'...Mia,' Lucas began, making the younger zmeu stop staring forward and look up at him as she stopped to hover in midair. 'Don't look down.'

Mia did not. Not because she was particularly inclined to do as told without being told why, but because she knew Lucas hated beating around the bush. If he was trying to be tactful and take things slow, then...

Zmei, as a rule, did not form attachments with their children they way humans did. Lucas could attest. Neither did they instinctively feel anything towards their parents. Mia had never even heard of hers, let alone seen or meet them, so a subdued reaction was understandable-expected, really, she told herself.

Or maybe, a voice whispered in the back of her mind as she walked closer to her parents' remains, she was so shallow, she wouldn't have felt anything even if they'd been murdered in front of her eyes after raising her. She certainly couldn't brag about her ability to form attachments. Take her relationship with David, for example. What did loving him, when they were together, however long that lasted, mean when she'd eventually have to switch partners, lest she go mad? Even if she never grew close to anyone else, would it truly be love?

She hadn't talked with David about it yet. Hadn't wanted to ruin the happiness of a relationship he could enjoy, one that didn't consist of her partner burning her, not even metaphorically. She had, she supposed, fooled herself into thinking they were both truly, completely immortal, with all eternity to look for a solution.

That had been before she'd come home with half her head a wreck, to find him limping around, ecstatic at seeing her, not at having survived.

The worst part was that David would probably go along if she told him. Blazes, she could practically hear him...

"It's...it's fine, really. We all have our needs. Not like you choose to...not like you can control yourself."

Yes, David, she thought to herself. Just smile and nod as this floozy bitch puts horns on you. Fucking dammit...

She was jealous, really, of those people who didn't need to sleep around every once in a while. Cheating because you wanted to was....well, "a luxury" was probably the wrong way to put it. But not something she'd do if it was her choice, she believed.

There was, of course, the other extreme. David was one of the chillest Christians she knew, and had never even joked about any bullshit like choosing for her, or not allowing her to do something, but would he draw the line at...hell, what would she even call it, when the time came? Polyamory? A harem? No, definitely not that. She wouldn't let herself bond with someone else like that while abusing David's tolerance.

Either way, it would end with him as a cuckold, and she was scared of how it could end for her.

His strigoi instincts, she knew, had become stronger, louder, gaining a sort of pseudo-consciousness, like they did in all his older kindred. The "other guy" hadn't tried to harm her in bed, but would he always remain so calm?

She just didn't want to wake up to David ripping her throat out, whether it was him or his worse half at the wheel.

'And now I'm wondering whether my boyfriend would murder me or not,' Mia grumbled. 'I fucking hate this shit.'

Good thing the corpses were there, she thought sarcastically. A surefire way to distract herself.

Her father had been a yellow, five-headed zmeu with half-lidded purple eyes that had glazed over after death. Somewhere between Lucian and Lucas in height and bulk, he lay on his back, wings shredded and scattered across tall grass that left grooves on her scales. His lungs had been torn out to be placed on his wingless mate's back. Her seven-headed, orange-scaled mother was much larger than her father, so he was hardly visible with her lying on top of him. The killer had ripped their chests open so they could bend and twist the incredibly strong zmeu bones together, like a twisted cat's cradle, and their organs had been placed, seemingly at random, across intestines positioned to form a heart around them.

The cherry on this gore cake, however, was the way the bodies had been left. The killer had come for them while they were mating, like the killer in a slasher movie, and left them like that, with her mother on top of her father.

Mia took one long look at the parents she had never gotten to know and now never would, lowered her head, and looked away, shoulders shaking.

Lucas hesitantly walked closer at her thin, hollow laughter, wondering if it was too much. Perhaps he should've just torched the miserable scene from the sky, leaving nothing and pretending there wasn't anything to find. Mia's instincts were just wrong.

'Girl?' he asked, as softly as he could manage, tail coiled up with tension, not touching her. 'Why are you laughing?'

'Oh, you know,' Mia said in a deceptively light tone, forcing herself to giggle while waving at the corpses with one hand. 'Just thinking...about whoever was not only edgy enough to come up with this bullshit, but also strong enough to do it. Must've had a lot of time on their hands. And blood!'

