With the breaking of Pantheon Peace and the damage caused by Elassa’s cracking of Arika, it has become obvious that the old order is failing. Great Guguo will not be caught unawares, we will not sit idly by as Arascus’ dissidents conquer Epa, the UNN and move on us…

…I fully support, ladies and gentlemen, the White Pantheon’s request to start industrialization for military purposes. For three reasons! Firstly, for peace in the world, Guguo needs a modern military to enforce the peace. Second, because we see Arascus’ takeover in Kirinyaa. I would like to ask where the fools who once talked of allying with him in order to keep our positions have gone? Third, so that after victory is achieved, Guguo is now left as the Pantheon’s right hand in the world, we will be rewarded!

- The Guguoan Sectmasters vote on Sect Mass Mobilization

Maisara flexed her hands and looked at her palms. Her skin had not fully grown back yet. They didn’t hurt anymore, but her palms were the tender pink of freshly regenerated muscle rather than the pale shade the rest of her body was. It was damage from the morning’s job: to make way for the mortal cleanup crew, she had to dislodge several of the graphite control rods which had jammed themselves half-way in the reactor’s core after the wave had flooded the facility. That had to be done by hand. And now Maisara hissed as she flexed her fingers and closed her palm.

Maisara looked through her report again as she felt her plane start to lower its altitude. That meant they were coming close. Maisara stood up and readjusted her shirt. Supposedly she should wear a heavy rubber suit to protect herself from the worst of the radiation, but she was a Divine. And she already had three different reactors under her belt. Fortia and Allasaria both had two each. She smiled in satisfaction at the thought as her back up team of Paladins all went to sit in seats and strapped themselves in.

Her entourage was for papers, for organising routes and for dealing with anyone who tried to come close. It wasn’t just the looters and reporters, it was minor local Divines who thought too much of themselves. Twice now, Maisara had to put some local deity back into his place because he thought that the assistance to some flooded homes outweighed the need to stop the entire Alanktydan Ocean from turning into a radioactive dead-zone.

So Maisara grabbed onto her seatbelt as she sat in the cargo-hold of the plane. A PCM4, Paladin-Carrier Model-4, specifically produced for her Orders, huge, capable of ferrying heavy vehicles or hundreds of men from location to location. With enough range to make a lap around the equator of Arda. Although it was sparse in the back, with only benches set up and the floor being all iron and steel. Maisara read through her report again.

Some parts could be ignored. The casualties, Maisara did not care about. The fact that five of the engineers working at Ilsney Nuclear Station were lost also did not matter. Either they had ventured into the mountains, in which case it wasn’t for Maisara to find them, or they had stayed at the Station, in which case the radiation will have already killed them. Other parts though were important, the blueprint map for example. Absolutely necessary. The fact that three of the backup generators may be underwater, again, crucial. Maisara read through her report until the pilot broke the silence: Paladins did not chatter much. “We are approaching Ilsney Nuclear Station.” He said. “Goddess Maisara, we will drop you onto the station from above, although we can’t get too much lower.”

Maisara clicked the earpiece in her ear. There was a small amount of static through it. “Don’t worry about it, just save me the walk.” She said.

“Understood.” The pilots replied over the intercom again, pistons hissed and gears started to turn. Metal whined as Maisara unhooked her arm from the strap she was holding onto and stood up. For a moment, the wind and air rushed past her, throwing her silver hair around and her clothes, and then it stabilized. Maisara did not even look at her men as she walked on the steel towards the edge of the cargo hold.

Down below lay Ilsney Nuclear Station, near the town of Ilsney, cozily sheltered between the beginnings of the Kalachia mountains and the ocean. It was picturesque, the Kalachias were ancient and overgrown with wild nature, Ilsney itself was cozy and small, all low-rise buildings to maintain the landscape and docks that would send fishermen out everyday. A school, a small hospital, the grandest building was the old library, which had supposedly stood for over a century, and a Pantheon Church, about as old, both were built at the same town when the town was settled.

Maisara saw none of it. She heard only silence, crashing ocean waves and the turbines of the plane.

Ilsney was a dark mark of grey roads and broken rubble from shattered buildings. The waters had washed almost everything away, the only things that still stood were the bottom halves of signposts and steel beams that had been used to support the larger buildings. Those had merely been snapped, not ripped out of the ground like everything else. The luscious Kalachia mountains, apparently brimming with untamed wilderness, were slabs of rock. Maisara could see exactly how far the wave had reached, about three-quarters of the way up the mountains, the trees suddenly returned. Underneath that line, it was as if the local government had gone on a deforestation policy. Everything had been washed away. And whereas the mountains themselves looked terrible, the valleys and ravines may as well have been the sites of battles. Instead of being filled with flora, they were filled with rubble from the mountains, and from what the waters had washed in from Ilsney. Maisara saw more than a few cars and several boats which had been smashed into the mountain even from here.

