Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  The penanggalan were taking advantage of their numbers, wrapping around the trio, forcing them to fight back to back. Anansi threw daggers from his nanoverse, imbuing each one with an animating force that let them harry the penanggalan. Dianmu lanced out with her glaive, stabbing at any creature that dared get too close. Athena kept her slashes up, cutting the tentacles down.

  And yet, their numbers barely dwindled. One of them began to snatch Anansi’s flying daggers out of the air, hurling them back at the Trickster. Athena heard him grunt as one sunk into his shoulder. Another got its tendrils wrapped around Dianmu’s glaive and with an immense surge, pulled the weapon free from her grasp. Dianmu sent out a stream of lightning to strike the creature, but they were closing in. Athena struck with her sword, only to find the mass of tentacles closing around her arm, immobilizing it, pulling her closer to a penanggalan’s waiting maw.

  Athena raised her free hand, pressing it against the penanggalan’s forehead and keeping it at a safe distance. Her palm was slippery with blood and threatened to slide off at any moment. The penanggalan snarled and snapped at her. This one was the strongest yet, and she could feel her elbow start to bend under pressure. It was getting closer.

  No, Athena thought, pushing down as hard as she could manage. She laced her fingers in the monster’s hair, stopping her hand from sliding any further.

  Her arm started to tremble, and she couldn’t get her other hand free to twist. She gritted her teeth and planted her feet, pushing with all her might against the penanggalan’s head. It was strong enough to contend with divine strength. Something had to give.

  And then, one by one, she could feel the penanggalan’s hairs tearing loose under her grip. Just as her handholds were about to break free, the penanggalan’s head jerked back, and it slumped to the ground. The pressure on her arm relaxed, and the sharp report of gunfire reached her ears.

  Horus had entered the fray, taking a position on one of the nearby towers. His assault rifle was swept across the battlefield, constantly finding new targets. Athena could see he was twisting reality around the barrel of his gun, doing something to the bullets. It didn’t matter what. She had an opening now, and with her arms free, she slashed at another monster.

  Horus had drawn attention with that attack. A dozen of the creatures were taking to the air and swarming towards him. Horus threw up a barrier between himself and the monsters, then emptied his magazine into a pair of them. Athena had to give him a nod of respect. He was opening holes in his barrier as fast as the weapon could fire and closing them behind the bullets. She’d never seen someone pull that off with anything faster than an arrow. His attackers slumped to the ground, and he tossed the gun aside to switch to a melee weapon.

  Then a penanggalan grabbed Athena by the throat and began to pull her in. She stifled a new surge of panic and swung her sword, severing the grasping appendages. It let out a hiss of anger and pain, which she cut short by embedding the blade in its face.

  For the first time in the fight, no new opponent rushed in to take the place of its fallen kin, giving Athena time to look around the battlefield. There were still a few penanggalan active, but most were lying on the ground in various states of destruction. As she watched, Anansi cleaved another in half from chin to skull, and Dianmu electrocuted three with a bolt of lightning thrown from her recovered glaive.

  A new swarm started to rise from the corpses, the fully fed penanggalan from earlier. Athena didn’t even have the energy to curse this time. Every last bit of strength she had would be needed if she’d have a chance to survive-

  The thought was cut off by Crystal striding onto the battlefield, drawing a sword and shouting. “Oy! Looks like you couldn’t take those three down; maybe give me a try, yeah?”

  The Penanggalan hissed and surged towards her as one. As Athena watched, Crystal leapt among the penanggalan like a sylph, flitting and flowing between them. Her slender sword sliced the eye out of one of her attackers as she jumped over the encroaching entrails of another, letting her foot connected with that attacker’s nose. As she landed, she flipped her blade out to intercept another in a single fluid motion, so quick that the second penanggalan was cut in half before Crystal’s foot touched the ground.

  A tentacle lanced out and wrapped around Crystal’s ankle. That was when Athena moved, throwing a twist of air to sever the appendage before it could throw off Crystal’s balance.

