What Little Remains Of Terpsichore Ironheart

"Hello, Joseph. We need to talk."

I sighed, realizing that, yep, I was in fact dead again. I didn't like that I could already tell just from the feel alone, but... Oh well. Not like I could do much about it.

"Let me guess, you're another ancestor of mine with unsolicited advice," I said. "Perhaps my maternal grandfather?" I opened my eyes, and beheld... "...Napoleon Ironheart is not dead."

"No, but he is your father," the being wearing the face of my father said. "Now, Joseph. I'm given to understand you're fighting the cult of Demon King Paimon, am I correct?"

"...Yeah, I am," I said. "Well. I was, before I died."

"Your death is only temporary," he said. "You'll live. But before I send you back, we need to discuss a few things. You see, as it stands, there are only three possible outcomes: One, you successfully rescue Emily from the cult before they make it to the ziggurat and use her to summon Paimon. Two, you fail to stop the cult at all, and Paimon regains his strength quickly enough to run wild on the mortal plane. Three: You prove yourself as Lysander's heir and kill Paimon yourself with your bare hands."

"...What are the probabilities of those outcomes?" I asked. "Because those don't sound like they're all equal probabilities."

"Ten percent, sixty percent, thirty percent," he said.

"...One in three isn't great odds, but it's honestly better than I expected for me trying to fight a Demon King," I said. "Wasn't Lysander already twelve hundred years old in the first Dark Crusade?"

"The odds are better than you think," he said. "The possibilities where you fail completely include the possibilities where you run away, or simply die on the way to the ziggurat- once we narrow down the possibilities to those where you fight Demon King Paimon, the odds become very nearly a fair fight."

I grunted. That was... actually, good news.

"So, if I kill Paimon, what happens next?" I asked. "Is that gonna go like Lysander killing Lucifer, and we're gonna have a new Dark Lord haunting the world for thousands of years?"

"No, it won't," he said, shaking his head. "The Hikaano do not like this fact, but metaphysically, the only difference between Demon Kings and Living Gods is that Demon Kings happen to be from Hell and preferentially use negatively-aspected vital essence. As such, just like Living Gods, Demon Kings can be killed, and their deaths go in one of three ways. The most permanent way to kill a Living God is to wield the Aspect of another god against them, which will completely destroy their divine mantle. As you are not bonded to any god at all, this way is wholly unavailable to you."

"That's not for a lack of trying on my part, you know," I protested. "Anyhow, what about Faith? She's a Paladin, and bonded to a god who has already killed a Demon King."

"Hano's aspect is... situationally inappropriate," he said carefully. "Faith would do no better against Paimon than you would. Now, the common way to kill a Living God is to kill them without wielding any divine Aspect against them, and this will simply cause them to reincarnate- the Dark Lord actually reincarnated within a year of each death, it simply took multiple centuries for one of those reincarnations to successfully conquer the orcs and begin a Dark Crusade."

"Huh. The more you know."

"And that simply will not happen with Paimon, due to the peculiarities of his own Aspect," he said, sighing. "The third way is to turn a Living God's own Aspect against them, which is called Usurpation for the way it directly transfers their divine mantle to the one who killed them with their own Aspect. Now, as it so happens, Paimon is the Demon King of Usurpation, and if I let you kill him as you are now, you will become the Demon King of Usurpation, and his soul will slowly come to override your own, until you give in to his soul and Aspect, and begin to do terrible things to this world."

"So," I said, quietly. "Is that it? Is that the only way this prophecy can end, Father? In death and destruction from a mad God of Usurpation, with the only real variance being over what that god's ears are shaped like?"

"Of course not," The Father, Transcendent God of Time, Death, and Fatherhood, said. "You need a theology lesson, young man: I am not a purely passive god who does nothing, merely representing 'the world as it is.' I may not be as active as The Mother is, but that is largely because I don't need to be to get my way. There are benefits to being the God of Time, after all."

"...Wait," I said, blinking.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Right now, however, I do need to act," The Father continued. "I must appoint a representative on the mortal plane, in order to kill Demon King Paimon and destroy his divine mantle. And would you look at that, here is a young man who has killed before and will kill again, who has died before and will die again-"

"How many times?"