Lucas didn't laugh. This gallows humour was unlike her, and he didn't like it.

'And the best part?' Mia said, eyes wide in mock-excitement. 'I can't even dredge up a damn tear at this shitshow, because I never got to know these people, never mind love them. So, I can't help but wonder...why the fuck leave them like this for us to find?'

'You assume they were left for us-or, indeed, anyone,' Lucas said carefully. 'I'm not sure you should.'

'Oh, really!?' Mia turned to look up at him, hands on her hips and a wide, fake smile plastered on her face. 'Gee, boss, that makes perfect sense. I'm sure some murderous rando just wanted to get their rocks off in this super special way, then left the toys lying around.' She shook her head. 'Come on, Lucas. Even if I, specifically, wasn't meant to find them, you don't do things like this unless you want attention.'

'Maybe,' he said grudgingly, still not liking the thought. What kind of spiteful freak hated Mia enough to try and shock her like this, whether they knew it would work or not? He dearly hoped he wouldn't have to wait long for an answer. Silencing Three Moons' howls for blood and paying back whoever was responsible at the same time? Really, he had nothing to lose.

Then, another thought struck him. 'Girl. You say you don't really feel anything about your parents? Besides disgust at how they died, maybe some pity?'

'I think anyone would feel that,' Mia replied, smile fading.

'Be honest. You don't have to play tough for me.' Lucas said, maybe coming off across harsher than he'd intended, judging by her frown. Not that he'd ever expected to be halfway decent at expressing his feelings.

'Do I have to repeat myself?' Mia asked stiffly, marching past him, jabbing his side with a wingtip. 'Let's g-'

'If you're only appalled, as anyone would be,' Lucas said, putting a huge hand on Mia's shoulder, stopping the zmeu in her tracks. 'Then why do you sound so angry?'

Mia stood silent for a few moments, then that empty, ugly laugh returned, setting his fangs on edge. 'Hey, Luc...how the fuck do you handle your urges?'

'What?' he asked, confused. 'Why do you...Mia, if you've gotten bored of Silva, that's your business. But don't try to come onto me, please.'

Her laugh was warmer as she shook in his grip. 'Fucking...Romania's most eligible bachelor, aren't you? Blazes, Lucas, that's not what I meant. I meant, how come you, and your older brother, now that I think about it, act like the polar opposite of every other zmeu I know?'

Normally, Lucas would have told her, or anyone else, to piss off. But...there was clearly something bothering Mia. And, judging by the way she had tensed when he'd mentioned Silva, he had the feeling something had gone wrong between them. 'Don't tell anyone this,' he began, lightly grabbing her crest between two fingertips, pulling her head back so she could look into his eyes. 'But the Mother of the Forest didn't only give me my weapon. She also took away some things, at my request.'

'And Aaron?' Mia asked, not showing any reaction towards the reveal.

'I don't know,' Lucas lied. 'Now...you were right. Come on. I'll treat you to something. You can tell me what's bothering you, too, if you want.'

Mia didn't respond, lips pursed, worrying the ground with her tail and claws.

Groaning inwardly, Lucas let go of her arm, reaching into his pocket to take out a blunt, filled with a thick, dark blue powder-the grass that grew in his domain, and could intoxicate a being immune to poisons able to wipe out billions of humans. 'Careful, girl: this is the second time today I do something I never thought I would. If this goes on much longer, I might get sappy or something, too. I'm scared.'

Smirking weakly, Mia took the cigar in one hand, then sliced it in half with one claw. Putting one half in her mouth and lighting it with a puff of orange flame, she gave the other back to him. Surprised, Lucas nevertheless took it, ashing it in one surprised breath.

Sloppy. Another thing he'd never thought he would do. He'd have rather been sappy than waste good grass...

As he wrapped and arm around Mia and took off, Lucas turned one head to look once more at the mangled corpses. Focusing his arcane sense into his side, he saw...nothing. No traces of magical power, or wounds they had taken in life. Like the zmei's bodies were the only things left of them. Come to think of it, how come they hadn't healed from their wounds? Zmei could heal head-sized wounds through the chest in moments, never mind some twisted bones and missing organs. They could even reattach their heads, as Aaron had been forced to do recently, for the first time in decades.