Two of the mountains had smoke-stacks, campfires from survivors then, although Maisara ignored them. Instead, her eyes went to the crisis she was here to prevent. Roughly four miles south of Ilsney was series of grey domes and boxes. The cooling towers to release steam had been washed away, that was no surprise, but Maisara was focused on the buildings. Her cold grey eyes grew dark.

It was always her.

It was never Fortia.

It was never Allasaria.

When something terrible happened, it was always her. Smoke was rising out from one of the buildings and another was on fire. Not the warm flames of wood burning, the toxic blue fire that said something which did not appear in nature normally was being cleansed away. The smoke from that was a tarry black, as if an artist had taken a dirty paintbrush and smeared it onto reality. Maisara heard her earpiece start to click rapidly, she took it out and threw it away. There was precisely zero chance it would work, she knew from the unnatural warmness this high up in the air.

Maisara took a deep breath, she checked her parachute one last time, and she jumped from the plane. Of Order had always had a soft-spot for falling through the air, although Fortia did too. Sometimes, Maisara wondered if Fer did too, it was only natural that those who couldn’t fly would enjoy this sort of activity. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a smile for a moment. Only a moment though, the wind whipped her hair and blew past her cheeks, and Maisara awoke from her brief pause for calmness.

A tug on the cord by Maisara’s shoulder opened the parachute. Maisara grunted as the massive cloth opened up behind her and cut her speed in half. She kicked her legs, grabbed the release cord and directed her glide to straight over Ilsney Nuclear Station. Once the drop was manageable, only about five stories high, Maisara held her breath in the warm air and pulled the cord. Straps gave way, ropes slid past and Maisara’s parachute lost its connection to her.

Maisara slammed into the concrete, feet first, as if she was diving into the ocean. Her boot touched the ceiling, and the ceiling could do nothing to stand up against the weight of a Goddess but give up and crumble. In a massive explosion of dust and concrete hailstone, Maisara crashed through the ceiling as she closed her eyes. For a moment, her magical armour materialized around her body. The silver chest piece and the battleskirt that protected her thighs whilst still allowing full range of movement.

Before the dust even started to clear, Maisara dematerialized her armour as soon as she felt the drumming of stone against it start to stop. If there was one thing she didn’t want to be doing back at the Mountain, it was cleaning her gear from radiation, so she tried to minimize its usage. And, frankly, it did nothing for protection. She still felt the skin all over her body start to heat up as her eyes readjusted to the darkness. The red emergency lights were somehow still functioning. That was either good news: one of the back up generators was still working, or terrible: the reactor core had not been shut down. From the choking heat and the sickly smell in the air, Maisara expected the worse option.

Down the first corridor, it had obviously been flooded and it had obviously been dried out quickly. The heat was starting to get stifling, the tiles here were covered in mud that was washed in from the outside. Roots and leaves too, at one point, Maisara snagged her leg on loose of bramble that stretched the floor like razor wire. Now that she was this deep in, and now that she felt the heat. Wounds like that didn’t seem to matter. Frankly, what did such a tiny cut even mean if the reactor felt as if it was going to blow?

Maisara followed the route to the reactor core from memory. There was no checking of side-rooms, nor seeing what the waters had washed into the building. The curiosity could be pushed down and frankly, Maisara had too much on her plate right now to have time to explore here. Down the main corridor, over two drowned bodies in white clothes that had been dirtied by mud. Through the main set of steel doors into the control room.

Through the set of steel doors. Maisara stared at the doors before her. She knew the keypad on the side would not work, yet she tried anyway. It did not work. It did not even flash. Maisara turned around, looked down and saw how pink her arms and legs were. Already she had spent too much time in here. Deities weren’t mortals; radiation would not kill Divines through cancer formation, frankly, it was worse. Back then, it had been called Olephia’s Curse, now, it was radiation poisoning, but what it was called didn’t matter. Ending up as one of the deities who tried to best Olephia’s dead-zone was not something Maisara had ever wanted to accomplish. The bodies would give out, they would lose strength, they would fall utterly drained of strength. Yet they would still live.

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If there was one death Maisara wanted to avoid, it was that torturously slow release from life.

Maisara’s executioner’s axe appeared in her hand. She slammed it into the door. The huge silver and steel great-axe disappeared a moment later. Even after spending only a few out here, the metal had already gone warm. The gash in the door let out a howl and a wave of heat that forced even Maisara to take a step back. The Goddess took a deep breath, held the noxious air within herself, and stepped close to the gash. Maisara grunted as she pulled the metal apart, even as it scorched her skin. It was as if she was being forced to grab a molten ingot of iron. Normally, it would have been an effort to tear the steel apart. With it weakened from the heat though, it bend under Maisara’s strength as if the woman was moving a rather flexible piece of wood.

