The temple exploded behind us and I didn’t look, because I’m a badass. Also, we blocked it off to avoid getting mulched by the explosion, so I couldn’t have seen it anyway. But the point is I wouldn’t have.

Sometimes the Ragnar made perfectly round tunnels because Val was doing some kind of mathematical transform and that’s how the output worked out. Sometimes the tunnels were meandering, moist, and murky because he’d reached into etherspace and superimposed the platonic ideal of a cave onto realspace. That was how things had turned out this time. I guess it was quicker or more efficient or something. The moral of the story is, I told my brain to turn off my sense of smell.

The island wasn’t that large and neither was the distance to the Ragnar, so we were back before long. I took ten minutes to snag a quick shower—man, fuck boat life—then Aulof had Val check me over for memetic damage, just in case. The scan didn’t turn anything up, but Val offered to start backing up my memories, which was nice of him. Apparently it wasn’t healthy to keep surgically replacing them, but at least I’d be able to check if anything went missing. He even showed me how to encrypt them with my comm signature so no one else could access them.

Afterward we met up in the lounge, where the commander had pulled up a rough visualization of the island on the big wall screens. Ethelios rose from the sea floor, a lonely mountain in the midst of the Aelian Sea. Actually, wait, did the Mediterranean have this many islands? Were the continents moving in different directions in this universe?

Whatever. The important thing was the loose topographical map of the city in orange, a yellow model of the Ragnar nestled into the rock beneath. Swirling vindictively around the city, a miniature hurricane in grey cut off the island from all foreign contact. A single, sullen red dot pulsed in the center of the storm, some hundreds of feet above the tops of the buildings.

Markus was fixing himself some kind of fish and rice dish at the kitchen console. Val sat with perfect posture in one of the armchairs. He had his chair console up, half his attention on closing down the tunnel that brought us here. I absentmindedly watched the thin, snake-like thread inside the island vanish from the far end.

“So,” the commander began, pacing back and forth in front of the screen. “This explains the sunshine. The storm wall probably passed over us while we were swimming down to the temple.”

“Without any hippocampi,” Markus piped up. “I feel robbed.”

“We killed enough of those during that mess with the pilgrims,” I said, leaning against the wall.

“Killed? I wanted to ride one!”

“Children,” Aulof said, pursing his lips at us. “We might be losing an opportunity here. Reviewing the Face Sponge’s surveillance data, this thing was easily able to sink that Parmedi fleet off the coast of Baros. If an obviously supernatural agent of Horcutio destroys the Trade Fleet right after their victims end up on the island, our drakkar will be becalmed.”

I blinked. “You mean… it’ll take the wind out of our sails?”

“No.” The commander shot me a Look.

“Where is the Face Sponge, anyway?”

“Out of range.” The commander didn’t seem worried about that. “Off the record, I think Commander Blackfin’s trying to minimize risk to his ship. Face Sponge is supposed to fill more of a scout role, and they’re already exceeding their mandate.”

Val made a thoughtful hm. “The fact that you heard the Velean idiom instead of whatever your culture’s naval tradition came up with means you’re missing key associations. Critically, I’d assume, the part where if the wind fails us we have to do its job ourselves.”

“Well, excuse me. I guess our boats are just too awesome to row. Aren’t there any aircraft carriers on Veles?”

There was an edge of warning in the commander’s voice as he dragged us back on track. “We need to eliminate this angel. Once you’re finished with the tunnel, the Ragnar will run silent until he’s down. Val, you suggested an ambush.”

Markus sat down, happily breathing in the steam of his dish with his eyes closed.

“I did.” Val was silent for a few moments, eyes not leaving the screen. “Disruptors won’t work, like I said before. Entropic weaponry has little effect on an already noisy target. But we do have a tool that can impose order on noise.”

He snapped his finger and pointed at me. My mind went blank and my heart leapt into my throat at being put on the spot, but then I realized I actually did know the answer.

“Wait, shit—amplifiers!” I said gleefully. “They comb etheric noise into the waveform we want!”

“Precisely,” Val said. “If we can prepare a battlefield for the angel and lure him there—similar to our operation in Salaphi—we should be able to annihilate him by channeling his own energy into an antagonistic frequency. Our amplifiers are rated for deicide; they have the capacity to land the deathblow here.”

“I’ll scout out a building,” Markus said, his mouth full. Thanks to comm translation, I had the dizzying experience of hearing him perfectly articulate his meaning while mangling all of his syllables.

“Good.” The commander gestured, rotating the map of Ethelios to examine the city more closely. “Go now.”

“I just got food!”

“There’s an angel hanging over the city,” Aulof snapped. “We don’t have time. Get moving.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Markus sighed—which caused fish bits to spray into his bowl—then shoveled down a two more large bites and stood up. He left a bit more aggressively than usual.

“Val, you’re with Lilith,” the commander said, not reacting to Markus. “Her pirate contact might know how to draw the angel to our ambush location. I’ll prep the amplifiers.”

“I’ll show you the way out,” he told me.

“I need to stop by the armory first,” I said. “I’m not sure whether this knife counts as a bladed weapon, and I want a haymaker if things go south.”

The commander swept past us. “Don’t lose this one!”

“He had a fucking magic tree, okay?” I shouted after him. “He’d have whacked you too!”

*

Ethelios was not a very large city, but more importantly the team had already deployed a satellite before we got here. Ironically, the eye of the angel’s little mini-hurricane wasn’t all that clear, so our imaging was starting to cloud over as twilight approached. But at least for now we might be able to catch Dal Salim if he stepped outside.

He hadn’t. So we went with the backup plan, which was just hopping over to the Fool’s Errand and asking after him. We walked with some urgency. The rain was falling over the ocean and the wind from the storm was just far enough away that you could hear it. There was no telling when the angel would decide to strike.

