A planet away, Janus laughed uproariously behind his mask and departed in a twirl of uncanny distortions. I had no idea where.

The remains of Yahweh’s lackey chose that moment to splat into the ground directly behind me, showering Gia and I in angelic viscera. Interestingly, even that interacted with my visitation. I cleaned it away and turned to the analyst covered in holy innards.

Gia had managed to stay in one piece after the edict had hit, but the dislocation would return once she left. It was a fairly easy prediction for me to make. Where my lunar visitation felt in good shape, my other bodies still stung from my altercations with the godkillers; three places in all. The worst was the bruise on my head where the angel had bashed it. It had only been a matter of time before Providence gave me a permanent headache one way or another. That would never be going away.

It was the only thing that was permanent. I steadied Gia around the shoulders for plausible deniability it was for her wobbly legs and not to give myself a focus that didn’t involve my child’s body mimicking every thought in my head. Together, we paced over to the other fallen corpse.

Yahweh made for a skinny child, lean in the way of youthful athletics. A runner’s build; a far cry from the sedentary figure controlling empires without lifting a finger. And small. Sørine would sympathise. His arms and legs had fallen askew, crumpled and curled on his side in a way that reminded me of an ailing spider. There was a lot more red on his suit, now.

For a moment I thought he might not be dead. I didn’t fancy us ending up with another blender situation. Though if we did, the spiteful part of me considered pouring him in with the Odin batch. They deserved each other.

The look on Mayari’s face put that idea to rest. The message was rammed home shortly after as Yahweh’s carcass levitated off the ground and neatly imploded. A glittering white jewel remained in its place, which Mayari gave an anticlimactic nudge with the spear-tip. It shattered into a sparkling dust cloud.

“Dead,” I told Lucy distantly, whose smile dropped from his face. He closed his eyes for a moment before turning his back on the amended edict and studying the as-yet-untouched floor. New symbols appeared there in concentric circles, reminding me of the setup Pope Grace had arranged in the Vatican Grottoes earlier in the week. This one, even in its early stages, possessed far more of a magical aura, raw energy forming nearby as it waited for purpose.

Over, but not over. There were still three members of the executive suite left.

Moonside, Mayari pulled a pouch from her tool belt and held it open while the crystal dust fluted in. She tied it off with a drawstring and clicked its secondary cover into place with a metal stud, then pressed the item firmly into Gia’s palm.

her hands signed for my benefit.

Said workshop lay shattered in ruins, furniture strewn over the floor in pieces. The hydroponics keeping its meagre life support functioning had been torn from the ceiling, plants upended, ripped and dying. Halfway up the rear wall, an angel hung wedged between the wall and a repositioned support beam, one-third of its neck missing above a river of crimson.

I noted a second, larger smear not far from the first. It travelled across the floor in a wide journey, accompanied by Mayari-shaped hand and boot-prints in the indications of a struggle, and ended in a puddle near the airlock at the entrance. I clamped down on my body before it could shift into something in very poor taste.

Working gingerly around the pouch in her fingers, Gia undid the clip on her child-sized helmet and pulled it off, gasping in the limited air. Her face was red, her regrown hair slicked with damp. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her gloves, which only served to smear dust across her face.

“I want to go home,” she said, not looking at me. Her voice was a child’s voice. “I want to get Sil and the scientists, put them somewhere safe, have a bath, and go to sleep.”

“That’s fair,” said Mayari, sounding like she wanted to do the same. She had her back to the puddle as she tossed a pair of toy guns into a drier corner containing their triplet. A veritable arsenal. “But I’d ask you to hold on a little longer.”

I glanced at the analyst, and at the far-away look in her eyes. “I think we’ve asked enough,” I disagreed, motioning for Gia to pass the message on. “Why don’t you join me instead? I could use the help in Rome.”

Especially since the task system had gone down. Hell hadn’t broken loose yet, but the boiler was set to burst. Scanning the crowds in Rome for corroborating evidence, I noted the angels had, for lack of a better word, stopped. A number of confused people, some of whom were probably camouflaged demons, milled around them. In an amusing piece of irony, those in Swiss Guard attire attracted less attention despite being over the top in all other regards; aloofness was practically a job requirement.

Their plain-clothes brethren weren’t faring so well among the jostling masses. Several skirmishes seemed to be breaking out at the piazza entrance as a few well-placed angels failed to give way to agitated legions packing themselves in far beyond logical capacity.

They’d simply shut down. Lucy’s army was going to be disappointed.

