Robert thought when the Goose flew off to observe the battle between the gryphon and the behemoth that he had seen it for the last time. The Goose returned three days later and brought with it news of the gryphon's victory over the behemoth. The Wolf arrived soon after to inform the Goose that it was done repairing the damage done by the gryphon and the behemoth during their battle and that it had done in Ukraine. It was followed by the owl, the rooster, the dove and the Leviathan, which had transformed itself back into its penguin form. They were all followed by the oracle, who congratulated and thanked them all for the work that they'd done to stop the Raven and to tell them that they were free to go back out into the world.

The Raven had no one to return to. John Lafferty died after the Raven busted out of his chest to observe the final battle. No longer a member of the Raven's inner circle, time caught up with David Huntsman and he turned to dust. To escape the never-ending ridicule that he was being subjected to, Fyodor Milichenko bought a farm in Russia where he could live in seclusion. Jim Balmer returned to being a pastor, using his sermons to preach forgiveness, understanding and mercy. Chris Dixon drowned in the flood, along with most of the would-be insurrectionists. There was nothing for the Raven to do but wait for the next cycle to begin.

Sonya moved fast to consolidate her power. She had Yevgevny oversee a purge of the Ministry of Defense and had Ivan oversee a purge of the Federal Security Service. Sonya had good relationships with the oligarchs from her time running EDF and used those relationships to assure them that under her leadership their economic prospects would be significantly brighter. The hard-line right-wingers that were key members of Vladimir Kolschonski's inner circle were also subject to a purge, this time a bloody one. With her position as the new president of Russia shored up, Sonya looked abroad. Her first foreign visit as president was to Germany, where she signed a deal with the Chancellor to increase oil and gas exports to Germany through the construction of two new pipelines. Her next visit was to London, where she got the Chancellor of the Exchequer to agree to loosen the restrictions on capital flows between their two countries, and finally she traveled to Brussels where her meeting with the EU President yielded strong commitments on expanded trade between Russia and the EU, commitments that were contingent upon Russia not getting belligerent with its neighbors, a condition that Sonya was happy to accept.

Six months after her swing through Europe, Sonya visited Washington. The meeting between her and Tom Groff was highly anticipated as both leaders had been highly successful in charting a new course for their respective countries, albeit through very different methods. In Tom's case, it was his successful implementation of an overhaul of agricultural practices in the US that had gotten the agriculture industry going again as well as a huge bipartisan legislative win on the thorny issue of immigration reform that had taken the wind out of the sails of the far-right and put him on firmer political ground than any president since Eisenhower. Tom Groff and Sonya Kruschenko were seen as leaders that had the potential to change the world and the first summit between the two leaders, it was believed, would set the stage for that change. Tom and Sonya were aware of the expectations that were upon them, expectations that they owed it to the Goose to live up to. The summit concluded with the US and Russia signing a wide range of bilateral agreements on everything from trade to security cooperation to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation to green energy funding. The success of the summit exceeded everybody's expectations by laying the groundwork for the most open and cooperative relationship between the US and Russia since the end of the Cold War, a relationship that, if it flourished, really could change the world.

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Safe from the Raven, the cat retracted the rape accusation that she'd made against Ryan Keely and confessed to making the accusation to discredit any Solomon leaks concerning Jim Balmer. The owl returned to Ryan to continue the mission of Solomon, the Leviathan returned to the ocean, the dove returned to Tom Groff and the rooster went to Moscow to spend some time with Sonya. The only two left were the goat and the Wolf, and soon it would be time for them to move on as well. This was the moment that Jessie had been fearing, the moment when everything that had been keeping her anchored went away. Over the time that it had spent together with Jessie in Robert's house the Wolf had come to care for her a great deal and was aware of the effect that all the guardians leaving was having on her. The Wolf thought a lot about what it could do to help her and believed that reuniting her with Mason would probably be the best thing for her. The Wolf transported Jessie and the goat through a dimensional gateway to the small village in Congo that Mason had made his base. Since arriving in Africa with the seed that the goat had gifted him, Mason had managed to grow thousands of hectares of crops. He wasn't in the village when Jessie arrived with the goat and the Wolf. Earlier he had taken a flight in his helicopter to check on the growth of new fields that they had just cultivated. In just three days the seeds that they had planted had grown into full size crops with corn that was currently in the process of being harvested. Mason walked to the end of the fields that they'd planted and saw green shoots sprouting from the ground on land where they hadn't planted any seeds. This was always the case when they planted, a product of the seed's remarkable ability to give birth to an abundance of life. Mason got down on one knee, dug one of the sprouts out of the ground and held it before him. It always amazed him how so much hope could exist in something so small.