The benefit of taking it slow over the last week was that the commander had thoroughly probed the city’s defenses—etheric and otherwise—with the ship’s sensors. We had a good idea of what we’d be facing from this end, but the walls represented enough of a barrier that our intel on the other side was limited.

The etheric defenses themselves were grand and intricate; no human had wrought these. There couldn’t be any ambiguity about that; pre-ethertech civilizations only had access to the blind fumbling of clap-your-hands-if-you-believe placebomancy—weak, unreliable shit like the energy manifestation people back home. A human working would have looked like an indecisive cloud of “protectiveness,” faith in the walls shifting the ether and reflecting back to realspace as a meager two percent increase to tensile strength or something.

In contrast, the gods’ workings were intricate, imposing, and vicious. Varas’s signature was all over them—as expected, the capital was her holy city—with select subsections reflecting the contributions of other deities. Meris had built a mechanism to draw the guards’ attention to sneaky infiltrators, while Alcebios—despite her mythological reputation as an antagonist to the rest of the pantheon—had woven a curse that would stick to enemies of the city and bring ruin on them.

There was even a thread from Kives promising that the space within the walls would be ‘unshakeable’ and that all who schemed to thwart that stability would fail.

My wariness must have shown on my face when the commander explained that one, because she smiled.

“Don’t be intimidated,” she said. “It’s a machine, not a real enemy. They weren’t built to penetrate military-grade comm shields.”

“There we go, then,” I said.

Abby didn’t continue the explanation, watching me instead. An unspoken question hung in the air.

“It just feels weird to be able to shrug off the working of a god,” I admitted.

“You were built to feel that way,” Abby said. “It’s deep in our nature—almost too deep to remove. What does the word sublimity mean in your native language?”

“Something that’s perfect,” I said, then frowned. “No, that’s not the definition you’re talking about, I knew that was wrong as soon as I said it. It’s the feeling when you encounter something, like, big. Something that makes you realize you’re really small in the grand scheme of things.”

“Every culture comes to understand that idea,” Abby said. “They might not have a word for it, but it emerges from evolution as a logical necessity. What’s the evolutionary origin of superstitious and religious behavior?”

I blinked at being suddenly put on the spot, then recited the Academy answer. “Uh, past a certain intelligence threshold, organisms develop pattern recognition to increase their fitness, and superstition is when the perceived cause-effect relationship doesn’t reflect an underlying reality. Religion is the combination of superstitious behavior, pareidolia, and social-cultural group-unification behaviors. Gods manipulate religious superstition to cultivate a food source.”

“Textbook answer,” Abby said. It wasn’t a compliment. “Why does this system emerge on every planet we’ve visited?”

“The why is that you need pattern recognition to increase evolutionary fitness, and people just don’t know better how the world works,” I said.

“You’re not winning any grants with an answer like that.”

“I signed up to kill gods, not study them.”

“‘There is no weapon more deadly than the truth,’” Abby quoted from The Road of Spears. “But I’ll spare you more guesses, for time’s sake. The evolution of cognition enables the development of a more sophisticated soul, which spurs the development of more advanced cognition, and so on. The more sophisticated the soul, the more ancient humans began to realize that they had a self, that there was an I behind their experiences, that this I was distinct, in an important way, from everything else.”

“So that’s where you get religion,” I said, putting the pieces together. “People want to feel like the ‘everything else’ is friendly to them.”

“No.” The commander’s expression was distant. “You’re a child of kindness, Lilith. There are peoples who suffer much more than yours. Veles was one of them, and our ancient religions were as harsh and hungry as the winter that culled our ancestors every year. They were too steeped in death to dream of the peace we know now, but they still made the appropriate sacrifices. Not for kindness. Religions exist so that the grandness of the world can be controlled.”

“Huh,” I said, thinking of my parents. “Yeah, that makes sense. Why were we talking about this again?”

“Because you’ve let yourself believe the oldest lie.” Abby’s tone was pleasant and a fond smile ghosted over her face. “You think a god can crush you because you think the world can crush you.”

“I don’t think that’s irrational, given what Horcutio did to the ship. You literally died.”

“What of it?” Abby’s smile wasn’t a ghost anymore. “Do I look crushed?”

“I mean yes, you got better, but you still lost,” I argued. “I know you’re trying to say I should meditate myself into believing I can fight the whole world and win, but that’s just delusional. Uh, sorry, that came out a little harsh.”

“That idea didn’t offend you last time I mentioned it.”

“You weren’t talking about fighting the whole world at once back then. Just cutting it. I don’t know, it doesn’t sound realistic at all this way.”

“Retreat is useful as a strategy,” the commander pushed me. “Not as a habit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry for saying sorry, then.”

