On the seventh day god didn’t get a chance to rest, because Providence’s marketing department had refused to capitulate to the demands of HR and decided to announce the new messiah on a Sunday. God in this instance was me, lowercase ‘g’, more commonly referred to with an ‘oh’ in front of it, or simply by my name: Loki.
For his part, the messiah was a rather aggressive redhead named Lorenzo previously employed by the Vatican City Swiss Guard to scare people off with the power of multicoloured pantaloons, and had no special powers to speak of. It could be debated I’d had a hand in his sudden promotion, or in certain other upheavals over the course of the week, up to and including the destruction of large parts of several capital cities, the sun dropping out of synchronisation with global calendars, and – not to leave out the immortal population – the unleashing of a fragile but nonetheless effective anti-divinity superweapon.
That was the simplified version.
Right now, occupied masterminding the coup de grâce of my corporate career, such side effects had had to take a back seat to the real task: putting an end to the company responsible for millennia of universal mortal subjugation. I was doing it from inside a decaying pocket dimension in a squalid cave, which undercut some of the grandeur of the previous observation.
In this case, revolution involved staring at doors. I checked on the forensic analyst beside me, a strong-featured Italian with pink-streaked hair and pronounced scoliosis on track to becoming less so thanks to a recent infusion of lesser immortality. I snatched her gloved hand before it could disappear into a roving crack between dimensions and bleed chunks into infinity.
Except to Gianna herself, I was technically incorporeal at the moment, which was why she was doing the knocking. I’d spent some time bullying my accidental collection of neophyte demon lords into becoming temporary worshippers for the sake of the practical benefits. Divine visitation wasn’t the only way to get around unseen, but it was the most foolproof, even if it did leave me unguarded for the duration. Once this was all over, I planned on kicking them all out again.
I guided my temporary protégé’s fist and rapped it up and down twice, while Gia stared at me with an annoyed expression. A second later her features smoothed into professional neutrality as the door swung towards us. We’d been knocking from the inside.
“Don’t look at me,” I reminded her at normal volume, unconcerned at being overheard. It may have been the wrong thing to say. The demon lord stiffened, overcompensating, focusing on a fixed point between the orange eyes of the deity peering down at her.
“Hi,” Gia greeted him, after the initial awkward silence. “So, uh, I know we’re prisoners and all, but there’s a bit of an issue with –” she hesitated, and I didn’t think it was an act, “– you know, food. And water. Bedding.” Her voice remained steady, but I could still hear the tell-tale markers of fear within. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume it came with the territory of confronting an unfriendly god. I knew it was worse – she was living on borrowed time.
Providence was normally more organised than this. Its HR department sat in charge of all things Facilities, and the executive in charge, Enki, could be forgiven for possessing a conscience amidst otherwise short supply. Due to the whole superweapon incident, however, the venue was being managed by Operations’ Security department instead.
And Operations wasn’t doing so well. For one thing, its Head of Security had recently died. Being immortal hadn’t saved him. Nor had being the most powerful seer in existence. Operations’ Head of Compliance hadn’t died, instead finding herself eaten by a computer, which made her even less available to provide handover notes.
With both lead subordinates gone, Vishnu no longer possessed the load-bearing stones to prop up the fragile house of cards under the brutal weight of multiple external crises. Staff were being transferred and trained at record speeds, but it still wasn’t enough.
Short of rewinding time – problematic for all sorts of reasons – a new PR strategy was Providence’s best hope of regaining internal and subsequently external control. That was where the messiah came in.
So of course we’d be disrupting it.
“Currently all we’ve got are computers, which aren’t great for any of those things,” Gia continued at the door, ignoring the fact her conversation partner was inhumanly tall and half-composed of shadow.
I peered past her into the cave beyond, not stepping out in case it revealed my presence. I didn’t think I’d be detected, but the facility’s single guard had been chosen for a reason: being attuned to the outer venue, or what we in the business called ‘a place of power’. There was no guarantee the ordinary rules would apply.
My suspicions appeared to be vindicated when Tepeyollotl turned away from Gia to stare at a blank sheet of rock. Several seconds later, a glowing figure stepped out of it, casting beams of silver light scattering around the cave.
Mayari had arrived, right on schedule. She was dressed in her workshop gear: greenish-grey boots, shirt and trousers, garnished with a toolbelt more compartmentalised than a traumatised war veteran. A corporate lanyard swung from her neck as she hit the floor without missing a beat. Large duffel bags swung lightly from each of her two hands.
