by Jayne Hawke
"Why would we want an archer against a shadow goddess?" Rex growled, awoken early and not happy about it.
Elijah lifted his hand. He no doubt knew as I did that there was far more to this Adrian than he was allowing us to see in that moment. The god touched all wielded some of their god's power. Magic which had been carefully chosen for each god touched, if you believed what they told you. It could have been randomly doled out of some big magic pot for all I knew.
Adrian smiled, a small sharp expression on his almost delicate features.
"Why would you want a wolf against a shadow goddess?"
Rex's lip curled at that. The jealousy and bitterness were practically rolling off him. I couldn't remember his having had a problem with my magic before, at least not on that level. Yet there was clearly something big going on there.
"There's no need to get into petty feuds right before battle," the final god touched said as he stepped forward.
The dark jeans and silver t-shirt were beautifully tailored to hug the tall strong form of the man with hair which I couldn't quite pinpoint a colour for. It was always shifting, much like his eyes. The longer I looked at him, the more I realised my eye wouldn't settle on him at all. The details of him flickered, shifted, and changed without my catching how or when.
"Niles. Hades god touched. I've been gifted the use of Cerburus," Nile said smoothly.
There was an oil-slick sensation that ran beneath his words, a charm that sent a shiver down my spine.
"Oh fantastic, a death god. Because that's a great omen," Rex said sarcastically.
Elijah growled at him. Rex lowered his eyes and took a step back.
"We're happy to have allies. Is there anything you can tell us?" Elijah said.
Shani slowly circled around us. I remained calm and relaxed, sword in hand, as she did so. It was such a blatant display of power and arrogance. She was testing us, seeing if we were weak enough to turn with her and avoid having our backs to her. I rolled my eyes, entirely unimpressed.
"The goddess is gathering her people. While she might well be fallen, she has been so for a long time. That has allowed her to bring enough people to her side to give her the required amount of belief to rise to the god plane," Adrian said.
The megaminds pushed an extremely human eye-rolling gesture out of nowhere, their presence known only to me.
"Then why did she need me?" I asked.
Adrian offered a small pitying smile.
"You were her champion."
Well, that was fucking ominous.
"Wait, you have like some monster or something hiding in the god veil?" Jess asked with a great deal of excitement, slipping out of the tall grass stark naked.
Of course the cougar was excited at the prospect of my, or her more likely, diving into some unknown plane to do battle with an unknown monster. A creature which would have been born of the gods themselves, because why use something mundane when you don’t have to?
Adrian chuckled, a bizarrely dark sound from his throat.
"I'm afraid we can't disclose such things."
"He doesn't know," Shani said with a toothy smile.
Adrian tensed and raised an eyebrow at her. We'd been given god touched from two different pantheons, from gods who didn't exactly agree. I was soon realising that this wasn't going to be as simple as point them at the bad guy and hope they kick ass. No, there were going to be problems.
Nothing was ever as straightforward as I'd like. There were always twists, bumps, and bullshit that popped up right at the wrong time. I deserved some quiet time, dammit. What would come next? We'd already saved the world once and were preparing to do it again. What was even left? A trip to the underworld?
"Seriously, though? What would Lily have had to do?" Jess asked eagerly.
"As the fallen's champion, she would have been sent into the space between to fight that which only a champion can fight. If, or when, she won the fallen would be given the chance to ascend," Niles said drily.
"That sounds so badass! Can I be a fallen's champion? Do they have to be born a champion or?" Jess asked.
Shani watched the cougar shifter with a small affectionate smile.
"I'm afraid choosing a champion is a long and difficult process. That’s why she’s so attached to her, why we can be entirely certain she’ll be here to drag Lily back onto the path. Lily was pulled into this at the end of a millennia-long journey for the fallen. Once we've eradicated her followers, she'll be returned to the state she was meant to be in. Entirely fallen. Forgotten," Niles said.