A part of the blue zmeu wanted to burn the unnatural husks to nothing, and forget they had ever existed. But he knew ARC, or whoever else was going to bring the killer to justice, would need all the information they could get.

If he didn't find them himself first. As he took in Mia's blank expression and faraway eyes, Lucas mused that he had always wanted to see how long he could keep someone alive in zmeu country, anyway. Maybe he'd even teach her to warp reality herself.

***

The only texts I'd received so far were more vague warnings about staying on guard, as well as a creepily-cheerful message from Szabo, who wanted me to meet his family. It wasn't the offer to teach me how to raise corpses and bind spirits that weirded me out, though, but the other one.

"Think as long as you need, brother! I know you and your zmeu love each other, as baffling as the thought two beings like you can is-this is not an insult. It is truly memorable, though do not think you will be remembered above Loric Szabo, David! But, once you drift apart (you know it will happen; either the voices in your head will drive you mad, or her whorish behaviour will), you should know my great-granddaughter is young and single. I take no small pride in having helped raise a family consisting of sane, stable people, as opposed to mad sadists, as one may expect from a strigoi. Indeed, it is such things that separate the great from the mediocre..."

I wasn't sure what made my cold blood boil more: the implication I'd ever let my distaste at Mia's needs cloud my love for her, or the fact he'd called her a whore. I had half a mind to go just to kill Szabo, and was pacing in the yard when my zmeu touched down, mouth surrounded by a mixture of ash and what looked like Lucas' smoking powder. Smiling at my raised eyebrows, Mia approached me, staggering slightly. I almost moved to support her, but she waved me off, a somewhat dazed look in her eyes.

'Hey, David?' Mia rasped, grabbing my right hand and squeezing slightly. 'What would you be willing...to forgive me for?'

'Anything...' I said, uneasy. Was she high? Fuck, what had Lucas even done? He was more serious than this. 'Mia, what's wrong?'

'Should I tell you...or show you?'

I gently pushed her away as she tried to bite at my noose marks, not liking where this was going. 'I'd rather you told me, thanks. Come in. After you calm down a little, we can talk about whatever you want.'

Mia's smile turned to bitter ash she shook her head. 'Tell you...huh?'

***

Zeus scowled at the book in Yahweh's hands. No god present had been allowed to bring weapons (not that they needed them, with their powers), and personal effects, such as crowns, had been placed at the centre of the round table balancing on air above Mount Meru. The book, however, was not even a Bible. So, what...

'The reports of my death,' Yahweh said, as if reading his thoughts, white, long beard swaying slightly beneath a featureless face of light. Abraham's God held a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra-an old and cherished one, judging by its weathered, well-thumbed appearance. 'Are greatly exaggerated. A minor spoiler, if you intend to read it.'

'Tch.' The Olympian patriarch crossed his olive-skinned, muscled arms, lighting crackling in his beard-grey when he had arrived, now black as his eldest brother's realm. 'If I wanted to hurt my eyes with Friedrich's ramblings, I'd dare Borson to scribble while drunk.'

'You want your eyes hurt, lecher? 'Tis a pity I could not bring Gungnir, but we could try a more hands-on approach,' Odin said: a cold, amused whisper, runes flashing in and out of existence across his black eyes. Zeus had heard rumours that his pet ravens were no more, and neither was he, as it seemed, famously one-eyed anymore. No coincidence.

It was unfair, really. Not only had the warmongering bastard escaped his fate, a state of affairs some gods could only dream of, but so had all his bootlickers. Not just unfair, absurd! What had the Aesir lost, besides a dead old fool's shrunken head? Even now, Odin pushed his worshippers to fight among themselves in grand tournaments all across the northern hemisphere, raising the brave dead as einherjar for his army, to be rallied around the ghosts of his sons.

'Watch it, weakling.' Zeus narrowed his eyes, and Mount Mheru, heavy as the Milky Way and more durable than all matter in said galaxy put together, was blasted to subatomic particles by his power. Then, with a thought, it was remade, the particles rearranged so it stood even prouder than before.

