by Alex Raizman
Dianmu broke formation, propelling herself upward on tornado force winds. Horus was flapping for all his might, but falcons weren’t designed for flying in Jupiter level gravity. I’ve got to undo that twist, Ryan though, reaching out.
Athena grabbed his hand. “Don’t! You can’t burn that much power.”
Ryan grimaced as Horus sunk closer. More bits of the house tore away and compressed into the sphere. A bed, blessedly empty, went flying from the building and wrapped around the center point, folding up until it was absorbed. Ryan tried not to think of what getting that close would do to a bird, but he couldn’t help picturing the feathers ripping away, followed by chunks of flesh and bone and-
Dianmu’s hands closed around Horus, and she pulled him away from the destruction point.
“Yes!” Ryan shouted.
He should have waited. The moment Horus was safe, the super-soldiers released the twist. The instant they did, the ball of condensed matter exploded outwards and sent shards streaking away in a deadly hail. The shards burst apart in the air, further spreading the destruction.
Ryan looked up at Athena. There were holes in her shield now, and her sword arm hung at her side. Blood poured from a hole through her bicep, and her skin had gone pale.
“Ryan, you have to move!” she shouted. Gunfire started again, the soldiers concentrating their fire on Anansi, who twisted and flickered for a second, then broke down the street and started running away.
Gunfire followed him. Palmer laughed. “Yeah, we got this bitch on the run!”
Ryan forced himself to his feet as his head cleared. Bullets danced around Anansi, stopping in midair before hitting him. Please tell me this is working, Ryan thought as he turned on his divine sight.
The real Anansi, shrouded in a twist, stood on top of a house, watching as his illusory self ran was surrounded by illusory suspended bullets.
“Move!” Athena repeated, and Ryan swallowed his fear and dashed out into the street, holding the massive sword across his body and hoping it might stop a bullet or two.
Ross noticed Ryan just as he got close to their wall. “Incoming!” he shouted, as Ryan’s sword cleaved a swath of their barrier away, leaving the soldiers exposed on that side.
All right. Now Horus and Dianmu can...realization hit Ryan. He’d exposed the left side of the super-soldiers, where Horus and Dianmu had been. They’d had to relocate after the gravity bomb had torn the house apart. They were on the right side.
All he’d accomplished was making himself a target.
“Deal with him, Ross!” Evans shouted.
Hector dove for Ryan, hurling a sphere of pure force. Ryan caught it on the flat of his blade, but the impact was enough to send his feet sliding along the asphalt. He shoved his sword into the ground, tearing up the pavement with his improvised brake.
Hector was on him the moment he stopped. Before Ryan could even lift the weapon again, the soldier brought his foot up in a roundhouse kick that caught Ryan in the side of the head.
Ryan went flying through the air. If not for the sword, he probably would have flown through a window. Instead used the massive blade as an anchor again, digging it into the dirt as he traveled across a lawn.
Ryan clenched his fists around the hilt, his heart pounding from fear and anger. He yanked the sword out of the ground and charged. Hector responded by twisting with one hand and swinging with the other, exponentially raising the force behind his punch.
Ryan brought up his blade and managed to catch Hector’s fist with the flat of the weapon. The force sent Ryan sliding across the lawn again, his feet ripping deep furrows in the mud. Maybe I should try dodging instead of blocking, so that stops happening. He pointed the sword at Hector.
Hector’s face contorted with anger, and he was already charging. This time Ryan was on his feet and had his weapon ready, however. He swung the blade, forcing Hector to leap back.
That was all the opening Ryan needed to go on the offensive. He didn’t want to tap into his divine power, not when he already required air. Pace yourself. Instead, he swung the sword in broad chops that forced the super-soldier to duck, weave, and leap to avoid being cut in half. He’s so damn fast, Ryan thought as Hector jumped over another strike, then used a burst of air to propel himself above Ryan’s backswing. Whatever powers were in play here, the fact was this man had likely been fighting since he was in his teens.
Ryan had about a month’s worth of combat experience. Only his greater familiarity with divine powers and the long reach of his weapon was making this anything close to an even match. We still have numbers on our side, Ryan thought, and the other gods are much better fighters. Ryan reached out when Hector leapt again, attempting to twist off Hector’s harness. Somehow, it resisted his attempt to warp reality, and the twist only tore off Hector’s jacket, leaving him in a white t-shirt under the apparatus. Ryan paused his attack, focusing on part of the harness. It was a red LED indicator showing a numerical display.
