[ He manages not to flinch. Escape is simple here in Horizon, and this is relatively neutral territory, being that this domain belongs to neither of them. ]

He's allowed me to live many times when I should have died. [ His god also threatened to kill him the next time he saw him, but Kahlil had done the job for him. And how, he is here, so many months later. I was chosen, he would say, but he's already saying too much. Still, he continues. ]

You say your god made drafts, copies, as though everything he creates is expendable. Mine was said to have torn his flesh and blood body apart to create the world out of the pieces. If our world is destroyed, there will not be another.

[ But the Rifter, the sacred destroyer, was made too well, made too strong, and Parfir’s own body shuddered as she walked across his back. This was what the Payshmura were meant to do. To protect Parfir's living body, the land itself, from his destroyer incarnation. ]