Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  “I know,” he snapped, cutting her off.

  Athena dug her fingers into her thighs to keep them from Horus’s throat. While Dianmu and Anansi watched the portal, ready for something to come out and attack them, Athena and Horus stayed alert for any threats that might emerge from the jungle. Athena was really, really regretting her watch partner.

  “Then you just said that to irritate me?” Athena asked, unable to keep the frustration down.

  “Just wanted to make sure my objection was still being disregarded,” Horus said, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’d hate to think you’d changed your mind and-”

  This time it was Horus who was interrupted, by a shout from Dianmu. Within the temple, a doorway had appeared between two piles of skulls.

  Athena scrambled to her feet. “Everyone get ready!” she shouted, preparing to incinerate any hostile.

  Anansi held up his hands, and Athena saw an elemental swirl around him. Dianmu reached into her nanoverse, pulling out a wicked glaive longer than she was tall, and Horus unslung his rifle and took aim. Athena had to grant him one point: he could put aside his grudges when there was a threat.

  The doorway opened, and Crystal peered out. “Oh, bloody hell,” she said. “Should have given you a warning. It’s me, loves, you all can calm down.”

  Athena breathed a sigh of relief as she let go of her prepared twist. “Glad you could make it,” Athena said, then noticed that Crystal was alone. “Where’s Ryan?”

  “He’s alive,” Crystal said with a tight smile. “And he’ll be fine, love. He sort of…got his face shot off.”

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” Anansi’s asked. “His face?”

  Crystal nodded. “One of those military gods, the cheap knock offs of the real deal? Sort of shot him right in the face. It didn’t kill him, but he’s taking a little bit of a break in his nanoverse to heal up, yeah?”

  “And the military gods? Do they die like mortals, or will he be back?” This was Dianmu, whose face mirrored Anansi’s concern.

  “I can’t tell you,” Crystal said. “He was gone by the time I got there, but I got to have some fun with attack helicopters and snipers. Armed with bullets that could hit me even when I was phasing. Ichor rounds.”

  The four exchanged glances. “Tell us everything,” Athena said.

  When she finished, there was a moment of stunned silence. “Never before,” Horus said, his voice a harsh whisper, “have mortals been able to bypass our phasing. How is this even possible?”

  Crystal chewed her lip. “Well...if you smelt metal with a bit of Ichor, you get weapons that can still injure us when we’re phased. Same as how we can fight each other, and monsters can still hurt us, even if we’re phasing.”

  “But that would require them to have a source of ichor,” Horus scoffed, but at the same time, Anansi and Dianmu shared a worried look.

  Oh no, Athena thought, we might lose him. She was surprised to be so worried about the possibility. She didn’t like Horus, but he was a valuable ally.

  Horus continued, “They can’t just scoop it off the ground. Ichor dries and becomes useless too quickly. How would the…” He saw Crystal’s face, and his eyes went wide. “No. You don’t think…they have her?”

  “They have someone. I’m sure of that,” Crystal said. “Most of the Olympians are in Tartarus, and most of the Asgardians haven’t left Asgard in nearly five-hundred years, but beyond that, there are plenty of other gods who’ve been quiet so far in all this. The presence of Ichor doesn’t mean they have Bast.”

  “But you think they do!” he snapped.

  Athena could see Dianmu’s hand tighten on her glaive and couldn’t blame the storm goddess. The veins on Horus’s forehead and neck were bulging.

  Crystal winced and held up a placating hand. “No, I don’t. We detonated a nuke to stop Enki. They would have had to wait to go in for fear of radiation.”

  Horus pursed his lips and turned the thought over. “We have to find her,” he said, his voice far more plaintive than it had been before. “Then we’ll know.”

  The look of shock on Tyr’s face as Bast had trained the gun on him flashed through Athena’s mind, but she bit her tongue on her immediate sarcastic retort. “We do need to find her. But Moloch’s portal is right here, and we do not know how long it will remain open, or where it leads.” She nodded towards Horus. “Besides, as you pointed out earlier, if she was working with Moloch before, she must have had a reason. It’s most likely she and him are together.”

  Hope ignited in Horus’ eyes, but Crystal interjected before he could speak.

  “Portal?” Crystal asked, tilting her head.

  Anansi, who had been standing in the doorway to the interior room, stepped aside to give Crystal an unobstructed view of the pulsating ring of energy. She let out a low whistle.

  “Oh. Yeah, we should probably deal with that first.”

  Horus clenched his fists so tightly, Athena wondered if he’d draw blood from his own palm.

  “Have you gone mad?” he spat. “They’re draining ichor from one of us to make weapons, and you want to focus on Moloch?”