It was really fucking creepy when he described it as that.
"What does this mean for Lily in the long term?" Elijah asked.
That was a really good point. I'd assumed that once whatever fight was brewing was done with, I'd be safe. I could return to my normal life of sleeping more than a few hours a night and making stupefying amounts of money. Looking at it in that moment, I saw what a ridiculous idea that had been. I'd just been burying my head in the sand. What reason did the goddess have to leave me alone? Really?
If this went to plan, not that we'd really pinned down a plan yet, then she'd lose her chance at getting back on the god plane. She was going to be really pissed. At me. At the pack. We couldn't kill her; I knew that much. The fallen just couldn't be killed. It pained me to bring in the Hounds. There were rumours about what they did to fallen like her.
That was the question I needed to ask myself. What was more important? The safety of my pack? Or my morals? Was I willing to throw the goddess to the Hounds knowing that she would likely be tortured for a few centuries if I did so?
Yes. I was willing to do that.
Elijah and the others were my family. My pack. They weren't perfect, but they were my family. My real, chosen family. Something I'd dreamt of as a little girl and had only now achieved. There was very little that I wouldn't do to keep those bastards safe.
"If everything goes as it should, and we have no reason to believe it won't." Niles looked pointedly at Shani. "Then the fallen will be stripped of her followers and bound. The bindings will be temporary, but long enough for you to hide. Or I suppose have a decent - if short - life."
"How short?" Elijah demanded.
"A century, give or take," Aiden said.
That was short for our kind, but it was far better than spending our time hiding in some cave somewhere. If it came down to it, we'd take it. Together. And when the goddess inevitably emerged once more to hunt us down, we'd be prepared.
"So, details. How exactly are going to strip her of her followers and bind her?" Elijah asked.
Niles gave him a cold snake-like smile.
"We will bind her. We are the god touched, after all. You will simply kill whatever you're pointed at. That is what you do, is it not?"
Elijah grinned at him, full sharp teeth on display.
"I've heard god touched taste good," Rex growled.
Niles didn't acknowledge him as having spoken at all.
Twenty
The arrival of the goddess was expected. Shadows became clearer, the sun became delicate and crystalline. It was dawn. The birds were singing and the shadows stretched from every rock, bush, tree, and animal. There was a mile between us and the treeline she came from, but the sun that rose behind her was hers.
“This is her time. As far from the shadow-devouring night as possible,” I said to no one in particular, the hours from now till sundown counting their infinite span across my strategic mind.
“This is dawn. It has a goddess.” The voice came from just beside me, and when I turned I saw a woman so pale as to be ethereal. As I stared at her brutally beautiful body, I was stunned by the terrible scars that covered her. She stood, pacific, a saffron toga beginning to form over her in bloodied scraps. Before I could ask, she answered.
“Eos’ maidens are used to war. Dawn belongs to the one who takes it.”
When I looked back at the goddess, I saw her from the perspective of the other gods and knew w
hy she was here and not on their plane. Why they had sent god touched to ensure that remained true. Apollo was the god of light, and she was where his light did not touch. Hades held dominion over the darkness of the below where Apollo could not reach, but every cave opening, every well, every mine allowed shadow to replace true dark, carving free a piece of his domain. Shadow stood against every deity that cast it, every deity that held darkness precious or threatening, every protector of the balance. She was an order aside, and that was why she had drawn all the finest people to her war.
I almost wished I’d chosen my side differently, the underdog calling on my sympathy, and then I remembered the bloodbath that had preceded her repugnant claim on me. She was a goddess, just like the rest, and their politics were between one monster and another. Power was the stake and the goal; mortals were means to an end.
I watched the goddess and her followers eating up space with calm, confident steps. The high grass was an indictment of our preparations, every step they took unmolested an argument in her favour. As she came on, I watched the pack on either side of me, saw the god touched take their positions. It wasn’t a battle line. Elijah’s voice rang out.