  The swarm was converging on Crystal, freeing the weary gods to grab bows from their nanoverses and open fire.

  The penanggalan fell like flies before the barrage.

  Chapter 15

  Consequences and Considerations

  Athena wanted nothing more than to fall back into the soil and sleep for the next year. If it hadn’t been so badly soaked with monstrous blood, she might have actually considered it. “Everyone accounted for?” she asked.

  Crystal was breathing heavily and leaning on her sword for support. She wiped some sweat-soaked strands of hair back from her face and looked up at the other gods. “Sorry for the delay!” she said, her voice full of forced cheer. “Thanks for saving a few for me.”

  Anansi stood up, pulling a dagger out of a dead penanggalan with a sickening lurch. He had a dozen small injuries and one deep wound on his left bicep, where one of his attackers had gotten its teeth deep into the muscle. “I would have killed them all on my own, but I would have-” he grunted in pain and shook his head. “But I would have hated to deny you the fun.”

  Dianmu flicked her glaive, clearing it of blood. Deep bruises were starting to form on her arms and neck. She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m not in the mood for the japes,” she said to Anansi, though her voice wasn’t unkind. “Thank you. All of you. That swarm was...trying.”

  Athena could feel multiple injuries throbbing for attention. If there had been a few more, or Crystal and Horus had been a bit later…we might have lost someone.

  Dianmu limped over to Crystal, using the butt of her glaive as a walking stick. “I trust you had something fairly important to keep your attention?” she asked Crystal.

  Crystal gave her a good-natured grin. “Your trust is well placed, love, because I did.” The smile faded quickly as Crystal focused on the news itself. “I ran into Resheph. Moloch came here to kill off his own pantheon and scoop up their nanoverses.”

  Athena swore. It was a slaughter on the scale of nothing she’d heard of before. Theomachies - wars between gods - were not unheard of. The Aesir had warred with the Deva in a conflict that had lasted a century and was remembered in both their respective faiths into modern times. The Olympians had fought with the Titans and caused the Bronze Age collapse. Sekhmet had nearly wiped out the Lower Kingdom in her personal war against the rest of the Egyptian pantheon. Yet even in those bloody battles, and the more genteel conflicts that had followed, Nanoverses were rarely taken. It was...monstrous.

  “You think he means to create a newly merged nanoverse with all the ones he recovered?” Athena asked.

  “Maybe,” Crystal said, frowning. “He has at least a dozen now. If he does what Enki did, he’ll be damn near unstoppable, but…”

  “But?” Dianmu prompted after Crystal trailed off.

  “Resheph was talking about monsters,” Crystal said, pursing her lips. “If Moloch plans on taking them into his nanoverse and...well, popping them to create monsters, from an entire pantheon this old…”

  “That is more his style,” Athena said after some thought. “No risk to him, and at the same time, a massive increase to the power he commands.” It made a disgusting amount of sense. He’d be unimaginably dangerous with that many newborn monsters at his disposal - although…

  “It would still be better than if he merged them,” Dianmu said, echoing Athena’s thought. “Do you really think he won’t?”

  Crystal nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it. We assumed the fight with Enki was, well, winnable, because he was predictable. But what if that wasn’t it? What if he was just overwhelmed by h
ow much power he was holding, so had to stick to his classics, or copying someone else?”

  “You think Moloch doesn’t want that to happen to him,” Anansi said, stroking his beard and frowning.

  “It makes sense. Moloch’s never been big on direct conflict.” Crystal fiddled with her hands as she worked through the thought. “He’s like Enki, in his own way. Rigid and stuck in his habits. Sure, if he merged that many nanoverses he’d be…” Crystal swallowed. “Well, I don’t want to think about how strong he’d be. But what would he do with the power? He would benefit more from an army of monsters.”

