While the blade was hers to control, it was still a force of nature, and coiled and undulated chaotically, streamers of nearly-invisible plasma arcing away from it in every direction. The blade sliced between Venus and Pluto, and then shifted erratically towards Pluto, who hastily dodged away . . . . and the line of arcing, curling plasma just kept unrolling. It hit Jupiter square on, blasted through the ancient temple of Aphrodite behind him, and expanded. The air around them ionized, and a thirty-foot wide segment of the mountain peak and cliffs behind the temple vaporized and melted away into slag. She could feel the stone pouring down the far side of the peak, a quarter of a mile away, tumbling like a waterfall for the next terrace down. Trees, no matter how snow-covered, were immolated, instantly, and those that survived more than a second, exploded outwards with concussive blasts of pitch and red-hot splinters. COWARD! Amaterasu shouted. If Truth is the bane of liars, then Courage is your bane, too!
Jupiter howled in agony, and the flames sheeted away from his avatar, showing the horrific burns on his skin . . . but the king of the storms still lived. And in the gap between seconds, as Venus and Pluto still stood in the hellish light of the plasma storm Amaterasu wielded, their bodies and garments almost as ghostly as the negatives of a photograph, Sekhmet leaped forwards, closed with Pluto, and engaged him, blades whirling. Pluto hissed, and caught the first blade on his two-pronged spear . . . and then held up a hand and sent a wave of raw entropy at the war-goddess. A dazed thought from Emberstone, She’s old-fashioned. But you . . . Baal’s teeth. You’ve learned from your people. You love science and physics as much as they ever did . . . . He could barely sustain his own protections. There’s nothing I can do to help here.
Believe in me, Amaterasu whispered, with Minori’s undervoice clearly audible in it. Believe in me.
Pluto was a chthonic deity. His power was greatest when in contact with the ground. Sekhmet, while a sun-goddess, in part, was not a creature of the air, either . . . but it was in Pluto’s best interest to keep her tied to his realm, his place of strength. So he wrapped his arms around her and the two of them sank into the smoking ground, out of physical sight. But Veil senses could detect them, a whirling, writhing ball of power, snarling and clawing each other now, sinking deeper into the earth. His flesh unknotted itself into roiling worms, and seethed down his arms and to burrow into Sekhmet’s flesh, bringing entropy and death with them. The lion-goddess’ roar of agony seared the minds of allies and enemies alike, and Amaterasu caught a look of cold triumph on Jupiter’s face.
But even as that duel began, and Venus took one more step, starting to lift herself into the air, Lassair manifested, phoenix winged, ruby-eyed, and far more beautiful and savage than Amaterasu/Minori remembered. Her wings blazed, and she leaped for Venus in a rush of flame, whispering, And you they have left for me, but do we really need to fight?
Venus reached out and caught her in both hands, keeping Lassair at bay with a grip on the fireling’s shoulders. Lassair smiled at her, and melted into flame. Lassair thought Venus the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Warmth, caring, generosity, and passion, eternally paired with her lost, war-like mate. She poured herself into the great Roman goddess. Into her flesh, into her heart, just as Lassair always did when she healed someone. And you are in need of healing, Lassair whispered to Venus. Your heart aches for the loss of Mars, and Ares was no compensation. Your heart aches because you see that Jupiter has become a dictator, not a father to his people. You are love and passion, as I am, but there is no love left in all the world to warm us.
The Roman goddess remained frozen in place, as all the aching parts of her essence opened up to the phoenix. Felt the love and generosity and empathy of Lassair, and tears began to form in her eyes. She was held captive, enthralled, to someone who held a mirror up to her own heart. Only Lassair’s mirror was not truth, but understanding.