“Archers advance and fire. Lily, you too. Shifters transform and kill targets of convenience. The rest of you-“
A sound of flame and crashing stone interrupted him. Jess screamed a cougar scream as fire swept up alongside dust and the fading life of an unbelievable number of worshippers. She was still human for all that I could see, but the catamount yowl was evidence enough of the beast she was born to be. I saw the goddess fall into a massive pit and realized I’d been staring at her with a lover’s intensity. When she was gone, dropped out of view into the great cat’s trap, I felt as though the sun itself had blinked out of view.
Seeing her return was comforting, no other word for it, and even as I politely asked the shadows for a bow I knew in my heart that I was grateful to see the face of my goddess. The shadows were ambivalent at best, each trying to decide its place. I scoured the shadow plane with nothing but fingernails and will, roaring my demand to the entire plane as I felt a world of shadows hedge their bets. The megaminds weren’t there.
I watched the goddess with a worshipper’s eyes as I felt her gaze, screamed a jilted lover’s desolation as I watched her turn her head up to laugh. I threw myself forwards, claws of stone and ice and bone springing from my fingertips as every element of me demanded satisfaction. Before I could take a step, I felt Elijah’s fingers gripping me by the hair. I could easily have pushed forwards, tearing the hair out and replacing it a thousand times over with the life magic lying dormant in the charms at my waist and wrist, but I trusted him and let myself be caught. I was ready to let him temper me, ready to let him direct my passions for a moment, ready to join the pack and acknowledge my own limitations.
Now that it was obvious Jess had been using her time for more than patrolling, our strategy had to change. At a minimum, sending the pack out to bloody the worshippers stopped being a good idea when there was the potential for the whole place to turn into acid or something. Elijah was interrogating her in harsh tones just out of earshot, getting the lay of the land. There was going to be a reckoning when this was done. She was the only one of us that had prepared for a massed attack, and that meant she had known more than us and said nothing. All our preparations had been for fighting the goddess herself and potentially a small force of shadow workers – perfectly logical with what we knew, but foolish with what Jess knew.
It was what it was. Jess’ traps ended 250 yards from where we stood, it seemed, and since I had no weapon useful at this range until the shadows picked a side and throwing rocks seemed petty, I began to do some area denial of my own. I knew that stopping the goddess entirely was impossible. No one had ever been able to keep me out of anywhere, and my shadow magic was just a taste of hers. Her worshippers, on the other hand, were almost certainly human. If she’d had enough magic to grant a battalion of followers the ability to shadowstep, she wouldn’t need us at all. That meant I might be able to stymy them with simple earthworks.
Tapping the magic of the earth beneath our feet, I crushed down the dirt in front of us and subtly shifted its composition into hard stone, extending the process in either direction until a semicircle formed that abutted the wards of the house. The result was a moat perhaps fifteen feet deep that sloped up to return to the normal garden level over the space leading up to the 250-yard mark where it ceased to be safe to walk. Advancing away from the house would be relatively easy; climbing up to it would be much harder.
In the time it took me to finish my work, the goddess’ advance had come another tenth of a mile. Her followers, those who had survived the trap, had reformed into the teeming, amorphous mass at her back. They were still vastly out of range of any normal bow, but Adrian’s bow sang out in a constant song of cleansing, the arrows a gift from Apollo just as was his skill and his purpose. If Adrian was right, she was being pushed back from the god plane step by step, death by death. If not, her every step towards the packhouse, towards me and the line, was another unopposed move to a checkmate I didn’t want to survive.
I wondered idly how big of a quiver he would need if he were using real ammunition and realized I had entirely too much time on my hands. I boosted everyone’s strength and speed with life magic, careful not to expend too much given it was also my primary method of healing. I gave Elijah’s voice a boost with air to make sure he could be heard when he needed to. I was on the verge of taking magical requests just to give myself something to do when the next trap was sprung. It wasn’t even entirely clear what had happened, only that masses of blood sprayed up and out and the goddess had to shadowstep over and over to avoid it.