"You don't want to know," The Father said blandly, before resuming. "A young man deeply immersed in the history of his people, and deeply invested in their future, who does his best to understand the full scope of history, and who is a surprisingly competent clockmaker."

"Oh so now you're paying attention to my hobbies."

"And who aspires to be a father, not only to his own children, but to his community," The Father said. "A community that, if he gets his way, will be very big indeed."

"...Well, fair enough, I suppose," I said, sighing. "Well, Father, if this is what you intend to do?"

"It is," The Father said, nodding. "Joseph Napoleon Ironheart, will you be my newest cleric, and take up the holy quest of destroying the divine mantle of Demon King Paimon?"

I nodded. "I will."

"Good. Now, at the moment, your tolerance for divine magic is not quite enough to do any meaningful amount of self-healing, so... you'll have to improvise a way to save your own life some other way. Any ideas?"

"...Actually, yeah. Yeah, I've got an idea."

"Alright, let's give this a shot."

---

I was only eighteen, but I've been a machinist since I was fourteen, and I've been working on experimental and custom vehicles for a lot of that time, even if I did start with just steam engines. And since I had been a Wizard that whole time, with a very skilled and supportive mentor in the form of my own mother, Ariel Silver, I'd developed a lot of simple, niche, custom spells that I found very useful in the shop.

See, when you were working on a complex assembly of moving parts that required a lot of lubricating oil to keep things from grinding and to act as a coolant, that meant there were a lot of pipes carrying flowing oil, and a mechanically-complex oil pump to keep the oil moving, and a lot of places where pipes joined or could simply be damaged and leak oil.

The proper solution was to simply get better at machining so that you could get really solid tolerances and mating surfaces that sealed perfectly and didn't leak, and/or slather a whole bunch of sealing compound around every single joint until it stopped leaking.

My solution was to spend literal months of my life developing a spell slash enchantment that would both magically pump the oil and keep the oil within the intended pathways, with zero leaking.

I'm not just talking about this because it was something I was really proud of. It had been hard, but to be honest a lot of the work was done by Mom, and it simply didn't matter to anyone who wasn't a machinist or the owner of a motor vehicle. I was talking about it because it was immediately relevant to the problem at hand.

In medical terms, my heart had been punctured, and without immediate treatment, I'd bleed out and die in a few minutes.

In mechanical terms, my blood pump had broken and was leaking everywhere.

And adapting this spell to work on blood instead of oil wasn't that hard, for someone with as much practice as I had.

My heart did not beat. But my blood still flowed, I did not bleed, and life went on.

"JOSEPH!" someone cried out behind me- either Talia or Faith, possibly both, and honestly, I couldn't rule out Volex.

I didn't bother responding, because I did still have that damn hellhound to deal with, but my bike was fast enough to run it down and skewer it through the back of the skull. After that, I just rode back over to Talia and Faith, who looked deeply, deeply confused.

"You're... alive?" Talia asked. "How are... That sword's going straight through your heart!"

"Sure, but that's on my left side," I said. "And I'm right-handed."

"Now is really not the time for you to be a smartass," Faith said.

"Yeah, I know," I said, sighing. "The short answer is... It's magic. The heart is just a blood pump, and I'm a Wizard who's spent a lot of time dealing with badly-made pumps that leak. I've got a spell for this."

"...You have got to be shitting me," Faith said.

"You know there's other organs in the way, right?" Talia asked.

"Wow, you make an amazing point," I said dryly. "I should go see a Healer, especially a trauma surgeon. Boy, I sure do wonder where the nearest trauma surgeon is. Oh, that's right, they're in my van, driving off towards the Temple of Paimon. So stop your goddamn gawking, hop on the bike, and let's go already."

"I don't think I can cling to your back, there's a sword in the-" Faith cut herself off mid-sentence, her eyes going wide as I pulled the sword straight out of my chest. "...oh..."

"This'll be a neat souvenir," I said, before putting the blood-stained sword into my pocket. "Now come on, we don't have time for this!"

Faith rallied herself, hopping onto the back of the bike and grabbing onto me tightly, while Talia instead turned into a rat and climbed into one of my pockets.

I gunned the throttle, and we sped off.