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'Destruction should serve a purpose. That was unnecessary, lord Zeus,' Shiva replied with a moue of slight distaste, four purple hands clasped together. At his side, Vishnu nodded, red lips set in a serious line, while Brahman hummed in agreement, stroking his four white beards. The Trimurti did not sit on chairs, instead levitating in the lotus position, or, in Vishnu's case, lying on his back across Shesha's hoods. The King of Serpents' hoods were large enough to hold all the mundane universe's hundreds of septillions of planets, and he was strong enough such weight was barely felt, but such was Narayana's size and weight, even Adishesha strained. Nevertheless, he would never refuse to bear his friend, whether on Ksira Sagara, or in this place of neutrality.

The serpent was uncoiled, keeping time flowing across the universe mankind inhabited. Were it to coil up, reality would be snuffed out like a candle.

'It was not, destroyer,' Ares smirked, leaning down over his father's throne to place an arm on his broad shoulder. The war god's scarred, tanned face was split by a lazy grin that fooled no one present. All could see the bloodlust raging beneath the forced nonchalance. 'The weak-especially weak enemies-must be reminded of their place.'

'Both you and your father forget-as expected, for small minds think alike-that, with fate gone for me and mine, I am no longer limited to my baseline power,' Odin said calmly, smiling as Ares' expression turned murderous. To his surprise, Zeus did not throw a tantrum at the insult. Immediately.

'I would kill you myself, old man, if the others weren't here to stop me. You and your ilk...not even immortal. You sicken me.'

'So, you do not strike me because you know you would be overcome? Thank you for admitting your weakness. Or...is it cowardice? Should weak cowards be reminded of their place, too?'

Ares' fists-accustomed to holding a brazen spear not even his father's thunderbolts, able to blast the universe to nothing or vapourise enough water to fill it-could break, closed around nothing. 'I can create dozens of stars with a thought, and remake them the same way. All my half-siblings can. What can you boast of, wretch?'

'A family tree that doesn't look like a crossword puzzle?'

'You foul-'

'Brother,' Hermes drawled, leaning on his caduceus at Zeus right, smirking slyly in the shadows of his winged hat. 'He is mocking you. And, while it is hilarious...'

'And working.'

'Begone, Thoth!' Ares growled, receiving an amused looked from the ibis-headed god.

'And working, yes, thank you, lord Thoth...it is not the purpose of this meeting. Speaking of...lord Dagda?'

The nature god did not speak immediately, his bearded face hidden by the hood of his green cloak, one hand toying with the lorg anfaid. Lately, the club's wielder had contemplated using the killing end more often than in the last five centuries together. 'I am a fool.'

On his left, Morrigan scoffed, pacing on air in raven form. Lugh, sitting on his friend's left, smiled at him encouragingly with all faces, his shining, brilliant white skin making the sun appear dim.

'Before all else, I must apologise to lord Odin,' the Dagda's nod was not returned by the Aesir. 'I should not have intruded in your domain, even if Nidhogg's existence was not linked to its fate. I should...I should have remembered our Treaty, to keep mundane reality neutral, and not intervene in each other's realm on a whim.'

'Why did you do it, druid?' Yudi asked, his voice far more subdued, perhaps, than one would have expected of the Jade Emperor, though no less benevolent. 'You have never been rash. What madness could possess you to...?'

'Madness, indeed!' Sussanoo harrumphed, black beard and moustache whipping in the wind created by his fierceness, ignoring his sister's exasperated look, if he was even aware of it. 'According to David Silva's testimony of Chernobog's claims-'

'Are we willing to believe Yahweh's dog after he was gifted what should have been our prize by his master's misbegotten spawn?' Shango thundered, paying as much attention to Obatala mouthing that he stay silent as Susanoo did to Amaterasu gesturing for him to stop wondering about the Dagda's possible mental afflictions out loud.

'Ah, your prize,' Odin nodded with a dry grin. 'I'm glad you do not even pretend not to have desired my lost possession.'

'Thunder does not dissemble! Thunder screams the truth into the ears of liars, just ask the pervert over there!'

'Silence!' Zeus bellowed, sphere lighting crackling around his fist as he stood up to glare at the boisterous Orisha. 'Do not lump me in with yourself, fool! My results are visible to all, and have brought nothing but peace to the universe,' the Olympian retorted, pointing across the table.