  “So there’s a chance,” Anansi said. There was a note of hope in his voice, one he was trying, and failing, to suppress. Athena couldn’t prevent herself from feeling the same surge of hope. It was a powerful drug, and one she tried to avoid imbibing too often, but in this case...

  Athena looked at Crystal. “Do you really think Moloch might want to avoid that risk?” she asked, knowing the hope was showing and not caring. “With so much to gain, he’d let fear stop him from seizing that much power?”

  Crystal considered for a long pause, then slowly nodded. “There’s a lot of bad names you could call Moloch. Bastard. Prick. Asshole. Monster. Jackass.”

  “Would-be-tyrant,” Dianmu added.

  “Murdering coward,” Anansi contributed.

  They all looked at Athena, who frowned in thought, searching for the right phrase to sum up her feelings on Moloch, “Sociopathic traitor not fit to lick the paws of the lowliest, flea-bitten cur to have ever begged for scraps.”

  “Nice,” Crystal said. “We could probably list them all day. But none of them are ‘idiot’ or any of its variants, yeah? If Enki succumbed to sensory overload from two, Moloch would be driven mad by thirteen.”

  Athena let out a long, steady breath. “I hope you are right,” she said. “Because I don’t know how we could possibly defeat someone with that much power. The three of us barely bested Enki, and only survived doing so by turning his power against him. Even with six of, I doubt we could defeat Moloch if he managed thirteen.”

  “If it took three people to beat someone with one extra,” Anansi said, “then we’d need at least...what? Thirty-nine gods if Moloch went for broke?”

  A falcon flew down from the sky, shifting into Horus as it landed.

  Dianmu sighed. “Let’s assume for now that the merger is not his goal. Then he would have another reason for taking these nanoverses, and creating monsters seems to be the most logical intent.”

  “Maybe,” Horus said, “he’s just eliminating our possible allies.”

  “Good of you to join us,” Athena said. “Did you find any other survivors?”

  Horus shook his head. “They’re all dead, and their nanoverses are gone.”

  Silence reigned as the gods considered the implication. An entire pantheon, gone. Nothing like it had ever happened before.

  “I saved Resheph,” Crystal said in a small voice, tapping a pouch at her side. “I killed him and destroyed his body, but his nanoverse is safe. He’ll resurrect there safely, so that’s…” She trailed off.

  Athena suddenly realized that something like this had happened before. Enki had done the same thing to his old pantheon. Crystal was the only survivor.

  Was this what it was like for you, Crystal? Athena thought. If not for the others, she would have gone over to hug her friend. Instead, she said, “It is something. Maybe he can tell us more, once he resurrects.”

  “I don’t think we can afford to wait,” Dianmu countered. “Moloch will be moving onto the next stage of whatever he’s planning.”

  Anansi nodded. “He only has a few days before he has to worry about these gods resurrecting and coming to reclaim their nanoverses, so he can’t dawdle too much. And I think there’s a flaw in your theory, Horus.”

  Horus bristled. “I’d love to hear a better explanation, old spider.”

  Anansi sighed. “I do not know. But if he was seeking to deny us allies, he chose a poor method for doing so.”

  “Anansi is right,” Dianmu interjected before Horus could argue. “If we tell other gods what happened here, they’ll begin to fear Moloch will come for them even if they mean to stay on the sidelines. It could be a rallying cry for our cause. He must have a plan for those nanoverses.”

  Horus looked like he’d just taken a swig of stale, sour beer. “Fine. Then we need to figure out for sure what he’s doing with them. That will help us find him and deal with him permanently.”

  Again, no one was sure what to say. Horus was right about that…but it didn’t get them any closer to an answer.

  Crystal opened her mouth, but whatever thought she had was cut short. At that instant, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group, the darkened entry portal surged back into life.

  Immediately the five gods scattered, surrounding the portal and assuming defensive positions. This can’t be happening, Athena thought. Another attack? Right now? We’re too tired.

  Then, to her immense relief, Ryan dove through the portal, sword in hand. They watched as he rolled behind cover, unknowingly parroting Athena’s earlier entry.