The guard was on her in an instant, crossing the tunnel in the blink of an eye and withdrawing further into formless darkness – a defensive position hard to attack. Glow aside, Mayari was still depowered and harmless to the knowledge of the wider business, but Tepe was taking precautions. Helpdesk employees weren’t exactly known for making appearances at top-secret facilities.
It wasn’t unjustified. We’d debated trying to take out the guard – Mayari was no pushover – but deemed it more trouble than it was worth. Besides, we had a handy excuse for being here, and an even handier approvals process.
Mayari lifted her chin a touch, standing her ground. “Odin said you were expecting me,” she announced, peering around the bank of shadow to where Gia stood in the open door. “Facilities still have their schedules full fixing the damage from sun displacement, and Operations are dealing with everything else. Apparently I’m the most qualified engineer left not suffering from overwork and burnout, so here I am. On a weekend.” She scowled. “This had better be worth my time.”
All lies, of course, though I had abused my impersonation of Odin to pull the right strings. I imagined some of the Facilities staff were up at their desks having panic attacks over the recent solar rearrangement, but their hands were tied in the face of official management policy, which erred strongly towards non-interference, regardless of the consequences on the mortal population. Apollo, the one senior manager to openly flout that policy, was now dead, which didn’t exactly encourage others to follow his example.
I tensed, poised to nudge Gia into assistance, but Tepe made a lacklustre gurgly noise unbefitting of typical public decency and shrank back into the shadows. This turned out to be less effective than he might have hoped, thanks to Mayari’s glow, but no one present was inclined to draw attention to it.
Mayari waited for a moment, shrugged, and made for the open door, raising an eyebrow at the other woman. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, crossing the threshold. “I’ll submit an assessment, but whether they listen to it is anyone’s guess.”
“Wait a minute –” Gia began, but the door slammed shut before she could complete the sentence.
On the other side, Mayari sagged against it briefly, but her face broke out into a broad smile. “Step one, complete,” she declared in Italian, straightening up again. She patted one of the duffel bags and laid it on the floor, where it hit with a far heavier clunk than its apparent weight had suggested. “At this rate, I could make a career out of breaking into divine strongholds. Not what I imagined for myself, but then neither was working for Providence.” She held out a hand, the motion swinging shadows around the long entrance hall. “You must be Ms Pisani. Mayari, Helpdesk representative, aerospace engineer and astrophysicist.”
“She’s a moon goddess,” I added, feeling a key detail had been left out.
Gia rolled her eyes in response. We’d been over it earlier.
Mayari didn’t miss the reaction. “I take it Loki’s already here,” she observed. “I still think this would be easier in person, if only so we didn’t have to go through an intermediary. Not to say you aren’t capable, Gia.”
“I have my reasons,” I responded, even though the goddess couldn’t hear it. Mainly that it wasn’t as simple moving to and from dimensions as it was bouncing through different parts of the same one. Physically, the easiest way was the front door, and I had many places to be.
A legitimate inspector would have had a field day with the current prison. The whole facility sat abandoned in darkness and a minefield of fatal tears in reality. Its prisoners had only made it as far as they had thanks to an array of personal electronics.
Ever since the complete dimensional collapse some decades ago, artificial pocket dimensions were all that was left of the once-rich multiverse. Earth and its gods had won the asshole competition; prize: unspeakable genocide. Yay for us. Without regular maintenance, however, even the artificial pockets were breaking down, their resistance limited against the power of the original edict.
Mayari stepped forward from the entrance. Her glow dimmed and transferred to the walls, suffusing the whole complex in bright silver light.
Gia looked up and around in the sudden visibility, taking in the adjustment with a sharp breath. She raised a hand halfway to her eyes, then paused and lowered it again. Demonic eyes needed less time to adjust. She frowned. “Won’t they notice? I thought you were supposed to be depowered.”
“First, let’s get to the others in one piece. Then I’ll change it back.”
‘The others’ in this situation referred to Xiānfēng, the group behind the group behind the superweapon. It was complicated. In essence the good guys, as far as that meant anything, once you got past the multigenerational build-up of brainwashing declaring their activities the opposite. Destroying the world wouldn’t have been nearly as big a deal if its residents had been properly equipped to survive it, and that was all on divinity’s heads. But sure, blame the subjugated for trying to surface while holding their heads underwater.
I followed the others back up the hall and around a few corners, keeping close. I couldn’t stray more than a few metres from my anchor without fading back to my real body currently in a warded penthouse in the central United States. Still worth it.