  Horus had gone from desperate to enraged in a fraction of a second, and his screaming was almost painful to hear. Athena took a step back. He sounded like a lunatic, raving at them. Not wanting to wait for him to act, Athena reached into her nanoverse and drew out a sword.

  “Oh, so that’s how it is?” Horus asked her, instantly switching from a scream to a dangerously low hiss.

  “Horus,” Crystal started to say, but he cut her off.

  “No. I want to hear it from you, Athena. Do you intend to cut me down?”

  “Only if you force me to,” Athena responded, doing her best to keep her voice calm. “Horus, you’re irrational.”

  “It’s your fault she’s even there,” Horus said. He met Athena’s gaze, and his hands clenched and opened at his sides.

  “Yes.”

  Horus tensed his entire body, and Athena prepared herself for his attack. Crystal and Dianmu also seemed ready for an outright brawl.

  Anansi, however, was not. “Horus,” he said, his voice level, “there’s much we still do not understand. The battle happened in Canada, but these soldiers are American. We do not know where Bast is, just that she is somewhere within the second and fourth-largest nations on Earth. Probably. It would be unwise to drop everything to find her when we are on Moloch’s trail.”

  Horus’s nostrils flared. “I don’t care about Moloch! I am here to find Bast, and for no other reason.”

  “Then you are a fool,” Dianmu snapped. Every head turned to look at her, but she did not take her eyes off Horus. “Moloch clearly wishes to establish dominance after the end of the world. Do you think you would fare well under that? Do you think Bast would want to live in Moloch’s nightmare world? You saw what he has created here, the sacrifices he made for power.”

  “But-”

  “No,” Dianmu said, her voice still razor-sharp. “There is no room for ‘but’ here, Horus. Moloch must be stopped before the world can end, so he does not gain control. Anything else – you, any of us, and Bast – must be secondary. Ensuring the Eschaton’s survival is the only thing that is more important than that.”

  Horus glared at her, and for a moment it seemed like he would leave in spite of the logic.

  “Horus,” Athena said, keeping her voice as gentle as she could. “You know Dianmu is correct. But I promise you, as soon as Moloch is dealt with, we will find Bast.”

  Horus spat on the floor. “You only want to find her so you can kill her.”

  Athena felt her fists clench, and slowly forced them to loosen. “I swear to you, Horus, that if you are with us when we find her, I’ll stay my hand.” The words left a sour taste in her mouth, but against Moloch’s army, they needed whatever help they could get. Even if it means allowing Bast to live.

  Horus relaxed. Slightly. “Very well,” he said. “I will stay with this until Moloch is
defeated. And will expect your aid in finding Bast afterward.”

  “Brilliant,” Crystal said, smiling at everyone. “This is good, yeah? We’re one step behind Moloch after all. How long could it take to catch him?”

  Anansi’s eyes sparkled. “I fear now that you have said that, we will find it even harder. Murphy’s law, yes?”

  “Oooh, good point, love. Knock on wood then.” Crystal tapped the top of her own skull.

  Even Horus smiled – slightly – at the joke. “So now we wait for the Eschaton and go in?” he asked.

  Athena shook her head. “We’ve waited long enough. Ryan can catch up when he’s healed.”

  “Agreed,” Dianmu and Anansi said in unison, and even Crystal nodded.

  “Then it’s settled,” Athena said. “Let us be done with this.”

  ***

  Athena led the way through the portal and hit the ground in an immediate roll, barely registering her surroundings as she dove for cover behind a wall. When there was no immediate sign of danger, she began to cautiously examine her surroundings, starting with the wall itself. It was made red stone streaked with orange marbling, unlike anything she had ever seen before. She looked up and saw a night sky was lit by a trio of small moons. The air reeked of ash and ozone like a forest fire sparked by a thunderstorm. Wherever they were, she was sure it wasn’t in the Core anymore, or any realm she knew.

  Athena risked peering over the top of the wall. This realm was as empty and silent as Olympus had been, but without the long-abandoned feeling. The walls were broken in places with scars that still burned hot, curling plumes of gray smoke rising from stone and soil. She took a deep breath and noticed the coppery scent of blood. In the distance, she heard the crackling of a fire.

  The ground had great furrows carved by divine manipulation of reality, too straight and narrow to be by any natural tectonic movement. Athena could see more of the marbled blocks, shattered and cracked, and bodies littering the ground.

  This was the silence of a battlefield after the fighting was done.

  “We’re too late,” Anansi said quietly, and Athena nodded.

  “Shadu,” Crystal whispered. “It’s Shadu, the otherworld of the Canaanites. Their version of Olympus.”