Fewer than five seconds had actually passed. The mountain’s peak had just begun to slump downwards in a heap of molten slag, when Jupiter, his skin still on fire, glared at Amaterasu, and the sky darkened. He rose into the air himself now, over the temple of Aphrodite as it collapsed in on the sullen line of melted rock that had scored directly through its heart. He didn’t even fight the air currents, which were blasting away from Amaterasu’s strike, ionized by the raw heat of the blade she held. He simply ascended, his face washed out by the blazing piece of the sun she held . . . and met her on her own turf. A storm gathered overhead, becoming a funnel cloud that reached down towards the earth, while electricity gathered in the air, and then grounded itself. A lightning bolt a hundred times more powerful than what could normally be found on Earth grounded itself on Amaterasu. The Mirror deflected some of it, but she hissed as the electrons exited her body through her feet, arcing into the ground. The muscles and nerves of her avatar spasmed, locking in place, but the true damage of most electrical attacks on a physical body was usually in the form of heat. The meat and organs of the body, flash-cooked. Amaterasu was the sun, however. So while this hurt, the physical portion of the attack didn’t damage her.
However, as with her own blow at Jupiter, there was a component of pure Veil energy behind it. And that was far more debilitating, crushing her with the weight of his power. But she managed to lift her head, and laughed at him, her eyes bright. Is that all that you have, thunderer?
Thunder roared overhead as he slammed her with lightning, again and again, and she lifted higher in the air, sweeping Kusanagi back for another hit, coiling the whip-like blade forwards again, and wrapping it around his body like a scourge. The air screamed away from him, blasting up towards the heavens, tearing a hole in the clouds above . . . and then another lightning barrage in return. The winds howled around them, blasting out from her heat, then cycling inwards and tightening as Jupiter fought for control of his storm. The atmospheric pressure dropped further, and the cyclone became visible from space, as it continued pulling in more and more clouds from around the Mediterranean. A great white spot on the face of the Earth, to match the Great Red Spot on the face of the planet that bore Jupiter’s name. The greater the speed, the more atmospheric friction, and the more lightning poured down from the skies . . . and while Amaterasu hissed with every hit, she gave no ground at all.
Min! Kanmi Emberstone stared up at Amaterasu’s figure, a black speck against the continuous white flare of lightning, the seething coil of unleashed sun that she carried in her hand. The ground around him smoked and fumed, giving off super-heated vapors as it burned, and he coughed once, before remembering that he didn’t really need to breathe anymore. He stepped forwards, slipped, and fell to his knees. Got back up again, fighting the howling wind that threatened to tear him off into the sky, and the debris that whipped at his face and eyes, blinding him. The thunder that shook the earth and air. The winds that bit his flesh. The blazing heat of the Grass-Cutting Sword in Amaterasu’s hand, which seemed . . . infinitely long, sizzling out half a mile, and then contracting down again to a glimmer of light only ten feet in length. He was dancing on paradoxes here, and he needed to help . . . but for a moment, he couldn’t conceive how.
He was only mortal, after all.
And then the stubborn core of him re-ignited. Only mortal was self-limiting. Like being Named, it defined you, and demarcated you. By accepting that, you weakened yourself. The only limit, he forced himself to remember, as he’d taught a generation of students . . . was your own ability to imagine and consider. Venus is out of the fight for the moment. Sekhmet’s fighting Pluto, and he’s using the nature of this universe against her, using entropy itself as a weapon against her. And Min . . . no, Amaterasu—it hurt to think that, but it was true—is taking a lot of Jupiter’s power on the chin. The electricity isn’t hurting her. But the Veil energies . . . I can feel those eating away at her. And she doesn’t have the cushion of a billion believers holding her up. All right, maybe he doesn’t have a billion anymore, either, but he’s had millions more than she has had, for centuries . . . . H
is mind raced, looking for an advantage. Weather-control’s not my thing. But . . . he’s throwing around so much raw electricity, I hate to see it go to waste. I’ve been waiting for a chance like this all my life.
Kanmi reached down, and touched the core of power inside of himself. He’d toyed with it since his resurrection. Tested it, here and there, with little tasks, but he had, by and large, preferred to use magic as he’d always understood it. But there was far more power in him than he had, to date, used. And far more knowledge of how it might be used. He wasn’t limited, as Baal-Hamon had been, to just the sun, powerful though that might be. He reached out and stole the lightning, like every trickster god before him. Coyote would be proud. He pulled it all to him, building up the charge, setting his teeth against the power. Every new charge fueled the matrix of the spell he was creating, and that spell was, actually, inspired not a little by some light astronomical reading he’d done at Adam ben Maor’s behest a few years ago.