“And now you retreat from retreating.”

“I—what do you want me to say?”

The commander’s face darkened. “Lilith, you coward!”

I stepped back, my eyes wide. The commander had never lost her composure in the time I’d known her. Another apology rushed to my lips but I held myself back. Panic in my chest. Why was she reacting like this? How did I make it stop?

“Godfire,” the commander hissed. “You meditated for a week, Lilith. Were you daydreaming the whole time?”

“No, I—”

The commander fixed me with a glare that shut me up immediately.

It was as if a switch flipped—all the emotions drained away, leaving distant remnants of themselves. The panic was locked in my stomach, I had to fix this, but I was free again. The commander’s glare turned to disgust, which made the panic swell on the other side of whatever glass wall was keeping it from my consciousness.

“Commander,” I spoke evenly, “I don’t know what I did, but I apologize for offending you.”

“You didn’t offend me,” she said in a more neutral tone. “You offended whoever taught you that panic response.”

I froze up. The panic response warped awkwardly as my system tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.

“You don’t want to be a child anymore,” said the commander. “So get rid of your parents. It was them, wasn’t it?”

I gaped at her. “That’s—look, commander, you have to know how bad that sounds.”

“According to who?” said the commander. “Should I be afraid of them? Go meditate on your trauma response. We have time. My master would hunt me down if she found out I let you calcify this into your new foundation.”

That was a dismissal, and I ignored it. Anger rose up in me like a fire licking my insides, but I controlled it.

“Never do that again,” I said in a low tone.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Notice how you only drew your blade after I sheathed mine,” the commander said.

“I don’t care. Never do that again.”

“If I don’t, Kives will.” Something relaxed in her posture. “It’s not fair that you’re in this position, but I can’t be the mother you needed. Not while a fertility goddess has you in her sights. You need to move past this.”

My emotions stalled again, then apparently decided to give up completely.

“This is a strategic priority,” the commander said again. “Go meditate. That is an order in my capacity as commander of this team.”

*

Motherfucking goddamn Veleans.

I’d started the meditation by wondering what I’d done to provoke Abby’s reaction, and after I found my thoughts anxiously spiraling the second time, I tried a different approach.

It took me about two minutes to realize I was an idiot. I’d only been thinking about myself. When I tried to place myself in Abby’s shoes, the answer was immediately apparent: she’d just learned that Kives had put a target on us, and she’d attacked our relationship rather than risk the failure of the mission.

And with that blade, I will cut heaven and earth, she’d said.

It had sounded so cool when she told me that. I hadn’t considered it meant cutting me.

And… yeah, okay, maybe Abby was kind of a mothering figure. She knew it, I knew it, but it was okay, right? People needed not to be alone, and I was an orphan for all practical purposes. My parents were still alive, I think, but I wasn’t going to be worldjumping to good old planet Earth anytime soon.

All I had left was an immortal ninja faerie godmother. And now that was gone. It didn’t change anything that I knew why she’d done it; something was broken that I couldn’t fix. She’d hurt me deliberately, and even knowing why she’d done it didn’t change the fact that she’d been willing and able to.

She hadn’t even told me what she was doing. She just did it. If she’d just talked to me—

I’d lost my replacement mother before I’d really appreciated that I had one.

Caught up in the grief of that was another grief, an older one, wondering why I had to get stuck with the shitty excuse for parents that I had. Abby had real kids. If I’ve been one of them, would I still have whatever panic response she’d triggered in me?

I wanted to tell someone, but the thought of saying any of this to the commander left me feeling hollow. The commander had ordered me to meditate, but fuck that, I needed another human being right now and she wasn’t available.

I pinged Markus first and got an “I’m busy” ping in reply. The other option was…

Fuck it. I pinged Val, using the signal for “I need backup.”

“Lilith?” he asked.

“I need to get some shit off my chest,” I said. “Got time?”

“Ah,” he said, as though he’d inferred the entire situation. Maybe he had. I was too drained to care. “I have some time.”

“Just shut up and listen, okay?” I said. “I don’t need any fatherly advice.”

“I have not been described as ‘fatherly’ in over two hundred years of existence.”

“Perfect. Now shut the hell up. Here’s the deal—”

*

I finished my briefing with the commander, maintaining perfect professionalism the whole time. She did the same, letting the occasional awkward pause communicate that this had hurt her too. I wasn’t sure if it was genuine communication or if she was rubbing salt in the wound to make sure Kives had nothing to hold on to.

At one point I interrupted to point out that Kives was clearly capable of using parental trauma without an active familial relationship, but Abby flatly replied that it was my job to handle the trauma. After that, I kept my mouth shut and she didn’t signal any awkwardness.

