26

"Some power to fool idiots!" Losh shouts. "Only the Icons are real! Stralchus teaches that we are prisoners in this false world, and we must overcome it through dedication to the Icons and destruction of all manifestations of the False One."

"It's all very complicated," Skull Ripper tells you. "I like our god. We burn wood in his belly, and then we don't get sick."

"Wood," Alexius says, noticeably relieved.

Then a voice booms out of the idol, "I hunger!"

"Oh, good," Alexius says. "It hungers."

"How did it speak?" Control asks. She's surrounded the idol but a thorn fence keeps her from approaching.

"Merely a trick," Losh says. "Even the most ignorant of my Cerulean Guards can see through this display."

"Look," Therko says as villagers carry wood toward the idol, "a small fire still gutters in its belly."

"Wood treated with resins and oils," Vecla says as one of the Triune lays a bundle reverently in the maw of the idol.

All eyes turn toward the idol as flames leap in its stone gullet.