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“Agree to it first.”

“How can I agree if I don’t know?”

The light in the temple began to dim now, and I understood bone-deep that we were on the verge of being entombed in this fucking mountain, in the dark forever. I could even hear the bones of the earth moving to embrace us, I felt my teeth becoming minerals and my eyes turning to small pockets of buried water. I was too horrified to speak, and I thank the gods, cruel as they are, that Galva had mastered her fear better than I. She always did.

“We accept,” she said, and the light of the temple brightened again, and the god in its huge niche stood now, arranging its six arms in a pose that seemed to have meaning, but one I did not know.

All three heads were smiling.

The woman laughed, the man groaned, and the other sighed.

It sounded sexual, like the three of them spent.

I was terrified in a way I never had been before, as if I were standing before something that had been present at the making of the world. Something that commanded some piece of that power.

So this was a god.

And I now felt an intense sensation under my breastbone, like fire, painful but almost pleasant. The feeling drove me to my knees, only it was four knees I went to, and then six.

“The FUCK!” I said with my three voices, all the same.

I looked up at Galva and saw that she had become a sort of monster, multiheaded, six-armed, six-legged, in great pain, or pleasure, or both. Of a sudden, I understood the splitting of tiny bits of the sun to make it burn so, and how lightning feels ripping holes in the night sky, and lightning ripped through all I thought I knew of the world and burned great holes in it. I saw the Knock, and great waves coming in from the sea to drown the cities of Old Kesh. I saw the first goblins writhe into our world, in a wretched subterranean breach, an infestation. I grew into something massive, and dangerous, and wise, and then I tore deliciously.

And there I was, ruined and reborn on the stone floor of this place.

And there were two more of me as well, all three Kinches trying to catch our breaths.

I was reminded of the cruel games the Book of the Full Shadow had played with me in dreams, to make me think I saw myself, wrestled myself, but these were parlor tricks. Masks. I understood to my great wonder, and horror, that there were truly and literally three of myself in that temple. Each of us with all the same gear, the same history, the same expression on our faces. I mean, I couldn’t see my own face, but I could see both of theirs, and they looked as I felt. Bewildered, awed, terrified.

Galva had likewise been trebled.

The other two Kinches and I began speaking at the same time.

“What now?”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

Now the Galvas all spoke at once.

“Of course you were the first one to say something.”

“Let me think.”

“Let me think.”

One of the other Kinches now came to my pack, pulled out the Book of the Full Shadow. It writhed in its bear trap, aware that it was in the presence of something beyond its understanding or control. I watched him carefully, that other me, moved past him, pulled the book out of his pack.

“So there are three of these fucking things now?” we all said at once, or maybe one of us said karking instead of fucking. Then two of us laughed, and one of us said fuck again.

Then we all laughed.

“I’m glad you’re so pleased,” the Galvas said.

Now a great fire burned in a triangular pit in the floor, so hot we all moved back from it.

The statue of the god stepped down from the wall, and walked through the fire, and it was as if it burned their beautiful aspects from them and turned them from god to devil. It was rough, porous stone now, impossibly old. It groaned like the living rock it was, and with two of its great arms, it plucked up one Galva and one Kinch and threw them, threw us—I don’t even know how to talk about this—into the fire. All their belongings, including the books, dragged across the floor and followed them into the inferno with great finality. No, this was no shadow play. I watched myself and the Spanth burn to death in an instant of extreme shock and agony, along with all that we had carried in here.