Before we stepped outside, I linked Val into my comm settings, then cloaked. I might have been imagining it when I thought I saw the angel looking back at me, but I had been on the island where Horcutio’s temple got exploded and I wasn’t in a hurry to get more supernatural entities interested in me. There were too many as it is. Val seemed to approve of the precaution, so either I wasn’t being paranoid, or paranoia was just normal for Veleans.

Under the cloak’s protection, I ventured a glance at the sky as we travelled. My eyes magnified what would have just been a mere silhouette to the average person into more detail.

The North Wind was looking for someone.

He hung absolutely motionless in the air, like Michelangelo had tried his hand at carving brown topaz and it had come to life and escaped the studio. Contrasting the inhuman stillness, wine-dark robes fluttered about him in a breeze that ruffled his riotous white hair and stomach-length beard. His eyes scanned the city below.

He turned baleful eyes as I looked, and I had a split second to stare into their depths—actual depths, his pupils were like looking into the ocean, with irises swirling around them like a whirlpool—before I shouted a warning and tackled Val back into the alley we’d emerged from.

Lightning struck where I’d been standing.

Bits of the street rained over us. The blast probably would have blown out our eardrums if we hadn’t been using augments.

“Go go go!” I yelled, scrabbling to my feet. “He saw through the cloak!”

Val leapt upright and grabbed my forearm, pulling me up short.

“This way,” he commanded.

“It’s gonna be right on top of—”

“Be still,” he interrupted as we rounded a corner. “Remember your training. Stillness within, stillness without.”

He stood with his back to the wall, staring at me intently.

“This is a dead end,” I said, heart racing. Primal instincts told me I was being hunted, that I needed to run or get ready to fight and claw with the last ounce of my strength—

“You’re right. Time is short.” Something shifted about him had shifted, something about his stance expressing an inner intensity. “The cloak is just a tool. You need the skill to wield it properly. Be still so that you can strike.”

“We are not the ambush predator in this situation!”

“Is this how you wish to die?” Val asked, tone idly curious.

I gaped.

He shrugged, then receded into himself. He settled against the wall, hunching his shoulders in and closing his eyes. In moments, he was simply part of the scenery.

I gritted my teeth and followed suit, trying to shove down the adrenaline rush that had followed nearly exploding. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply the scent of ozone and petrichor.

“Eternity is a myth.” Val’s voice echoed softly in my ears. “To live forever is to take life and death into your hands at each moment—each moment an act of war against the cosmos. That which survives is that which survives today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow.”

I felt my heart slowing down. I focused on the comforting embrace of the cloak, countersignaling the idea of me to the surrounding environment. The direction of the wind changed, a strong, damp gust blowing past us. I was safe from it, hidden in the depths of stillness.

“This body is temporary. Do not let it control you. Its fear is not your fear.”

“Easy for you to say,” I murmured. “You’ve never changed yours.”

Val laughed. “Focus. Only mortals need fear the divine. You are a godslayer. You are that angel’s natural predator.”

I opened my eyes. “Shouldn’t it be here by now?”

“Didn’t you feel it?” Val asked. “It’s come and gone.”

I stared at him incredulously, then broke down laughing. “You bastard! When were you going to tell me?”

He smiled thinly. “You see? Running wasn’t necessary.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“With caution, now.”

We slowly resumed course toward the docks. The hole in the street was still smoking—steaming, I guess, what with all the humidity. I kept my attention firmly away from the figure in the sky, and we stayed out of its line of sight as much as we could.

“You know,” I said after a bit, “that whole ‘grrr, you are a predator’ thing feels a bit overblown to me. Back home, that’s the kind of shit toxic dudes tell other toxic dudes to help them feel better about their latent social anxiety. No offense.”

Val’s eyes crinkled up in a smile. “The word you’re using doesn’t translate back to the word I’m using. Helnir—predator, hunter, slayer. One who is called upon to fight dangerous beasts for the good of the community. You may recognize it as the second half of your job description.”

“Oh. Uh.” I avoided eye contact.

“If the men in your culture of origin habitually assassinate each other, I can see why that would be considered a societal toxin.”

I laughed. “No assassinations. They mostly just post misogynistic essays on the internet, then go to work and pretend to be normal. Anyway, I never got an answer earlier.”

Val appraised me. “To?”

I was pretty sure he did know, but I played along. “You made a big deal about how this body is temporary and all that. But you use the same body every time.”

“Ah,” Val said.

We had reached the docks where the Trade Fleet ships were docked.

They were in pretty poor shape; the storm had done a number on them. One of them had a broken mast, and there were slashes and gouges all over the exposed wood from debris flung about by the wind. The North Wind probably could have scuttled them if he wanted, but apparently his attention was on something else.

“Genetically speaking, it’s based on my birth body,” Val said eventually. “Within tolerances, of course; Velean bodies are heavily modified. But otherwise, this is the closest thing I’ve ever received for a gift from my mother. I want to wear it as I work toward unmaking her, and I want her to see me in it when I strike the final blow. It will demonstrate that I could rise above the situation she birthed me into.”

I stared at him. The sentiment felt about right, but he was so earnest, so animated, so… basically not like Val at all.

“You’re bullshitting me. What’s the real reason?”

He considered me, then broke out into a smirk.

“I thought it’d be funny.”

After a beat, I burst out laughing, and then so did he. We laughed all the way up the gangplank and we were still chuckling a bit when I kicked the door open to find if Dal Salim was still in my quarters.

Before he’d even had a chance to greet us, I heard a familiar stomping set of footsteps approaching down the hall.

“Idiot!” Erid growled. “Where in all the writhing, toothy abyss are my fucking documents?”