'I like to think I have succeeded in life despite my heritage, father,' Elsbeth Crane replied, expression blank. Zeus' incredulous glare almost unmade the elaborate braid her hair was in, but the Scion Head did not even blink. On her right, Aya Reem sighed, not meeting Thoth's eyes, despite the god of knowledge being the only representative of her pantheon. Osiris could not leave the underworld, and Ra was fighting Apophis, as he did every day, alongside Horus and Set.

Samuel Shiftskin put a reassuring hand on the mummy's shoulder, his strength almost denting the enchanted golden pauldron. Aya's neutrality in the Headhunt had left her with nothing except her (admittedly impressive, for she could move fast enough to make tachyons appear stationary, and nothing could stop her strength if she put her mind to it) physical prowess and ability to order the physical world and the Duat, as a champion of Ma'at. But the blessings of her gods were gone. For someone who had left behind a home torn apart by conflict between a Muslim father and a mother who kept the old gods, it was almost as devastating at the thought something she would need those powers to prevent would happen. Aya knew her gods were not so petty or spiteful to keep her depowered in such a case, but...

A few seats away from the ARC Heads, Armament, as Hans Miller was known by FREAKSHOW, looked to his sides, blowing a raspberry at Asterion's earnest expression and Eidolon's literal stone face. Hans was a blond, blue-eyed man of average heigh, muscled in a wiry sort of way that his his white sleeveless shirt helped to emphasise. Black suspenders reached across shoulders that could bash continents to gravel, and his arms-both covered in eagles, the bald ones on the right grasping the stars and stripes in their claws, the golden ones on the left holding the black, red and yellow. His mixed ancestry was almost as much a point of pride for him as the ability to become any weapon, mundane or divine, real or fictional, that had given him his name. It was the ability to create endless copies of such weapons that had resulted in him being asked to sign the Syncretic Treaty, swearing to never do so unless creation was overwhelmed by invaders. Much as Eidolon and Sam were not allowed to copy or transform into certain beings, unless that was the case.

Hans was a man of action, as he liked to say. Growing up in Texas hunting rogue weres, he had entered FREAKSHOW to shoot and blow up people and things legally, and even be paid for it. A power like his, backed by a mind like his, was not exactly reassuring for the gods. Hans might have tattooed the brain' areas and his purposes across his shaved head, but no one who knew him believed he actually used his.

Take, for example, the Excalibur copy he had created and was now tossing up and down like a knife, catching it by the hilt each time. The Sword of Promised Victory could cut almost anything (save for, Hans thought with a grin, the other swords that could cut anything, or certain indestructible artifacts, like the Nemean Pelt), and warp reality so its wielder would always win, if not live after, unless it was paired with its scabbard, even if thir opponent was infinitely stronger, faster and smarter than them.

'Unmake that,' Amaterasu said, her pale, soft features already taut with irritation from her brother's antics. 'No weapons, mortal-'

'Aww, then you'll have to disarm me, babe,' Hans flashed the goddess a wink, before tossing the sword in the air and kissing his biceps. 'I can't help it if 'em guns deadly...'

Amaterasu held back a smile as the cocksure human tilted his head back, catching Excalibur's hilt in his teeth like a rose. She would have never admitted, but humans had gotten more and more amusing these last decades.

'We should give everyone of y'all one o' these,' Hans claimed, moving Excalibur from his moth to his right hand. 'Then every good guy alive, so we can never lose.'

'I agree with the mortal's outrageous idea-to a degree,' Ne Zha said from besides the Jade Emperor. Having lived like a human himself once, something Wukong never hesitated to remind him, the Third Lotus Prince took every chance to point out others' mortality. 'Or, we can simply match the strongest ones so they can breed strong children, as they do in my country. Just look at our cultivators.'

'Eugenics?' Sam sneered, his beady shark eyes gleaming. 'You know, I might be biased, but I hate your idea. In fact, I think you should remove yourself from the gene-pool before trying to control it like that.'

