I tumbled through onto Mayari’s island, still peaceful and isolated from the chaos elsewhere, and made another couple of short jumps in the direction of raidho. Durga’s many blades had left painful incisions all over my body, but I’d gotten out fast and the wounds were closing.

I found Gia sitting huddled on the beach outside one of Tez’s less destructive black cubes, wrapped in a thin blanket and shivering in the cool rays of the morning sun. Disproportionate bundling of the fabric scrunched around her smooth scalp, reverted to its shaved state in adulthood. It would grow back in time. She turned the appendage at my approach, eyes wide and face harrowed despite showing no other sign of her earlier injuries.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” I remarked, warping the rest of the way over.

Her head shook almost imperceptibly, a minute movement from side to side. “How could I, with everything going on out there?”

I grimaced. “You’ve been talking with Lucifer?”

“No. Can’t you feel the tension? It’s like distant gunfire. Only I’m not hearing it with my ears, and ‘distant’ is a little more distant than I’m used to.”

“No. Or at least, not from a distance.” Even with a place of power to draw on and all that entailed, some things hadn’t changed. “Did you enable your password like I told you to?”

“Yes. The way you acted, back in –” She swallowed, not finishing the sentence.

I breathed a shuddering sigh of relief, which felt like only a few seconds long but terminated in the realisation I’d somehow collapsed to my knees, heels digging sharply into my backside and sand already working its way into my shoes to further irritate the toe filling up my footwear in a pool of its own sticky fluid.

Water burned down my cheeks like acid. I could have shifted it away but didn’t, leaning hard into the pain as if it would shatter and break before me. It made no difference. It never did.

I turned my face to the sky and screamed my frustration into it, wordless and furious in all the rage one flimsy human form could muster. I wanted to lash out, grow, seize the world in my grip and squeeze it as Baldr had done to Legba; crush it between my palms till it cracked and bled and the magma spurted out of its core. I wanted to take control of all I could reach and then some, stretch until I was in danger of losing myself, and sunder it all to irreparable pieces.

The wind gusted coolly over my skin and displaced some of the sand clawed between my fingers. I sobbed into it, not caring I had an audience who, I was aware, had partially recoiled away from me.

Why me? Why again? Why couldn’t once be enough? Why couldn’t someone else deal with Baldr this time; someone who could ravage his power and sling it far into the oblivion beyond death?

I’d almost had it. I’d come so close.

But the opportunity was gone, and I didn’t know how I could do this again. Everything was worse this time around. It would be a race: me and one single, inexperienced demon lord I couldn’t guarantee loyalty from against a universe and every powerhouse within it. I’d only won last time because no one had seen me coming. I no longer had that luxury.

Short of Enki’s failsafe, this was a losing proposition. And how long would it be before Lucy spilled the beans on even that? I’d left him buying time sweet-talking Pakhet and Durga, but how far could I really trust him under Baldr’s influence?

How could I do this again?

But I had Gia. For now.

I buried my face in my hands, swapping it for a new one as it came out again. Tears gone, scrapes cleaned away. I brought a leg up underneath me and followed it with another until I was back on my feet with only the aches from the godkillers carrying over. Another disadvantage – every form I took from now on would be marked with clear physical tells, making it even harder to hide.

“We have to go,” I said after a few moments. I held my good hand down towards Gia without glancing her way. “It’s no longer safe here, and I’m willing to bet they only haven’t come for you yet because you’re technically a demon. Classic underestimation.”

“R – right.”

Now I did look at her. Gia was staring down at her closed fists, having pulled the blanket a little tighter around herself. I let my face soften. “Didn’t go to plan, no. The key takeaway here is that right now, you’re the most important person in the universe. Like it or not, you get my protection.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“The most important? I thought that was supposed to be that Lorenzo guy.”

“Eh, he was always a fake.” And technically not part of the universe anymore. “I’ll explain in a bit, but I have to ask you not to talk to Lucifer. Or anyone. Both our lives likely depend on it, and that’s not even the worst part.”

“Because we killed God,” she stated.

“Yeah. But not for the reasons you think.”

“Mmm.” The analyst stared back out at the ocean for a moment. “Where are we going?”

Good question. Options were limited. My first choice, Facility J, had already been compromised. The unnamed disused facility also sat behind dimensional boundaries, but the others knew where it was, and the fact it housed the remnants of Xiānfēng meant it still carried a painted target. It also didn’t give me much to work with. Even if we un-mind-controlled Yun-Qi and the scientists, their tools had been destroyed. There’d be no escaping into Yggdrasil this time.

