In the maggot-like morass of bodies beneath me, I had no idea if Hera was alive or dead. And there was hardly a city left to keep my eyes on. The angels weren’t flying yet, or hadn’t figured out how to, and every technological means of surveillance short of satellite footage had been eliminated within a significant radius. It gave us potentially a few minutes to figure out how to react, even if that reaction was running away.
Tell me this isn’t permanent, Tru implored me, legs dangling stiffly under my talons. Tell me you can put it back.
I pulled my attention away from the swarming masses and fixed it on the floating sheep, before warping us through to the balcony of Tru’s penthouse. It remained there, unchanged, with no sign of angelic incursion thus far, or even any sign of the rifts dotting the world here and there. For now, the apartment remained a small pool of consistent calm in a world about to lose its collective shit. I’d been half-expecting it to be gone along with the rest of the continent, but Hera’s reach hadn’t spread quite that far. Mercy, or more likely fading strength as the goddess failed to draw her final breaths.
Stay here if you want, I said. It’s as good as anywhere.
I can fix this, the sheep replied, eyes darting past the architecture like he barely recognised it. Through the wide sliding doors, I could see the glasses were still in the sink from our pre-Odin meeting, and puncture marks all over the living room from the even earlier exorcism.
There’s a hole in the – the financial system, said Tru. But I can patch it up. I can see the trading freeze. It’s right there. But I can get past it. Reverse the sale, reverse everything. Just tell me it’s not too late.
It’s not too late, I said, reverting to human form. Something struck me as odd about it, and I realised I’d subconsciously chosen Sørine. All that thinking about the past. I shifted again, picking something new. “At this point, I think it’s safe to say you can do what you want. Short of time reversal, we’re not going back. Toss a coin, it’s just hit its apex. Slowed and decelerated before gravity weighs in. We’re sitting in that little slow-motion cusp one hair’s breadth along the downhill slide. But we are on that slide. Fighting it’s a gamble when we don’t know what we’re fighting against.”
Our battle wasn’t over; Enki and Legba were still alive, and could still bring Yahweh back. The original announcement, Legba’s revisions, and a new totalitarian world order even worse than the current one were all still very much on the table, and I had no clue which way the chips would fall. Beyond that, Mayari was galaxies away holding back a reinvigorated divine war, Janus free and unrestrained. Siphon still had their anti-god bombs running latent in Singapore, and Yggdrasil was out there somewhere trying to regrow roots into the universe it had been pruned from.
To think Tez had said the future was unstable.
“You’re right, naturally,” Legba weighed in, smiling at me on the other side of the world. “‘Downhill’s’ a presumption, though. Not everyone’s a villain. Just the occasional example.”
“Yes, I’m very well aware,” I replied from Tru’s balcony, mainly for the facetiousness.
I leant over the rail of the penthouse and out at the perfectly ordinary skyline at odds with the chaos building on a global scale. I felt odd, even headier, and not just because of the place of power, though it played a major contributing factor.
It was still growing, too, though I could come no closer, my senses spreading through Rome and even a little through each visitation. I could feel the penthouse as an extension of potential muscles and sinews I could flex if I chose, could feel where Lucy had left his lingering enchantments on it, and knew they wouldn’t even slow me down.
I’d seen people die in their thousands. Millions. Cities and districts wiped off the map. I’d probably known some of them. Grace’s popemobile driver was still keening away next to me, lost in his own personal hell. Even as my raw power grew, control slipped away as fast as the reliability of our information.
And I felt… fine. Not angry, resigned, or even shellshocked into inaction. It couldn’t be mental tampering; I’d handled that angle myself with Gia’s laptop. I’d have guessed an oversupply of visitation practice might have had me disassociating, but if anything, I felt the opposite. More here than I’d ever been. Alive, vibrant and invigorated, drunk and high off all the suffering in ways that didn’t make any sense.
Not that it was currently doing me any good.
Lorenzo’s toes halted mid-air, centimetres from the basilica platform. Just in case anyone had missed the holy descent. The crowds hushed again as the choirs died down and the autocue started rolling again. A few wild sobbings and euphoric prayers still cut through the silence. Grace’s chauffeur could have been one of them, the sound not drawing so much as a glance or tensed shoulder blade.
Lorenzo opened his mouth.
The godkiller hadn’t worked, and I was out of time. Of all things, I recalled Apollo’s snotty one-liner about the best options being the ones I hated, and cursed him silently.
In one instantaneous action, I took control of the basilica and absorbed Legba into it, consequences be damned.