The moon of Io, in orbit around Jupiter, was a seething mass of molten sulfur under its crust, heated by constant tidal pressure from Jupiter’s gravity, and continuously spinning on its axis. It probably generated an electrical current of its own, but that was miniscule compared to the actual electrical field surrounding the king of the planets. And Io continuously belched out sulfur and other materials, forming a cloud of charged particles around the gas giant, causing friction as it passed through its own scattered remains. And that friction set up even more electrical potential. This sometimes caused a spark to leap between the two bodies. Kanmi had compared it to shuffling his feet, rapidly, on a carpet, and then touching a doorknob, but the line of electrical potential between the planet and its moon usually contained about two trillion wex of electrical energy at any given time. As much energy as was used in every electrical and ley plant on Earth. This . . . is probably going to hurt . . . better make sure the ground doesn’t melt under my feet . . . . Kanmi thought, hazily, and put up a few more wards on himself. Grounded himself into the heart of the mountain, as best he could. And then used the power Jupiter had so graciously provided, and redirected it. Added to it, hauling on his own connection to the Veil now.
The electrical conduit snapped into place between himself and Jupiter, and a single flash of power transmitted between them. He’d set himself up as the negative pole for the moment, and had deliberately tried to drain as much of Jupiter’s power as he could . . . and sent it into the ground, through himself. The incredible surge of energy threatened his manifested body, and the ground under his feet began to smoke once more, Kanmi swore, and reached for Baal-Hamon’s essence within himself. Let his body shift to plasma. Became a small piece of the sun.
His radiance tore away his own shadow, and he clung tenaciously to his spell construct, and drove Jupiter’s own power down into the earth. Sekhmet! Let go of Pluto!
All Sekhmet knew at the moment was agony, as she continued to fight the death-god, teeth locked in his throat. He was worms, however. She’d never imagined that. Every mouthful she tore away began to burrow into her flesh, crawling into her mouth, her nasal passages, burrowing deep into her avatar’s flesh. Looking for her core in the brain and the intestines, searching through her lung cavities. She could feel them infesting her, each with the cold touch of death, of entropy itself. Her body, perennially bloody anyway, was covered with her own gore.
She heard Emberstone’s words dimly, and managed to throw herself to the side, letting her flesh pass through the stones and dirt. She went so far as to demanifest, trying to cast out the worms, as she might any arrow or spear that had marked her flesh, but these were a manifestation of Pluto’s will, not a mere mortal attack. They stayed with her, and Sekhmet truly feared that they would pursue her even into the Veil, unless Pluto died here, and now.
The electrical current would normally have just dissipated itself into the earth, but Kanmi directed it deeper. Let it find the god of the underworld, the god known for his wealth, for his affinity for precious metals. For gold, wondrous, ductile gold. The blue-white light lanced through Pluto, and for an instant, the god of the dead was stunned and helpless. Which allowed the Egyptian war-goddess to leap back on him, and begin to tear at his throat with her teeth once more, raking with her claws and tearing away gobbets of flesh that promptly turned into more worms.
I cannot defeat him! Sekhmet called. This creature would have been a match for Set at his most powerful, and she could feel her essence being devoured, from within.
Kanmi! The voice-within was small, but insistent. Amaterasu checked the condition of the god of sun and magic with a trace of thought, and then put the concern aside, lashing once again with Kusanagi. Assassin, Jupiter snarled at her. Honorless. Cowardly.
How odd for you to say those words to me. Your grip on your own power has distorted the world. You’ve been locked in time since your people conquered the new world. You found one path. It worked for you and yours, and you saw no need to change. But the time of warlords is long past, as is the time of giving patronage and wealth to those who please you and casting out any who disagree as a threat to your own power. It’s time for you to let go of the world, god of storms. So that the rest of us may try to save it.