When night fell, I was on ops as the commander suited up for infiltration. Objective: locate an egress point inside the city, past the etheric barriers that prevented us from scanning with deeper clarity.

We were a fair distance from the city gates, so the travelers and merchants camped outside didn’t see her as she pushed open the hatch we’d translated into the ground.

I was the commander’s gaze as she looked up at the wall, the tension in her body as she prepared to climb it. I was her ears, tuned and filtering for enemies. I was her eyes, cycling from infrared to night vision and back. I was the light exosuit synced to her comm, moving with her biological limbs as if she’d been born with it.

I wasn’t her pseudo-daughter, but I could be her backup.

The commander fixed her intent on a slight ridge about fifteen feet off the ground, then leapt. The exosuit’s pistons flung her into the air with enough precision that the apex of the jump put her right at the target. She almost lazily reached out and snagged it with her fingertips, pressing her boots to the wall below.

“Contact,” she subvocalized. I was the inaudible vibration of her throat. “Do a sweep.”

“Copy,” I said, bringing up the ship’s sensors. “No response to contact.”

“Am I inside the barrier?” she asked.

“No.”

“Acknowledged,” she said. This was the probable case—etherically, she wasn’t inside the city—but it would have allowed us to test comm tunneling more safely. She began her climb without hesitation, her boots and gloves fixing her to the wall when she put weight on them.

I could feel the exertion of the climb, but the commander didn’t stop until she found an arrow slit. She peered inside, seeing only an empty room, and shifted three feet to the side.

In one minute and forty-three seconds, she reached the top of the wall. This close to the top, a uniform red glow could be seen.

“Ghostlights,” I said.

“Clever. They’re preserving their night vision.”

Night vision still required line of sight, however. The commander carefully pressed herself close to the wall and waited.

Guards passed once, twice. Armored, from the sound of it, and the rhythm of their footsteps revealed they were patrolling in pairs. I noted the timestamps as the commander’s ears picked out a third patrol.

“Close to regular,” I calculated. “Your absolute window is forty seconds. That’s if you move right behind them when they pass. They might hear the noise.”

“My adhesive gear is silenced.”

“Your clothes aren’t.”

“True.” She sounded unconcerned.

The third group passed, and she carefully followed them until she found a point where the red glow was weakest. She waited just below the edge of the wall until a fourth group approached. One black-gloved hand detached from the wall. Her attention focused on the back of her palm for a moment, then a cover slid open to reveal a camera. She cautiously poked it over the wall.

I was now watching a livestream of the commander’s experience of a livestream of her hand camera. Eifni’s tech really was the best: the fidelity was perfect.

The wall wasn’t crenelated, but it was up to shoulder height of the average guard patrolling along the top. A short step at the edge would allow them more leeway to fire at invaders. Red ghostlights were set into the wall at regular intervals, illuminating a platform about ten feet wide. At the other end was a wooden railing.

The commander turned her camera down the railing until she found a gap about a hundred feet from her position. She examined it for a moment, then pulled back.

“That’s my entrance,” she said.

“Hell of a climb.”

She didn’t respond. She just got to it.

I could tell she was tired, even with the exosuit carrying a lot of her body weight. Climbing is super strenuous. But there wasn’t any weariness to the exhaustion. In fact, her body was almost getting more excited at the prospect of the challenge.

The commander was really something. My body would have been looking forward to a nap or something.

“The light is pretty strong here,” I said. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve been doing this for three hundred years,” she said.

“Fair enough.”

“Mark me.”

Another group of guards was approaching. I waited until they passed. “Okay, mark. You’ve got forty.”

She crawled up and got her fingers over the edge. She shimmied her boots up until she was almost in a runner’s pose, except on a vertical surface.

“Thirty.”

Her legs tensed and I felt the exosuit shift to maximize output as holy shit—

The commander flung herself into the air in a graceful flip, using her immovable fingers as a pivot until the momentum pointed where she wanted to go. She corkscrewed as she flew, getting a glimpse of the guards, then landed perfectly on the other edge of the wall.

Her boots made no sound as they adhered to the top of the wall. Before her momentum dissipated, she backflipped into the city, pivoting on her toes this time. She caught the wall before it impacted her face, then released her feet, finishing in a Spiderman kind of pose about ten feet from the top of the wall.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, full of satisfaction.

“Twenty,” I said, refusing to acknowledge her.

“Oh, be quiet. Am I inside the barrier?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

The commander triggered her comm’s etheric tunneling protocol, the procedure that would tether her soul to the Ragnar’s crypt if she died. I waited for a tense moment, then got the signal.

“I have your signal,” I said. “You’re free to fight the whole city, you madwoman.”

“Maybe later,” said the commander. “Let’s finish the mission first.”