“Mmm,” Mayari answered me, bringing my attention home again. “That won’t happen.”

“I assume because of that?” I gestured to the smear on the floor.

The goddess’ face twisted. “I lost, Loki. Everything I did, they countered. All that got through was the spear. If it had just been the angels, or just Yahweh, I probably could have handled it. But they came at me on two fronts, and even with you helping, they got the better of me. If you hadn’t been there…” She set her lips. “I can’t come to Rome.”

I scrutinised my ally, who stared back at Gia with two working eyes. From the outside, she seemed the picture of health, radiance literally flaring from her skin. The fists curled at her sides and tremble at her brow painted a different image.

“How bad?” I asked, fairly sure I already knew the answer.

“It wasn’t pretty. The moment I step outside the effects of this edict, I may as well be dead. The damage will come back.”

I cursed. “We’ll find a way to undo it. Someone will know something. At least it’s no worse than house arrest.”

“If I have to spend the rest of my life cooped up here, I’ll go mad.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Pfft. We’ll bring the party to you. Starting with all those refugees you wanted. The way Earth’s going, I doubt you’ll struggle for volunteers.”

“That’s another problem. I warned you about my eye and what it meant to restore it. I didn’t expect it would be so permanent. Unless you want an instant Armageddon, I need to kick this place out of orbit. At least several stars away, minimum. I’m holding it together and hiding it from the neighbours for now, but can’t keep it secret much longer. If I let go here, everyone we’ve worked to save will perish.” Her newly golden eyes blinked. “Even then, the gravitational pull will have an impact on neighbouring celestial bodies, and I don’t want to be responsible for starting a chain reaction.”

“This may not sound appropriately sentimental for your lifelong home,” I said via Gia, “but can’t you dump it in a patch of dead space and leave it there?”

“Not if you don’t want to mess with the suppressants vault. Distance won’t discriminate there.”

Oh. Right on brand for the week, one more complication cascaded into another, while in the back of my imagination a smug-looking Apollo lectured me on the importance of coordinated oversight. Never mind it was Providence’s fault the boiler was set to rupture in the first place.

Somehow we’d ended up back here, facing the same decision we had almost a week ago: to keep or not to keep the world’s divine powers contained. Enki’s lunar edict might have been designed to stand up to being transformed into a new star, but it wasn’t the kind of bet you put smart money on, or felt confident that winning would lead to better consequences. What I’d seen up close of Enki’s mental state didn’t lend me confidence towards either option.

But method mattered.

“Right,” I said, dismissing the automatic headache forming in my ethereal temples. “How long before every angry divinity realises they can kick off a new war?”

“I’ll hold it off as long as I can,” the moon goddess replied. “It should be enough time for you to win.”

‘You’, not ‘us’. She’d already mentally written herself out of the narrative. “If we do, we’ll bring backup,” I promised.

“When. Not if. I’ll keep the spear, if you don’t mind. I’ll need it when they come for me.”

Sighing, I marched through the scattered debris and picked up a godkiller in each of three hands. The moment I touched them, I felt them adjust to my visitation, mimicking the status of their wielder. When I let go, they reasserted themselves in reality. I could probably take them with me, though I wasn’t sure how they’d fare as weapons while intangible. I handed one to the analyst swaying on her once-again-mortal feet and shoved the rest into pockets, where my body immediately absorbed them as a matter of course. It felt wrong, like having an uncomfortable and distracting lump caught in my throat, and carried across all versions of my body like the injuries they’d caused. I had to fight not to spew them back out.

Grace’s cavalcade in Rome had stalled somewhat, as the winged menaces in the back of the vehicle refused to budge for the pope. The driver, remarkably not an angel, was in the process of clawing his way around the popemobile to the side door to sic the Holy Father on the crowd that way.

“Alright,” I said to Gia on the moon. “Tell me where home is, and I’ll send you there. Gun’s for insurance, once you change them back for me.”

Gia stared down at one of the most powerful weapons in the known universe lying in her hand, where it sat on top of the pouch of chief executive glitter. “What did he mean by repaying a favour?” she asked suddenly.

I saw Mayari’s ears prick up at the mention, and rushed to avoid imparting the wrong impressions. “Oh, you heard that? Probably thanking me for killing Odin. Not even Yahweh is myopic enough to think that bastard wouldn’t turn on him one day.”