Maisara unbuttoned her shirt as she felt the material start to cling to her from her own sweat. Her palms and fingers stung as she dealt with the buttons. Her nails had started to bleed, as did several holes on her palms that her body was fighting to regrow.. Maisara ignored the stinging nails, but directed regeneration to the holes in her palms. Sliding through the gap she had bent into the steel, she saw where the parts of her palms had been left there. Maybe Elassa would have turned her head at it, but Maisara? She simply held her breath because the smell of melting flesh was something she was not particularly fond of.

Maisara yelped and cut her leg on a sharp piece of metal. She wobbled from the heat, then again as she felt her muscles cry out under the toxic radiation in the air. And she turned, took a deep breath, and inspected the control room. Two bodies were here, these men hadn’t drowned, they had fallen over in puddles of their own blood. And Maisara looked up at the controls.

There was a reason it was Maisara who got these jobs, and it was a rather simple one. Fortia and Allasaria were both incapable of learning the control scheme of these reactors in the few hours they had of preparation. Maisara had always been good at this sort of thing, but now as she looked up at all the blinking lights: the red alarms, the screens that had been brought to silence by radiation, the gauges and metres, she realised that this was a situation in which no one knew what to do.

Maisara coughed and swallowed more toxic air. She relaxed her hands, tried to ignore the feeling of burning on her cheeks and the fact her eyes were starting to tear up. And Maisara pushed the shut-down button. Apart from the tip of her finger leaving a thin layer of skin on the plastic, and the stinging sensation when she had to tear it away, nothing happened. Boric acid release, same thing. Emergency control rod switch. And nothing.

Whether it was the fact her lungs were starting to sting or that her feet have become numb, Maisara gave up and switched tactics. She considered herself a woman capable of patience, yet she would never describe herself as patient. Today especially so.

Maisara kicked down the door that led to the reactor room and felt the heat slather her as the metal twisted and fell of its hinges. She had just stepped out of an oven and onto the edge of a volcano. Breathing became difficult, her lips started to crack, her vision started to discolour. She coughed onto her hands and saw blood. Sometimes, she really did miss Kavaa. She missed the little quirks of the cold Goddess, the way that she would roll her eyes. Or the fact she would scold Maisara when Of Order needed healing. The way she would complain about the fact she felt trivialized by constantly healing the damage from spats in the Pantheon. Right now, Maisara would give another millennia of seething at Allasaria for Kavaa to suddenly appear and soothe the burning with her icy touch.

The walk down the corridor was no slower than any other time, yet Maisara had to drag herself there. Each movement of her leg felt as if her muscles were tearing themselves apart, each breath of air was as if she was trying to swallow boiling, noxious, bitter jam. She didn’t even want to touch the door at the end. The fact the air shimmered was enough tell to gauge its temperature.

The axe being radioactive didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It would be a pain to clean, but it could be cleaned. It materialized in Maisara’s hand, she hissed as its grip stung the raw flesh on her palms and she threw it forwards. It crashed and roared and…

And Maisara heard her ears pop. Gone. Silence. Maisara took a step forwards as her thoughts were suddenly all she could hear. Deafness it was, these things happened. Regeneration would fix it on the plane. The lack of sound did not compare to the state of the reactor core anyway.

In the previous plants Maisara had gone to, none of them were glowing like a blinding white star. Maisara felt her vision go dull as she looked around. There was ash on the floor, maybe bodies, maybe books, she couldn’t tell as she stepped into the main chamber. The core was dry, its cooling was now mere steam in the air. The pump to run more water into the core wasn’t working. Maybe it had shut down, maybe the tidal wave had brought debris which blocked it. Maisara did not know. She did not care either.

Her eyes searched around for a tank she knew would be somewhere here. It had to be. She passed over it several times before realising it was there. A huge thing, with a valve and a pipe that led directly into the core. Maisara took a step forwards, felt her legs shake and gave up. She threw her axe again, at the valve, but she hit the tank instead.

Boron acid spilled out, hissing as it cooked itself on the temperature of the metal, but there was simply too much of it for it all to boil away. It flooded half of the room, found a channel that led to the core, and started to flow. The temperature dropped only slightly as Maisara tested her hands in the acid. Apparently, it was supposed to control the reaction in the core, it only stung her hands. She shook it off and took a breath as the core was submerged.

That did help. It helped a lot in fact. Even as the acid bubbled around the core, it stopped glowing. Maisara looked around. Clean-up would come later, but if she didn’t get the control rods in then this process would have to be repeated. She looked around for a manual release.

There was none.