  It wasn’t a bad call; in fact, it was precisely the right call when going through an unknown portal. However, doing it when no adversaries were present struck Athena as so…so Ryan that she had to smile. “It’s all right, Ryan. The fighting’s already over.”

  “Oh,” Ryan said, his cheeks flushing slightly from the theatrics. “Okay, good. Everyone okay?” Athena nodded with the others, and Ryan let out a sigh of relief. “Great, glad to hear it. So…what happened?”

  Athena shook her head. “We’ll fill you in. But right now…we have Hungers to attend to, and there’s nothing left for us here. Let’s head back to the core before this portal goes dark again.”

  ***

  Some of Dale’s contemporaries had trouble with presidents who had never served in the military. Many even went so far as to talk about them, in private, with outright contempt, calling commanders-in-chief who had never been commanded “cowards” and “dilettantes”. Dale thought those opinions were far too extreme. The President’s job was so immensely complicated that anyone who held the office would lack knowledge and experience in some areas; if it weren’t the military, it would be something else, and a different group of people would be privately rolling their eyes.

  However, that didn’t mean that Dale enjoyed dealing with a president who had never been on the front lines, or even the back lines, had mostly been leading the country during a time of peace and had no practical understanding of the need for, and the difficulties of, rapid military response.

  Especially when that President was dressing him down.

  “Let me recap in simple terms,” President Thomas Mason snapped. “You identified Ryan Smith, Antichrist, god, superhero, or whatever the hell he is, entering his sister’s apartment building.”

  The President paused, waiting for a response. Dale held out as long as politeness allowed, then kept it to just a simple, “Yessir,” because that was what you said when the President asked you a question, even if it was a question you had already answered.

  “And, upon getting this information, without consulting this office, you decided to engage the target?”

  “Yessir.”

  At that, the President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, slammed his hand on the desk like a teacher trying to get the attention of an unusually thick student. “You unilaterally authorized a strike on U.S. civilians on U.S. soil?!”

  “Yessir.” It was amazing how politely insolent two syllables could sound with enough practice.

  President Mason growled. “Admiral. You...how do you think this is acceptable? For God’s sake, man, you launched missiles on an apartment building. It’s on the evening news! Have you seen it?”

  Dale had seen it, but before he could say so, the President started a replay. Dale decided the best move was to shut up and watch, yet again,
a news report on the destruction of the apartment building.

  “This amateur footage clearly shows a United States Navy Helicopter, the X91 ‘Barn Owl’ opening fire on this apartment complex. Witnesses claim that their cell phones were confiscated after the incident, but this live-streamed video was already available online. There are unconfirmed reports that three Barn Owls were destroyed by a counterattack. The Navy has refused to comment on the incident, but the President has scheduled a press conference at seven PM EST.”

  President Mason glared at Dale. “Seven PM EST, Admiral. Now, please, tell me what the hell I’m supposed to say to the press about what happened here?”

  “The truth, sir?” Dale said, his tone slightly less stiff. If the President was asking for his advice, he wasn’t going to terminate project Myrmidon, and he wasn’t going to court-martial Dale. Not yet, at least. He might still do it once this is all over. But until then…

  “The truth? That one of my Admirals launched a strike on United States soil, and I knew nothing about it?” A vein bulged in the President’s forehead.

  “No, sir. That Ryan Smith, the super-powered terrorist responsible for detonating a nuclear device in Canada, was in that apartment. That we cleared the apartment building of civilians before we attacked.”

  “And that after all that, Ryan Smith is still alive and out there?” Mason asked, clenching his hands into fists. “That we failed?”

  “That we attempted,” Dale replied. “That we only failed because those cowards in Congress won’t allow the needed funding to truly deal with a threat of this magnitude. That the threat is still at large because we’re operating on a shoestring budget, and we could have had him if the bleeding hearts had not drug their heels.”