She was wearing him down. Chipping away at him. His attacks stung, but weren’t doing as much damage to her, as she was doing to him. But other than Emberstone, she was fighting him alone. And if he were truly injured, there was nothing she could do to keep him here. From retreating to the Veil. Freya! Thor! Morrigan! It is time!
And even as she called for the gods of Valhalla and Gaul to come to her aid, Jupiter glanced down. Only seconds had actually passed since her avatar’s concern had compelled her to check on Emberstone’s condition. And then Jupiter smiled . . . and brought all of his lightning down, not on Amaterasu this time, but on Kanmi Emberstone.
The first time Kanmi had entered the interface room in the Odinhall, he’d told the others that what he saw there was a reality made of numbers. Perfect, harmonious numbers. Every living thing was an equation that balanced. There was geometry and physics and the interaction of systems. All numbers. And when deprived of his physical senses, that was precisely how Kanmi’s Veil senses interpreted the mortal world now. He looked up, sensing a set of fractal lines of blue-white light converging on him. They descended almost slowly, and he could see the arcs and jags resolving themselves. See the patterns behind the apparent chaos. Could see the Veil energies behind the strike, far more dangerous to him, at the moment, than the electricity, which couldn’t harm his plasma form even an iota.
So he let the electricity pass through him, surging through his spell conduit once more, and reached out and caught the Veil energies. Baal-Hamon had been a sun-god . . . but he’d been one that had fed on the lives of his people. He had been the beneficent sun, source of all life, affiliated with generative Tammuz . . . but he had also been the devourer of the deserts, the one who leeched life and bleached bones. Kanmi poured himself up through the howling winds, reforming himself at Amaterasu’s side, still pulling at the power Jupiter had released. Drawing on it, unwinding it, tearing at the source. Feeding on it. Baal-Hamon within him had long since dissipated. No personality left, a Name that had shattered on the rocks of time. But the hunger remained. A hunger that had walked this world almost as long as Amaterasu or Sekhmet had. “Nice to meet you!” Kanmi shouted, out loud, over the howling wind. Can you guess my Name?
The look Jupiter gave him was that of a man who’d just slapped at a mosquito buzzing around his head, only to miss. I feel no worshippers. You’re no more than a house-spirit. Die!
The next barrage, Amaterasu threw her Mirror forwards to catch, to divert from him, as Kanmi continued to bite and gnaw at the source. Leeching the power away. He wouldn’t have thought before today that he would dare to do this. It was heady, and he knew he was little more than a tick, a parasite, gorging himself on the blood of an elephant. But every drop he drained, couldn’t be used on the others.
&nbs
p; And at that point, Thor, Freya, and the Morrigan emerged into the howling storm and blinding light, and Thor roared a challenge, throwing his hammer directly into Jupiter’s chest, bowling the other thunder god backwards and down into the smoking ruin of Aphrodite’s temple. What a storm! Thor shouted, joyously. Pity I won’t be letting you use it anymore!
Morrigan! Assist Sekhmet! Thor, hold him here! Freya, with me! Amaterasu’s orders were clear and sharp, and the death-goddess of the Gauls nodded once and dove for the earth, a flock of ethereal ravens plunging with her into the ground, where she began to tear into Pluto, though Sekhmet still held his body by the throat . . . and her own body was being devoured from within. Thor’s hammer snapped back to his hand, and the thunder god swooped down, just as Jupiter ascended once more. Both of their forms were sheathed in blue-white light, and they hit one another with the force of comets colliding. The shockwave roiled out from them, knocking down trees for miles in every direction, and the ground underfoot, already torn and smoking from the heat of the battle, rumbled uneasily, sliding and shearing away from the mountain. When the light faded a little, Amaterasu could see that Thor had his arms locked around Jupiter . . . and, more importantly, the Valhallan god of war had all of his power wrapped around Jupiter as well. Keeping him locked in the mortal realm.
The Goddess Embraced Page 126