Shiftskin's reaction was understandable, if tactless. As a child in the Navajo Nation, his skinwalker parents had flayed him, then taken him while wearing his skin, so he could see his own face while he learned to love himself-an attempt to coax out his magic through self-loathing, if his mind didn't break. The young skinwalker had flayed them in turn, then wandered far north, where he had eaten a murderer's heart out of hunger combined with hatred. Not long after, the young wendigo had gained the power to transform into any and all beast, from kitsune and Garuda to Typhon and Tiamat. Then, he had spent years as a murderous, manflaying vigilante, before Aya Reem had captured him, giving him a choice between ARC and prison.

Perhaps interested in more than her power, Shiftskin had grinned, saying he was very eager to serve alongside, or even under her, if she asked.

'I can't believe I'm agreeing with the maneater,' Ying Lung muttered, more to himself, as he refilled his pipe. Today, the dragon was in his pale-skinned, white-haired human form, white eyes gleaming through sunglasses as his thin moustache twitched in disbelieving amusement. 'Prince. You can try to kill me again, if you're offended. I have the guts for it, so to speak.'

'Indeed,' Wukong chimed in. 'I saw them hanging last time. His guts, too.'

'What side are you on, monkey?' Ne Zha asked in distaste.

'Your right, his left,' Sun replied, pointing at Ying with his tail while accidentally poking Ne Zha in the eye. The Prince struck the Buddha hard enough to unmake all matter in mundane reality, but left only a bruise that healed instantly on his smiling face.

'This circus has dragged on enough,' Thoth said, though with no small amount of amusement in his voice. 'Lord Dagda?'

'I should not have taken my brother's sword to kill Nidhogg.' The Dagda lowered his head in shame. 'But these...these women...they were Seelie, you see? I was returning to Bru na Boinne one day, and saw them sitting down by the road, covered in weeping sores. They told me they had gone to tour the Yggdrasil, and the dragon had mauled them for not reason. I was seized by such a rage...rage like I had never known. But, you must understand...they wept and sang like no Fae I had ever known...'

As he spoke, the Dagda slowly clenched his fist around his club, before blurring over the table, smashing Thoth out of his chair. The god was sent flying by a blow that would not have shamed Odin, his ibis head changing to a baboon's, then a shapeless, featureless black mass. His body soon followed.

' "Thoth", you say,' the Dagda snarled, hefting his club. 'So nice, so arrogant, to dangle a fraction of your name before us, thinking we would not notice! Messenger!'

The black shape seemed to smile for a moment, before vanishing. The Dagda sat down with a huff, preempting any pointing of fingers or demands for answers. 'We have been compromised,' he said bluntly. 'The things in the Void have learned to imitate our shapes, our mannerisms, enough to fool even godly senses-'

'How do we know you aren't one yourself?' Sussanoo demanded, drawing the Totsuka Blade. 'Because you blew that one's cover? Perhaps it was to draw away attention from yourself!'

'I know, because I think I have been tainted by it once...the madness you spoke of, lord Susanoo? Now that my mind is clear, it felt quite similar to the aura of that being. And...I am starting to think Chernobog spoke true. Nidhogg's "victims" might have been a trap to bait me into rashness, after all. Perhaps they were working together with the Crawling Chaos."

The silence that followed was deafening. If one looked with a keen enough eye, though, they would have been able to see the so-called supreme gods' auras bordering and overlapping each other, like coloured light coming out of a prism. Indeed, the way the Unmoved Mover was separated by perception was quite similar. Even the Blind Idiot God, whose messenger crawled in the screaming void beyond all Gates, was one such aspect of it.

'Before the others arrive, and we begin guessing at a purpose beyond chaos for the sake of chaos, or childish amusement,' Odin broke the silence. 'Lord Dagda...where are Oberon and Titania?'

The Dagda let out a self-deprecating laugh. 'You know how the Wild Hunt is formed from the Fae who chafe under civilisation's laws...? Of course, you have led it yourself, lord Borson. Imagine the surprise of everyone in Otherworld when we learned that, to end their unceasing, bloody rivalry, the Seelie Royals went to the Unseelie, and proposed a Hunt consisting of both Courts, as well as every unaligned Fae and supernatural they could cajole or pressgang. Bonding through atrocity, I suppose. We...should not expect the Seelie to strike against their opposites-for, truly, I do not know if such distinctions exist in their minds anymore.'

As silence returned, some gods mused that, perhaps, not only the Dagda had been touched by the madness from beyond.