Except he was gone, the expected new extension of my body absent from my clutches. The spot where he stood, empty. The soul, somehow out of my reach. I hadn’t telegraphed my decision in any discernible form, even for him. There was no doubt about it; he had to have a seer in tow.
It had to be Tez. It had to be.
So be it. I barked out a laugh and went for the next best option, the so-called messiah himself.
“But it failed,” a lyrical voice spoke in my ear, even as nothing happened. “Payback’s a bitch.”
Bragi. The storyteller.
Contrary to the voice, there was no one next to me. I could see and feel everything, and he was off somewhere else, Legba delivering his words like targeted carrier pigeons.
Bragi had always been annoying, and that hadn’t changed much in sixteen hundred years. More an occasional visitor to the sociopath box than a permanent resident, usually too tied up in his personal hedonism to pay much attention to anything going on outside of it. Even Odin had avoided using him when other methods had been available. It wasn’t worth the griping. But Bragi’s powers were formidable when he cared to use them: a crappier version of Themis’ with less of the moral compunction.
As long as he kept talking.
“Her next attempt failed, too,” said the god of poetry, as I threw my weight behind the entirety of Rome, drawing it into me and vice versa. It bounced off like it had hit a wall, albeit a soft one. I could push through, though that would waste effort and attention, and I had a hunch it was what Legba wanted.
“You little shit,” I muttered, trusting Legba to deliver the message. It would appeal to his sense of humour.
The grunt that followed rang with a hint of exertion. I’d at least made some impact. “For all her newfound power, Loki could not make headway against her opponents,” Bragi continued. His tone made it clear he thought he’d already won. And he’d known about the place of power, too. They had an informant, too. Lovely.
“Yeah? I offed your dad,” I reflected. “Very grisly. I’d call that headway.”
“Futile attempts at psychological warfare easily averted, the shapeshifter found herself with little choice but to do as she was told,” Bragi’s voice narrated smugly. “She found herself unable to change form – and in fact, forced with furious resignation, to shift into the form of a lowly rodent –”
I let the visitation on Tru’s balcony slide into rat form with no hint of fury or resignation, my primary body remaining unchanged. Gia’s mental protections were holding; they couldn’t get at me that way. I grimaced out at the crowd towards no one in particular and reached for the city again. Again, barred.
“– in the flames of his holy sorrow,” Lorenzo read from the teleprompter, recalling the speech from his rehearsal at the embassy. He read it in Italian, but I heard the words in every language I knew, even sign language, the motions overlaying themselves in my head where none existed in reality. The redhead looked to have gotten over his initial anxiety and seemed to be easing into the act, lifting his chin in subconscious alignment with the sweeping buoyancy of the crowd.
I felt it like a living thing; Bragi hadn’t cut me off from that yet.
Though he was trying. “Nor could she glide through the ether,” the storyteller continued, “rooted as soundly to mortal chains as by fear itself. Denied also the illustrious magic of the runes, their aid forbidden to friend and foe, as their power strayed far out of reach –”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Oh, shut up,” I growled, stepping forward towards the stage for an old-fashioned neck snapping. The moment I lifted my foot, it caught on a piece of chain and sent me sprawling onto my back, knees in the air as Bragi laughed through his words.
“Yeah, this needs to be ten times faster,” Legba’s voice cut in. “The point is to make her listen. At this rate, she’ll miss everything but the closing credits. Do better or I’m cutting you off.”
“See?” I said. “Even Legba agrees –”
“Ugh. Fine,” Bragi interrupted. “Loki shuts up and can’t move.” I heard him sigh. “Lowest common denominator.”
I snapped my jaws together with a clack and seethed outwardly. Inwardly, the odd heady calm remained. I’d wait, then. In Bragi’s case, the effects would wear off after a matter of seconds without regular refreshment, and hearing him being taken down a peg had almost been worth sacrificing humanity for.
In the ocean grotto, Lucy glanced towards Vince. “So, verdict? Can we kill Enki now?”
I stared back at them, tongue and movement tied, unable to so much as blink.
“Uh, he’s not saying, my lord,” Vince relayed after a moment.
“Why not? What happened?”
Do it, I willed, but the words wouldn’t go through.
“At a guess, I don’t think he can,” Vince replied slowly. “I had a wife. Imelda. She looked just like this at the end. Heard every word I said, but she couldn’t tell you. All I could do was give her my time and my stories, keep her comfortable and make sure she wasn’t alone.”