Mayari took the prominent blood trail and dimensional breakdowns in stride, even pulling out her phone to snap a few photos in passing. From the glint in her functional eye, I could see she was itching to spend some time experimenting on the anomalies. But we had priorities.
The Xiānfēngites had spread out since our first meeting, the scientists branching into a second room despite the risks. Now, the cell containing the object of everyone’s interest was left unattended but for Dr Philippe Musisi and Lien Yun-Qi, previously known as Fenrir, my son. The group was sticking to the plan. It was, after all, the culmination of everything their organisation had worked towards for the last four hundred years, even if it hadn’t gone down exactly as hoped. By which that meant their near-total eradication at the hands of vengeful gods, and the incidental deaths of two million innocent people. I hadn’t mentioned to Xiānfēng they were technically allied with the one who did it. Even a borderline suicide cult sharing your general goals and worldviews had its limits on how far you could push acceptable workplace practices.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Introductions were polite but restrained. Mayari stepped forward, not wasting time, and spoke to Yun-Qi in hushed tones. She set down the duffel bags with another loud clunk and zipped one open, pulling out a small folding table and chair. This was followed by a collection of gleaming surgical equipment and a shaver.
Philippe picked up the chair and ushered Gia forward to the single computer sitting alone on the stone floor, its cables neatly unplugged and coiled nearby. The machine hummed along at normal power nonetheless.
The lead researcher unfolded the seat beside it. “You won’t feel it after a few seconds,” he announced apologetically in Mandarin, gesturing for her to sit. I passed the translation on to Gia, who accepted it with a look of pale resignation, lowering herself down into its cheap metallic embrace.
Mayari joined us a few moments later while Yun-Qi prepared the table. “What’s the status on the spear?” she asked, addressing Gia. Her gaze searched the air around the woman, however, not quite landing on me.
“Er, I’ll need to get back to you on that.”
I waved it off. “It’s ready. I’ll drop it off once I’m done here.”
The artifact in question was on my lap, in fact, with my hands (and a few extra limbs) curled around it in a death grip difficult to remove without excessive force. It and my real body were being watched over by Tru, another of the demon lords and my current housemate. As tasks went, it was cushy but boring, until it wasn’t.
Short of hiding it in a pocket dimension, there wasn’t really anywhere safe we could bring the Spear of Destiny. Any item powerful enough to kill a god packed a staggering aura, and while I could only sense it up close, there were plenty of gods out there who it would shine out to like a beacon. Smuggling it in the front door with Mayari probably wouldn’t have worked.
We’d agreed the penthouse made for the best interim holding space, thanks to the protections Lucifer had set up earlier. Normally, it wasn’t possible to deliver objects by divine visitation – at least, nothing that hadn’t come through as part of the visitor. Fortunately, I was a shapeshifter. The best shapeshifter, debatable competition with Hera aside. I had ways of making it work. It would just be… messy.
That would come later. For now, I listened to Gia pass on the message.
Mayari nodded. She picked up the shaver and turned it on, then passed it to Philippe. The doctor accepted it with professional neutrality and gestured for his patient to look straight ahead.
Clumps of hair fell to the stone.
“Remember, you won’t be going in alone,” Mayari told the swallowing analyst. “The three of us together should be able to make more sense of it than your predecessors, and you have one of the world’s foremost dimensional experts accompanying you.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “I hope she isn’t talking about me,” I said. “Being a frequent flyer doesn’t automatically make you an expert on planes. Especially if the ones you flew on are now several hundred years out of date.”
“You’re not reassuring me,” Gia growled. She turned her head, only for Philippe to swing it back into place with the hand not holding the shaver.
“Everything will be fine,” I amended, switching gears smoothly. “If anything goes wrong, we improvise. I am great at that. Trust me.”
“No,” said Gia.
I shrugged.
Yun-Qi, finished with the table, dripped what looked like medical-grade sanitiser onto a piece of cotton wool and began daubing it onto the shaved areas. I watched him closely. He did a good job of hiding it, but I noticed his dark eyes flicker to the side once or twice, searching for something that wasn’t there.
I opened my mouth to pass on a message, but Yun-Qi spoke first. “You are still thinking like the old Gianna Pisani,” he said. “Now, you're a pioneer. You are no longer as vulnerable as you once were. Your physiology gives you a dramatic advantage over our previous volunteers. You will survive the surgery, and you will come back. If your mission succeeds, you will have changed the world for the better.”