“Are those things going to nest? Because you’re the first thing I’m feeding them if they do,” Elijah asked her, trying not to sound amused.
I decided I didn’t want to know. Whatever they were, they were eating up a lot of time, magic, and followers. She had many troops yet to go, much magic yet to expend. I would see her shadow over my own. I could feel it.
She was getting closer. I began to prepare a spell, a massive working possible only because of the witch magic she’d torn from my sisters so long ago. I was certain she could feel the spell, but there was no uncertainty in her step. I would punish that arrogance if it was the last thing I did.
I felt it when she came to the point where I could begin attacking her directly. It was as if a line snapped into place between us, certainty and relief at being able to do something useful at long last an almost physical energy. I thrust my spell forward, an immense wall of water held well below freezing, its liquidity entirely the result of my magic. It swept towards her, devouring the shadows and closing her window of escape. It would hit her, her and her people, the only question was what she could hope to do about it.
When I felt the water strike the wall of their combined mass, I let go of it, the magic that held it in liquid form dissipating into the world. In an instant, the entire thing froze, its momentum carrying it forward with hundreds of people trapped at its heart. I could feel the goddess held fast in the ice, knew that she was trapped, and squealed in gleeful pleasure. The ice continued to slide away from us on its own momentum, making a bloody pulp of worshippers trapped behind it.
The shadows felt the shift in the balance and a few of the most confident, the most powerful entered the battle. At long last, I had armour and weapons, the shadows sweeping in to give me what they knew I needed without my even needing to ask. It looked like I was making an impression. She was down, trapped, and if we could get to her and capitalize on it, we could end this battle. Therein, I quickly realized, lay the problem.
“Any chance I can get over there and kill her without some huge mouth opening up in the ground and eating me or something?” I asked Jess, covering my irritation badly.
“I mean... you could fly?”
“Anyone got a Pegasus I can borrow? That’s from your pantheon,
right? No? Alright, cool, we’ll all just kind of stare while she breaks free.”
Like I said, I was hiding my irritation badly. I had summoned a private miracle and stupid planning had turned it into a two-minute timeout. I watched a goddess-sized hole form in the ice, shadow blades tearing through it like Styrofoam and tried to calm down enough to come up with another idea. She was moving fast, now, her worshippers either dead or trapped on the far side of the ice.
I grasped at the earth beneath her, forming sinkholes and sand pits to slow her, stone spikes to split her attention as arrows rained from Adrian’s bow. She could not help but slow, her movement forward hindered by the constant flow of projectiles and the uncertain terrain. She could dodge into the shadow of a single blade of grass, sweep aside from a killing blow with no more to protect her than the whisper of a passing seed. Her shadow magic was without fault, without parallel. What the best of us knew, she had taught. Still she stalked forward, alone against the world.
The sun was nearly free of the horizon now, a time that was once all but irrelevant a critical step towards the end of shadows. I found that the maiden of Eos still stood a dozen feet behind me, our line having advanced to the very edge of the berm without my realizing. She bore new wounds, deep and painful, but her smile was blissful and untroubled. It was a second’s glance to know that dawn was hers, and when the sun finally came free it flashed with sudden power and the shadow goddess stumbled, the first true sign of weakness.
I drew back like a demigoddess hero, threw my arms into the air, and with the power of the mystical winds screamed out the victory of the dawn even as Eos’ maiden was too refined to give in to herself. I was no maiden, no mirror of divinity. Let victory ring.
The goddess was nearly throne prone, her steps faltering. Over her stood Eos’ maiden, her smile glowing and fierce. This was not the first dawn she had won, not the last or the greatest, but it was the most trumpeted.
It was a second or less before the goddess was back on her feet, her face cold and certain, and by then the dawn maiden had disappeared. It was always dawn somewhere.