  Athena pointed to Crystal, Dianmu, and herself, then at a tower that still seemed intact. When the other women nodded, Athena pointed at Anansi and Horus, and then at her own eyes. At their nods, she slipped out from behind the wall and began to advance carefully, hugging the ground as much as she could. Crystal and Dianmu followed suit.

  The first body they reached was once of Moloch’s Aspirants. He was a young man, perhaps twenty. His eyes stared unblinking at those three dots in the sky, and his face was twisted into a rapturous smile that clashed with his spilled entrails. Flies were already landing on him. Athena shuddered at the sight. She’d been on battlefields since before recorded history and only left them after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, yet the sight of anyone who had died this violently still filed her with a mixture of pity and revulsion. That smile didn’t help matters. It was wrong. Dead men should either look at peace or horrified.

  They shouldn’t look so damn happy about things.

  They came across more of Moloch’s followers, their bodies battered and broken, eyes staring blankly at the sky. One was covered with burns along half his body, charred so profoundly that his hand was nothing more than a blackened skeleton. Another’s long hair stood straight up, and her corpse still smoldered.

  “Mortal weapons didn’t kill these soldiers,” Athena whispered to Crystal.

  Crystal’s expression was queasy, but she studied the corpses carefully. “No marks from monster claws or teeth, either. Only one thing causes injuries like this.”

  Athena had been hoping Crystal would disagree with her own conclusions, but no such luck. Divine power had killed these men.

  Dianmu had moved slightly ahead, and now she waved them over. She stood over a broken body, and as Athena drew closer, she realized she knew this man - or had known him, more accurately.

  “Who is he?” Dianmu asked, reading Athena’s expression.

  Before responding, Athena knelt beside the body. If not for the gaping wound on his throat, it would have been possible to believe he still lived. “Marquod,” Athena whispered, her voice thick.

  Crystal hadn’t seen his face yet, and at his name, she came up short. “Who the bloody hell would kill Marquod?”

  “Moloch.” Athena spat out the name.

  “But why?” Crystal’s voice was on the edge of cracking, and Dianmu was giving them both a concerned look.

  “Marquod was a god of dance and laughter,” Athena said, gently closing his eyes. Marquod had been staring accusingly at the heavens as if he had died wondering why he deserved this. “He was always smiling, always had a joke on his lips, and he-” Athena struggled to finish the sentence.

  “He was fond of the lost and broken,” Crystal said, swallowing hard. There were tears in her eyes. “If you know someone who knows Marquod, you know a deity that’s been exiled.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dianmu said quietly.

  Crystal nodded appreciation but turned back to Athena. “His nanoverse?”

  Athena shook her head, trying to keep her tears in check. “Gone. I pray that it’s just rolled under a rock somewhere.” She smoothed his hair back. “I’d like to see him dance again.”

  It’s always the gods like him, Athena thought. We war gods and storm gods and death gods and thrice-damned tricksters, we get out of these things all right in the end. It’s the dancers, the laughers, the dreamers - they’re the ones that suffer.

  Athena clenched her hands until her nails bit into her palm. There would be time to mourn Marquod later. For now, she had to make sure the living gods remained that way. “Come on,” she whispered.

  At the base of the tower, Athena wrapped herself in a bubble of solid air and pulled herself to the top. Dianmu followed, and Crystal signaled for Anansi and Horus to leave cover and join them. The tower wasn’t tall, only five stories, but it would offer an excellent view of the entire area.

  When they reached the top and turned to survey the battlefield, Dianmu gasped, and Athena had to grab onto a parapet for stability. It was a slaughterhouse, the likes of which Athena hadn’t seen since the fall of Constantinople. Dozens of dead. From up here, Athena couldn’t tell the difference between Canaanite gods and Moloch’s zealots. They were just broken bodies lying in the soil of this strange realm. Athena reached into her nanoverse to pull out a pair of binoculars. Instead, she retrieved a spyglass, but it served her purpose. She scanned the terrain, looking for signs of life.

  She found none. As far as she could see, the five of them were the only things moving here, other than the flies that were preparing for a feast.

  “Athena,” Anansi said after a moment, leaning in. “What do your elf-eyes see?”

  Athena continued her scanning without pause. “I am not an elf, and this is a spyglass. But so far, no sign of movement.”

  Behind her, Crystal let out a semi-hysterical giggle. Athena was familiar with gallows humor, although it had always struck her as disrespectful. Especially when she didn’t get the joke.

  “I think we’re safe,” she finally, collapsing the spyglass back into her nanoverse. “Moloch got what he came for. He’s gone.”

  “How do you know?” Horus asked, tilting his head slightly.