Maisara looked up at the control rods in the air. Her vision was blurry and dark, and she had to reach out to check that her eyes weren’t tricking her. There were in fact dark-grey rails that guided the rods into the core. Maisara reached up.

Thankfully, she was tall enough. She didn’t know what she would if she wasn’t, but she could just about reach that sheet of metal which held the rods. Maisara grit her teeth as blood poured down her hand. Her weight alone wasn’t enough to dislodge the mechanism. So she grit her teeth harder, and with just one hand, Maisara swung herself up.

Heat and smoke and noxious fumes. That was all Maisara could see or hear. Her eyes tried to focus on objects and shapes, but couldn’t. Maisara dropped to her knees and started to run her hands over anything and everything. Steel. Cold steel. Bolts. And then she found it. Something slippery and round, as if it was coated in chromium. Her fist closed even as Maisara felt as if she was being forced to bathe in acid and she snapped the piston. The platform immediately started to move.

Maisara made a small gasp, even though her throat could only rubble and spit out blood as she crawled around on the ground. There was no gap between the platform and the core below her. It had shut luckily. She felt around for any control rods that needed to be pushed in further. Her hands found one that her eyes could not see, and she used it to stand up as she pushed it in.

The temperature in the room started to drop. It didn’t get cool, Maisara doubted that was even possible at this point, but she no longer was standing in the middle of the sun and only on its surface. Her vision slowly fought its way to reveal something, anything. Simple shapes of grey and silver and red lines and black and yellow warning labels.

Maisara pushed in every rod she could see. She was sure, she was definite, she was certain that she damaged the core. That something in there had cracked, or that the rods had been pushed in so deep that it would be impossible to take them out. And Maisara did not care. She gave the core one final look over and started moving one leg in front of the other.

Back through the corridor. Back through the control room. Once again she cut herself on the door, although it didn’t make much of a difference anyway. With every step, Maisara was leaving a trail of blood as she went. Until she got to the opening she had made on the way in. Maisara bent down to jump, and then realised her legs simply refused to.

The Goddess of Order grit her teeth. She gave up on her eyes, on her hearing, on all her senses and all her natural regeneration moved into her legs. In two seconds, she lost every sense there was again, in two seconds, the muscles in her legs were once working, if only for an instant. Maisara released and felt cool air all around her.

She drifted in the darkness, in that stinging, biting wind. By all means, it could have been called unnaturally warm. Hot even. And yet to her, it was a brilliant, beautiful devouring cold that rushed over. Maisara smiled to herself as she thought about what she had just done. Another reactor was saved. Another countless amount of lives were saved. Another successful mission to add to her repertoire. And those thoughts went away as Maisara bathed in the senseless darkness, without sight and without smell and without sound, with only cool air embracing every inch of her.

Maisara grunted as her back slammed onto grass. She thirstily took a breath of fresh air. Just like the temperature, there was no way this air could be called cool, yet it tasted like the sweetest ambrosia Maisara had ever tasted. She lay there, taking deep breathes, letting her body finally take a few moments of rest as her regeneration, finally undirected, fought damage all over her body. How long did she lie there?

It felt like an hour. It realistically was maybe half of that. There were more jobs to do. She couldn’t rest now.

Maisara finally stood up, wiping her hands on her shirt and throwing the rocks off herself. Her entire body stung as if it had just been rubbed with spicy powder, and her hands burned. She looked down at herself, there wasn’t an inch of herself where the skin wasn’t peeling off.

Maisara grit her teeth as she watched the plane come down in the distance. They wouldn’t be able to land this close to the reactor without frying the electronics. She sighed and took a shaky step forwards as she guided her natural regeneration to her legs first.

Each step felt as if she was walking on metal spikes that had been heated to glowing. Yet after each step, Maisara took another. There was cleanup to do. Regeneration could be done on the plane. The UNN’s nuclear reactors were almost all saved now. Those that could not be salvaged, Allasaria would go and wipe with her magical beams. There would be fallout, but one small burst of fallout was better than the constant leaking they would make.

Maisara thought about the future as she took heavy steps down the road. The UNN was now firmly Pantheon aligned, Guguo should be too. It was only Epa and Arika that were issues. If they could…

She pushed the thoughts away. Frankly, her whole body hurt far too much to think about battle plans right now. She wanted a bath.

Still thinking about a bath, Maisara walked back to the huge PCM4 plane and asked them for the next report. Another nuclear station that had been flooded: mortal crews could not fix it, the water in the general location had become so radioactive it was frying electronics within minutes. The pumps had to be turned on before salvage teams could get to it.

Maisara leaned back, closed her eyes, waved her hand to signal take-off, felt flakes of her own skin fall onto her knees, and took a deep breath; she really wanted that bath.