I grinned at that. Via Gia – and far more paperwork than I’d have preferred – the remnants of Xiānfēng had been inducted into the Vatican Concord, the binding pact protecting the existence of the rebellion. Given the powers we were up against, it was all that stood between us and certain discovery. Between Xiānfēng, the demon lords and Lucifer’s four abyssal commanders, the mess of webs in my head had gotten a lot more crowded than the seven threads we’d started with. Adding this many points of failure would have been an alarming drain if not for the demons, who added to the pool of divine energy the pact could draw on. As it stood, it was still a risk – but well worth it for the benefits.
“If you would,” Yun-Qi continued, passing the cotton wool to Philippe even as the latter withdrew the shaver, “I’d like to see your hand.”
“But the guard –”
“– won’t know,” Mayari interrupted. She held out a palm, manifesting a sphere of light above it by way of demonstration.
Philippe's eyes widened, and the hand holding the wool paused. “Incredible.”
Mayari smiled a little sadly at him. Comparatively-speaking, this was nothing. “If he hasn’t figured me out, you have nothing to worry about.” The light blinked out again. “Technically, we’re a whole universe away from his post right now. Dimensional walls will block practically everything from a sensory perspective.”
“But Loki –”
“I told you,” said Mayari. “Dimensional expert. What we need to watch for is people coming in. That falls to me, so you may find me coming and going. I wouldn’t worry unless I’m gone for more than a few minutes.”
Gia nodded, and pulled off her gloves. Rather than showing the hand to Yun-Qi, she instead reached up and felt the top of her head, grimacing at the resulting smoothness. Red light scintillated from under one of the palms.
After a few moments, she held it out to my son.
“Raidho,” he responded, catching the hand in his fingers and carefully unfurling the fingers. “The rune of journeys. There isn’t a better one to be marked with in your situation. Some would call it an auspicious omen.”
“I don’t believe in omens,” Gia replied, only to catch herself. “Or I should say, I didn’t. Should I?”
“Probably not. An omen with any validity behind it is what the more enlightened would term ‘pattern recognition’. If you aren’t seeing the pattern, it’s probably because you’re missing some of the pieces. But the universe is a place of chaos, even when the gods come into it. Chances are it’s just a coincidence.”
“Been a lot of those lately,” I murmured.
Gia glanced at me.
“Hi, Dad,” said Yun-Qi, although his eyes didn’t quite connect with me.
Gia made a double-take, as did Philippe. I was impressed at how many languages the doctor spoke – although in retrospect, familial greetings weren’t a high bar to clear. “Wait, what?”
Yun-Qi tapped the rune, drawing her attention back to the matter at hand. His nail clinked on the scar like glass. “Raidho can lead you back. Just like it should take you to where you need to go.”
“The administrator account,” Gia intoned, reciting the conclusions we’d reached at the mission briefing.
“Yes, but if you want a cure for your ailment, you’ll need to push deeper. Into Yggdrasil, the great world tree. And in doing so, divert the river of future history.”
I made a small cough in the back of my throat. “Once you’re in place to take down the task manager, I won’t be able to stick around to help you,” I advised the Italian. “It’s all Mayari from there.”
“Then can I do it the other way round? My cure first?”
She had her priorities straight. I approved. “We should,” I agreed. We had a little time, and a functional demon lord was far better than one due to turn rapidly insane.
Yun-Qi inclined his head a fraction, grey hairs glinting in the movement as he filled in the blanks in the conversation. “It may even be only one stop is necessary,” he said. “Many fundamental systems spring from Yggdrasil. But we don’t understand enough about it to know how it works for sure.”
“Let’s see what we find before we make any hasty decisions,” said Mayari, weighing in. “Our intel is hazy. But Gia, if we can fix your issue first, we will.”
“A word of caution nonetheless,” said my son, curling Gia’s fingers back over her rune. “Yggdrasil has always been guarded. I expect its protections were largely removed by the event responsible for its widescale decimation.”
“The restructure,” affirmed Mayari.
Yun-Qi nodded. “But,” he continued, expression serious, “it’s possible some survived, attached to the remaining fragment. You should be careful. We haven’t broken through this deep before.”
The conversation stalled as Philippe returned with a marker from the table and a familiar black tiara. A row of thin metallic needles extended from the underside of the plastic headset. The doctor fitted the headset to Gia’s head, resting the base of the prongs against her scalp, then uncapped the marker and used it to trace circles around each small perimeter.
Gia’s eyes looked a little wild.
“Breathe,” I instructed, sidestepping neatly before Philippe could walk through me. “And listen to Yun-Qi. We got you a local anaesthetic. If it’s any consolation, one of your fellow demon lords recently survived being exploded.”