Lucy winced. He closed one eye, keeping the other open and trained on Enki. “This is a lot harder than it used to be,” he grunted, raising the non-gun hand to his forehead. “He’s alive, but I can’t get through to Lust at all.”
Which meant they were cutting Grace off, too. The pope was shooting me glances every few seconds, expecting me to do something, but I had no instructions to give.
“Greed’s telling me a similar story to you,” Lucy continued. “Loki’s not moving. Something about rats and sheep, that bit’s unclear. Hera’s down, replaced a city with –” He paused. “Durga’s headed to Rome.”
Tez is helping Legba, I tried to communicate, and failed.
The day might still be saved if Durga arrived in time, but if she ran foul of Tez, I wasn’t sure her battle prowess would be enough. Seers didn’t need to engage in conflict when they could simply avoid it. Our best hope was that there would be too many demands on the god of night’s attention and he’d slip up enough for a checkmate. He’d been enough of a wreck earlier in the day; I couldn’t imagine his state of mind now.
Of course, there was another version we could ask.
Technically, nothing in Bragi’s longwinded spiel had mentioned anything about visitations, and taking a side trip to visit a friend – although that status was becoming increasingly questionable – could hardly be classed as interfering with an opponent.
I opened a channel to Regina in Singapore, materialising in front of her as paralysed as the rest of my bodies. She and Neetu stood in what appeared to be the inside of a warehouse confronting a cowering balding man I recognised as Dr Louis Ngai. An orange forcefield encased him like a snow dome, where he rested on hands and knees, palms spread out on the concrete in front of him.
Among the storage containers, active computers were up and running around them displaying the now-familiar sight of Siphon’s containment software. Neetu sat at the sole available chair, cautiously interacting with a window I recognised as the one Quil had been previously screaming out of.
Regina caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and jumped slightly. Her forcefield constricted by half, sending Ngai into a panicked curl at its centre before the demon lord eased it out again.
Warn me next time, she said, then stopped and peered at me more closely. Loki?
The amulet around her neck shifted its eye from me to its wearer, and Regina frowned.
Neetu swivelled on the cheap office chair, away from the running software. “Is she back?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of? Can you be more specific? In case you’ve forgotten, we’re sitting on a delicate load of live ammunition while a tower full of terrifying gods is out there baying for our considerably indistinguishable-from-the-enemy’s blood. I’m deeply concerned about our margin for error.”
“Not really. Tez says she wants answers.”
“I, too, would like these answers.”
Regina held up a hand at the police officer to wait. She had her gloves off, her orange algiz rune shimmering clearly with the movement. She turned to face me, staring me directly in the eyes.
“He says it’s all for a good reason, and he won’t interfere. The situation here is under control and sticking to plan.”
“Won’t interfere with what?” Neetu pressed.
Neetu would have made an incredible demon lord.
“And I don’t want to be the downer here,” the officer added, “but I’m in favour of erring against misplaced optimism. Loki doesn’t show up when things go smoothly, I do hope you realise.”
Ngai raised his head from its position on the floor. “You’re followers of Loki? That might not be such a bad thing.”
“Back on the floor,” the sergeant instructed calmly.
Regina continued to stare at me, her expression deepening into worry. Something’s obviously wrong. I’m going to contact Lucifer.
Good. Maybe they’d be able to work something out. I answered her the only way I could – by ending the visitation. Questions raced through my head without the means to ask them, but by the sounds of it, Amulet Tez wasn’t going to tell me either.
“So it’s just Legba and I?” Enki asked, leaning forward against Lucy’s cylinder. “Well, that’s it, then. That’s the last of Yahweh’s key support pillars vanquished. Let me out and I’ll deal with whatever Legba’s stirring up for you. Then, we can gather some actually sensible people together and figure out how to proceed from there. My teams are used to rebuilding from devastation; they won’t bat an eyelid.”
“I don’t think you quite grasp the ‘anti-establishment’ part of all this,” Lucy responded. “Sorry, but I can’t trust you. Besides, I assume Legba can nullify your edicts far more easily than I can. Once this is over, we’ll come find you in the afterlife and work out an arrangement.” He raised the pistol once more towards Enki’s skull, and winced again as presumably Regina made contact. Groaning, he moved his finger away from the trigger. “Wrath, don’t take your eyes off of him. If he tries anything, you’re to use every means at your disposal to stop him.”
“Wait,” said Enki, rubbing at his eyes. “He’s your Wrath?”
Vince drew himself up to his full height, lacing his fingers together to loom towards the imprisoned executive. “It’s important not to let labels define the person,” he declared in an ominous tone. “Sins are an occupational behaviour, not a fixed personal identity. One can be a gracious host even as one laces the meal with poison.”
