besides, they’re my friends. Not beasts of burden.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “Right now you’re a trainee. Besides, it’ll help us when we eventually need to fit in. I’ll be a frost mage, and you can be a barrier mage.”

  I thought about what she said, and unfortunately couldn’t think of a good reason not to do it. I really did need the practice with my mana control. Prolonged, low level usage would probably help me figure out how to tweak spells without catastrophic consequences. We could obviously save more of the body, and we could pass ourselves off as whatever this world’s version of adventurers were.

  “Fine. But we keep the head as well. I want a trophy.”

  “Deal. I’ll freeze the head to stop it from rotting. Carve out the heart as well, I can freeze it and we’ll put it in the storage bag.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I groaned as even more got added to my to do list. Still, I got back to work. Soonest begun, soonest done and all that. I kept running motivational quotes through my head as I went through the repetitive tasks. Somewhere along the way I started counting scales, trying to guess how many were in each row. Then how many rows before I could cut off the section I was currently peeling. Anything to keep part of my brain engaged and on task.

  It was hours later, and nothing had really changed until I got to the heart. As soon as I removed the organ, there was a golden flash of light and a fist sized stone appeared. Faceted like a gemstone, it had these oddly compelling streaks of gold snaking through the clear matrix. At the center was a white starburst, like someone had taken a supernova and frozen it in time.

  “I should have known it had a Spark.” A familiar voice said, and I turned to find Theo sitting in his chair behind me.

  “Hey.” I said, standing and dusting off my hands. “I’m sorry for how I acted earlier.”

  “Stop.” Theo said, holding a hand up. “We both came off a lot worse than we probably should have, and part of it is on me as well. Let’s never mention it again, and just move forward.”

  “Works for me.” I said with a grin.

  “Great! Now, since you haven’t had the Divine system for long, I’ll explain a bit of this. Part of the welcoming package that only unlocks once you come upon one of these things. To reach full divinity, you need a Divine Core. It’s the soul of your being, and coalesces from your divine traits. You’ll have to figure those out on your own, can’t help you. If you get lucky, a Divine can sort of gift you a starter core from their own Divinity. That’s what a spark is. Grow it to five times the original size, and it becomes a Shard of Divinity. Five shards can form a Core. Follow me so far?” I nodded along, and he continued.

  “Great. Now as to why Divines are so hard to kill. The core can be used to recreate their body, though it takes a while and a lot of energy. And it’s nearly impossible to destroy the Faith energy that creates it, different options for dealing with Divines have emerged. Consuming is the favorite, as you can slowly dissolve the Faith energy and make it your own. Of course, you have to be stronger than the donating deity, which is why you can’t consume it. Seal it with your own power, and you effectively take it out of play for a limited time. Depends on your power difference. Storage is similar, but you keep it with you and constantly use your spirit to suppress it. Theoretically unlimited, but you know how things go with that. What can go wrong, will go wrong. Split it into portions and you can choose multiple options. And if you drop it down to the minimum size, you can take it over yourself. It’ll go into storage, and double the spirit will be reserved. Half towards keeping it stored, the other half will slowly work to erase the donor’s essence.”

  “Thanks.” I said, grateful for the explanation. “Any idea on how long it’ll take to erase the donor essence if I drop it all the way down?”

  “Sorry. It depends on way too many factors to actually answer that. Any other questions?”

  “How does negative luck work?” I asked in a hopeful voice, wondering about what was bugging me the most from our last conversation.

  “I’ll answer, but this is the last. You’ve read enough cultivation novels to know about lucky encounters. This is the same basic thing, except the chance for everything going horribly wrong is much higher. And the chances that you aren’t fully prepared will be much higher. Now, That’s all I have time for, so I wish you luck.” He said the last bit with a sarcastic grin before fading away right before my eyes.

  “What was that all about?” Elendria asked, walking up after making a third wagon. I filled her in on what Theo had said as I absentmindedly turned the Spark over in my hands. His words had not only gotten me wondering about what to do with this Spark, but also how I could go about killing Apophis. If faith energy powered a God’s core, then I would have to do my best to break his church. Break it in such a way that I didn’t alienate his followers, but instead framed it as freeing them from a tyrant. A tall order for a year of action. I would at least have to take out the major temples and make sure not to get bogged down in side quests. Plus there were those two marks from the bastards that killed my family. I wasn’t about to let them go.

  “So what are you going to do about that Spark?”

  “Split it.” I answered immediately. “Clear it out, and take one for myself and give you the other one. We’ll have to start building our reputation on this world. Not that killing the one god left wouldn’t do that.”

  “Sounds good. And while you do that, go ahead and finish cleaning up this snake. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Then we can head off. Head in the direction the priests came from.”