It was true. The pock marks still littered the sofa I was sitting on.
“I’m going to explode?”
“No,” Mayari said firmly. She glanced at Philippe and switched to Mandarin. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’ll be honest,” said the scientist, placing the cap back on the marker, “I’m not usually in charge of these procedures. Our experts in that field were somewhat recently terminated. But I’m well-acquainted with the theory and have observed it performed on a number of occasions.”
“Oh,” said Mayari. Her eye swung towards the nervous analyst, and her features contorted into an unconvincing smile. “We’ll have to make it work, I suppose.”
Gia’s eyes became wilder.
I didn’t think demons could have panic attacks, but nudged her foot with the toe of my shoe. “Now’s your cue, devil-summoner. As you practiced.”
The analyst nodded, and set her mouth in a thin line. A few dozen seconds later, her eyes rolled back in her head and turned white. She blinked a couple of times, returning the pupils to their usual position. But now, it was a different person looking out from them.
Lucifer stared up at me from his borrowed body. “Interesting,” the devil said, stretching his fingers. “Turns out visitations do work on the possessor. Is everything ready? I don’t have much time to spare.”
The sound of a surgical drill whirring briefly to life answered his question.
“Lucifer,” Yun-Qi greeted him, approaching the chair with a syringe full of clear liquid. “This might sting a little. Though not for long.”
“I’m more concerned about what comes next,” the devil replied wryly. “If my host blacks out, you’ll know we have problems.”
If anyone was going to black out, I suspected it would be Philippe. He looked a little green around the gills.
Yun-Qi held the syringe to one of the marked locations, taking the time to position it correctly. “It’s a noble thing you’re doing,” he said, depressing the plunger a fraction of the way down. “Taking the brunt of the procedure for an underling. Not exactly what you’re famous for.” He withdrew the syringe and moved onto the next.
“No,” agreed Lucy. “But I’d think you’d know all about such disparities already.”
“You also made a sacrifice for me, all these centuries. Even if you didn’t realise who for. I didn’t get to properly thank you, and owe you a tremendous debt. Instead, I’m dispensing needles into your head.”
Lucy shrugged. “You’ll repay it today. It’s enough. If anything, four hundred years of mild inconvenience and unanswered questions doesn’t match one critical action when it’s needed most.”
“Even so. Thank you.” Yun-Qi prodded the site of the first injection. “What do you feel?”
“Nothing.”
The remainder of the injections proceeded in silence, until Yun-Qi finally stepped back to make room for Philippe. “Good luck,” the former said. “To all of you. I’ll be here to monitor your progress from the machine. Dr Musisi, the stage is yours.”
To the doctor’s credit, no one lost consciousness. When the tiara made a return appearance, it did so with full cable attachments bundled from headset to machine. Yun-Qi had switched on the latter. Its screen glowed with an array of familiar tiled windows. The cursor hovered over a small blue button.
“It’s time,” said Philippe. He hadn’t joined Yun-Qi at the machine, but continued to hover back and monitor his patient. “May your voyage be fruitful and safe.”
Lucifer shared a glance with Mayari for a few moments. A second later, his eyes rolled back and he was gone.
“Wha –?” Gia blinked back at me, returning from wherever Lucy’s hosts went while temporarily displaced. She started to raise a hand, only to pause at seeing the additional set of cables extending out from her inner elbows.
“Gia,” interrupted Mayari, waving to catch the former’s attention. “Focus on me. I need to see what you’re seeing.” She faced the opening back into the deserted corridor, and lowered herself to the floor, back propped up against one of the walls not falling into disintegrating ruin. Her eyes closed, and didn’t open again.
I waited a few moments as the analyst’s face scrunched into deep concentration, and gradually eased off again. After a minute, she glanced up at me.
“I’m good,” I explained, holding up a hand. “I expect I’ll follow you in.”
Visitations were a bit like that, though I was still a few centuries out of practice. Find someone awake, and you’d meet them in reality. Find them asleep, and you’d be talking in dreams. The latter could be particularly interesting, since they had a tendency to disregard the laws of reality, common sense or congruity. ‘Interesting’, of course, covered a broad range, from endless meadows of singing flowers to oddly prevalent upsetting placements of teeth. Though given the typical state of dental care during my last dream-visiting days, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“We’re ready,” said Mayari from the floor, still with her eyes closed.
“Launching,” announced Yun-Qi. He clicked the button.
Nothing happened. The brace in my shoulders began to relax, as for a few moments the cursor turned into a fitfully spinning wheel of indecision.
Only then did the world fall apart around me.