Since the corporate restructure, there weren’t many safe places to go. Dimensional walls existed few and far between. At least twenty-five other demotion facilities lay out there, none of which were kind enough to conveniently drop the secret of their locations into my lap. Those were out. There was Lucy’s abyss, of course, but I’d have to go through him to get there, and it was a poor choice for obvious reasons. There was the void, but decontaminating the souls of dead people wouldn’t do me much good, and if Providence decided to change their access codes while we were in it we’d be trapped and stranded forever.

Without that layer of protection, I was a sitting duck with its legs sawn off, a fruit ripe for the harvest.

If there were no viable pocket dimensions to abscond to, the next best substitute would be something that behaved like one, where they could find me but not necessarily follow.

We did have one of those. Its name was Singapore.

That would be helpful. Not only did it contain Siphon’s stockpile, but the whole country was cut off from news of the outside. Baldr’s influence would be limited there. I could bring Gia to Regina and Neetu, free them from his stranglehold.

And then –

The question remained how to get in. The only physical entry was in Providence, and the only way there lay through HR’s back door. I didn’t know how to pass the checks myself, let alone smuggle Gia through.

Maybe I could find an alternative. It was hopeless and likely to fail, but better than sitting around waiting to be picked up on the island. The time Lucy bought wouldn’t last forever.

I looked across at Gia, still shivering as she waited for me to answer, and shrugged. “Somewhere we almost definitely shouldn’t. But hey, no time like a global upheaval. Also, you’re going to get wet.”

“We’re not fetching Sil, are we?”

“He’s in good hands,” I said, only lying a little bit. “And you? You’re in the best.”

“I don’t think I agree with your definition of ‘protection’,” Gia said, “but you did come through before. I thought I’d die about a dozen times today, and somehow I’m still here. You saved me. But you put me in danger in the first place.”

“And if I told you every last person on Earth and beyond was in danger, and I needed you to stop it?”

“I’d believe you until you got to the part about me. That has ‘scam’ written all over it.”

“Mmm,” I agreed, tilting my head. “Far from my best line. How about ‘We’re going to infiltrate an uninfiltratable nation, break into the secret weapons cache of its resident god-slavers, and do it under the collective noses of the deities hunting us down?’”

Gia’s eyes widened. “How many deities?”

“Pretty much all of them.”

“Yep, much more believable.”

“So you’re in?”

The haunted expression hadn’t left her face. “If the other option is being ‘come for’, there’s not much of a choice. And I haven’t died yet.”

“Of course not. You’re under my protection. Dying isn’t allowed.”

“That,” Gia said, turning a sceptical face on me, “is a lie. And not a good one.”

“Well, they’re a finite resource. I’m running low on supply.”

“Also a lie. You’re definitely running low on efficacy.”

Maybe I was a god of lies, I thought to myself wryly. Shapeshifting leant itself to them. And what was mind control, if not the greatest and most powerful of lies? If that was true, then Baldr’s presence in the world might have been responsible for the place of power following me around, and would explain why it seemed to be everywhere. But it didn’t feel right; further off the mark than chaos. I’d spent thirteen hundred years struggling against it. Some god of lies I’d make, who couldn’t even control their own domain.

“You don’t have to convince me,” Gia continued. She pulled the blanket off her shoulders, folded it into a simple bundle, and placed it onto the beach. One of her hands made it halfway behind her head before she hesitated and put it back. “I’ll come. All that time I should have been asleep, I’ve been thinking. About who to believe. What it all means. And all I really came up with is that I don’t know. In the space of one day, I’ve watched you do terrible things. Wonderful things. Feats that are downright incredible. But even at your worst, you obviously care. Better that than someone who doesn’t.”

“Hmm. In microdoses, perhaps. Caring is exhausting. As prodigious as I am, I wouldn’t recommend following my example.”

“People do, though.” She paused. “I didn’t think I’d have it in me to pull the lever, but I did, and I’m afraid I’ll find out there was no one tied to the original track. But if I hide and cover my head instead of digging for the evidence, I’ll never know.” The demon lord stretched her bare toes, kicking sand over the blanket to weigh it down. “You’d think learning gods were real would trigger some kind of existential identity crisis. But it turns out you’re every bit as convoluted and mistake-prone as the rest of us. Somehow that makes it easier.”

“The biggest lie,” I agreed, “was pretending the power hierarchy wasn’t the only difference.”

I extended my hand again, and Gia took it.

We’d test the border in Singapore. It was a long shot, but if any rune could break in, the rune of roads had as good a chance as any. I still had a few tricks up my sleeve.

And then, as befitted a liar, if that avenue ran dry, I’d turn around and do exactly what I’d said to Lucy I wouldn’t. The only other accessible pocket space I knew of sitting behind dimensional borders.

I’d invade Providence.