It had been an odd turn of phrase, though, and the explanation felt weak. If Yahweh had been trying to seed doubt in Gia he might have succeeded, but that wasn’t his style. No, it had borne the ring of truth about it, and it made me uneasy not knowing why. I couldn’t imagine the tyrant would thank me for me destabilising Providence, no matter how much he disapproved of its other staff, or what he could possibly have done in return. Other than the general assumption others should worship his mere existence.

Had it been something in my missing memories? Something I’d done or promised after being caught in a previous insurrection attempt Lucy had failed to erase?

My train of thought was interrupted as the fehu rune clamoured for my attention.

Where are you? prodded Tru, through it. What’s happening?.

“Out of time,” I said, and sent Gia on to the refugee island. She’d missed her chance, and maybe she’d run into Primary Tez. At least it had beds.

The transition shunted me out of the lunar workshop by enforced pursuit. Away from the edict, my physical self-control instantly improved. I let the visitation linger long enough to see Gia drop onto beachside sand before replacing it with Tru’s.

He whirled on me immediately. Sweat beaded his forehead in many small droplets. “What the hell happened?”

Colstee’s office, still darkened, now displayed ten times as many video feeds as before. The rift footage had grown in numbers, and been joined by screens showing collapsing buildings, unstable cracks in the ground, and plumes of smoke rising into the air in places I wouldn’t expect to find them.

I peered past him towards Durga – or what I assumed was her – still laid out on the floor under a hemisphere of twitching arms.

Beyond her, looking pale and stricken by the shelves of maps, Colstee stood with her back jammed up against a transparent display case. As scenes of disaster played out in full colour, she wasn’t watching the feeds.

The lumps in my bodies shifted uncomfortably in echoes of raidho as I felt the godkillers transform.

“Did you send Hera the footage?” I asked Tru.

“Yes, just a minute ago.” His nose wrinkled in distaste.

“And you managed? With Durga like that?”

“Well, you both just left –”

“– you with someone who literally,” – I glanced at the mound of arms – “can’t lose a battle.” I paused. “In theory.”

“I’m not confident this is going to plan,” Tru understated. The remnants of a travel station ate through a Japanese fuel station in high definition behind his head as he waved a familiar phone at me. “Look, I did the thing and hit the button. Now what? Sit here and wait to die?”

“We get Providence. Buy it all out.”

“Now?”

I ejected one of the godkillers, relieved to be rid of its influence, and pressed the grip into his palm. “Or wait to die. Hide this.”

His lips pursed together, drawing out the elongated hiss of an ‘f’, but he took the gun, checked the safety and tucked it under his belt. From the way Colstee’s eyes tracked it, I gathered it had a real, physical presence. I was surprised she hadn’t made a run for the door while Durga was incapacitated.

Tru’s breath hung in the air as he closed his eyes.

If Durga didn’t rouse soon, this branch of the Vatican Concord would be in trouble. As with Lucy, we’d underestimated the impact of the shutdown, and we needed her speed. As backup, the godkiller was a long shot. But it was something.

And that was assuming Hera even made it out of Providence. I’d assumed the building’s move wouldn’t hold them for long, but neither she nor Enki had shown up yet. With HR in charge of Facilities, it was possible Enki viewed the office as a higher priority than Janus and was staying behind to sort it out. And if my read on Hera had been wrong, perhaps she was avoiding our trap.

Other than the regular ‘thwap’ of an arm on the floor, the office was quiet. I walked through the field of projections without disrupting the light and scoured for anomalies. Colstee had surveillance all over the world, from drones to satellites to streamed arrangements from foreign media. I stopped in front of a screen showing a distant Singapore, now with a huge white spire towering over the skyline, and wondered how much the world was seeing.

I turned my head across bodies and space to see Lucy’s binding circle or near-equivalent glimmer to completion. A shift of perspective, and I was a bird on a roof in Rome. Another, and the Rome I watched was footage on another dozen of Colstee’s livestreams. The transitions were getting smoother again.

A purple glow lit one side of Colstee’s office as Tru’s eyes snapped open, entirely engulfed by runelight. A strangled noise emerged from his lips. I hurried back and took each of his hands in one of mine. “You can do this.”

“I can. That’s what scares me. Why am I doing this?”

“Because,” I replied, staring into the light, “gods, demons or mortals, we’re all of us slaves. Physically, mentally and emotionally; dispensable cogs in the divine corporate machine, whether we’re on the official books or not. God’s plan is no more than control so complete he can order you to believe night is day. And he has it, more surely than holding a knife to our throats. Today, we can take away that control for one beautiful moment of freedom, and things can change.”