Enki gave Lucy a look.
“Yes, I know,” said the devil.
“I stand corrected,” said Enki.
A slap on my physical cheek brought my attention back to Rome in a hurry, where Lorenzo was still reciting from the autocue. The skin smarted from the blow; Legba’s outward playful demeanour masked an underlying hardness.
The Vodou god glared down at me, the cracks of his charade finally revealing some trace of what lay underneath. “All this effort, and Tez tells me you’re still not paying attention,” he scowled. “Yes, I know you know. It was supposed to be a surprise, but you can’t even let us have that, can you?”
Us? I tried moving my lips, but they were still too sluggish under Bragi’s effects.
“I gave you the benefit of the doubt after everything Odin said, but apparently he was right. You really don’t know when to cooperate.”
This was about Odin? I felt the muscles in my cheekbones twitch, about the extent of what I could manage. I supposed that explained a lot. It would be just like him to have a fallback in place, a loyal lackey to manage his interests until he could return and claim them for himself.
But of course he wasn’t dead. So Legba couldn’t bring him back.
But Tez. I didn’t understand where he came in. He’d helped remove Odin himself. And Vishnu. Perhaps Legba had offered him something – maybe a solution for his endless deaths. I could see him going for that. Or maybe they’d just worked on him over time. I had no way of knowing how long his ‘orientation’ in Vishnu’s time freeze had been, or what it had really involved. If only it had just been paperwork.
“You will listen,” Legba said, his face slipping back into cordiality. “Bragi?”
“Yes, whatever, everything I said before still applies,” Bragi’s voice sulked in my ear. My muscles starting to unwind froze up again. “In addition, Loki loses all senses except the ones focused on myself and the messiah.”
It didn’t work as well as he’d planned; Gia’s protections kicking in on what was coming awfully close to mind control. But everything else dimmed, softened and muted as though through a filter. I struggled to process it. Lucy, Tru and even Legba were rough moving blurs; the crowd in Rome a colourful smear. On stage, Lorenzo stood out crisp and clear, shining under spotlights real and individually-enforced.
Durga. Where was Durga? She should have arrived ages ago.
“Many of you here have come from different faiths, or none at all,” Lorenzo read from the autocue. “Converts or curiosity, it warms my heart to see this. Because the Catholic Church didn’t get it right.”
I expected a few surprised murmurs from the crowd at this, but they didn’t arrive. The audience hung off the messiah’s every word.
“We were all correct,” Lorenzo continued. “Every god throughout history, all real.”
In truth, I hadn’t expected this from a Yahweh-centric production. It was unheard of for him to admit the rest of us even existed as far as marketing materials were concerned. Employees weren’t even meant to volunteer the information in front of Providence’s stakeholders. I imagined the people out there still murdering each other over blasphemy were going to have a field day coping with this announcement. I did expect the other shoe to drop any second.
“But there can only ever be one leader,” Lorenzo stated.
And there it was.
“Today is a day for rejoicing,” the messiah continued. He looked much more confident now, delivering the message like a seasoned pro. I suspected with the involvement of some Bragi-incited assistance. “Today, we unify. Today we end all suffering, and the world shall know only peace.”
There was a technical argument that destroying the world could accomplish those goals, but that was my line, not Legba’s. If he wanted to hurt me, that wouldn’t be it.
“Peace on Earth under one god, one love, one holy light,” I recognised from the original script. Not in the original order. “Our resurrected saviour, the reborn. He from who all light flows, the font of joy, wisdom and beauty –”
Wait, they weren’t actually going to snub Yahweh and do it?
“– and the promised second coming.”
The teleprompter kept rolling, and I saw what came next. No. If I hadn’t already been frozen I would have done so now from the sheer paralytic horror. But only for a second, and then I was straining against Bragi’s magics with my full force and all of the place of power behind me.
My bindings stretched, straining like fabric, and tore at their weakest seams. I seized at the fissures and rent them wider, sending anything through I could get. I arced across the piazza and committed to talons of brick and mortar, sending narrow lines of architectural growth spearing through the crowd. Several hundred people died with them before Bragi spoke me back into paralysis a second later. I didn’t care. They were better off in the void than with what was coming for them.
You can’t do this! I tried to scream. It came out as a muffled groan. You have no idea what you’re unleashing!
I could do nothing.
“Welcome, one and all,” announced Lorenzo, “to the Age of Baldr.”