Fifty percent.
Hector saw where Ryan was looking and grinned. “That’s right, jackass. You’re screwed.”
Ryan charged again. Seemingly calm, Hector reached up and tapped the harness. The number jumped to seventy-five percent. Ryan swung, screaming with desperation as he put as much force behind the blow as he could muster.
Still grinning, Hector caught the sword with one hand.
Ryan yanked the weapon back, breaking it free of Hector’s grip. Before the super-soldier could react, Ryan propelled himself into the air with a twist. He caught the sword! How the hell did he catch the damn sword?
Being airborne gave him a chance to survey the battlefield. During his fight with Hector, illusionary Anansi had been struck by a pillar of flame, and Anansi had left an illusory smoldering corpse in its place. Horus was back in human form, his gun thundering. Dianmu was buffeting the soldiers with winds from above, and Athena had advanced, her shield glowing like a blinding spotlight and blinding them.
The three super-soldiers - four, with Hector rejoining them - stood calmly in the middle of the tempest. Each of them started pressing their chest in the same place Hector had.
Oh, this is bad.
The super-soldiers twisted, and suddenly everyone was sent flying away. Ryan rocketed towards a two-story house. With a frantic twist, he diverted his path from the brick chimney and into a glass window. The glass shattered around him, and he was given a painful reminder that movie glass is soft, but real glass breaks into tiny knives that dig into your skin in a dozen places. One shard stuck deep into his leg and was driven even deeper when he ricocheted off the far wall. He started to scream, but everything was happening too fast, and before he could get the sound out, he slammed into the solid oak door of the closet. It cracked under the impact, and Ryan found himself pinned against it.
It felt like an elephant was balancing on one foot on his chest, with a second standing on the shard of glass in his leg. He tried to scream but couldn’t through the force that was pressing him against the door. Something cracked, and Ryan could only pray it wasn’t his spine.
Just as he thought he couldn’t take anymore, the pressure vanished. Ryan slumped to the ground. Everything was weirdly quiet, the sound of battle completely faded. He took advantage of the silence to take stock.
A shard of glass in his leg. Lacerations across his back and arms, and bruises on his...I don’t think I have anything that isn’t bruised. I think my bruises are developing new bruises of their own. His head was pounding, he was gasping for breath, and on top of it all, he was thirsty. No broken bones, though. That was something.
Ryan pulled off the shredded remains of his shirt and twisted it into a narrow tube, then bit down on it. Breathing deeply through his nose, he braced himself and pulled on the shard of glass.
His scream would have given away his position if he hadn’t had the shirt in his mouth. It missed the artery, but you can’t keep screwing around, Ryan thought, taking more deep breaths to get ready for the next wave
of pain. He waved his hand over the wound, heat flowing into the injury and cauterizing it. The sensation made him bellow into the shirt again.
He spat out the shirt and sat for a minute, panting and clearing tears of pain, but he knew he had to get back to the fight. He forced himself to his feet. Putting weight on the injured leg wouldn’t be in his top ten favorite sensations, but it could hold him, so he counted that as a win. Trying to creep over the broken glass, he limped towards the window.
The super-soldiers were scanning their surroundings. At first glance, they looked utterly unphased, so Ryan wasted a bit more energy on creating a lens to bring them further into focus.
So far, they seemed uninjured, but all four were breathing heavily. Palmer’s hand was on his stomach, Munoz licked dry and chapped lips, and Evans’s eyes were drooping slightly.
That’s right, Ryan thought, dismissing the lens and climbing out of the window. You might have just thrown me through a window, stabbed me in the leg, and ignored everything we’ve thrown at you so far while pulling off some of the most complex twists I’ve seen since Tyr’s sunbeams, but everything is still going according to plan. It might look like you’re winning, but I’ve got you right where I want you.
Ryan hoped that if he repeated the lie enough, his confidence would come back. He ducked into the space between the two houses and peered around the wall.
Slowly, his allies were emerging. Horus’s falcon was circling overhead. Athena was pulling herself out of the rubble of Jacqueline’s house, moving bricks away with her shield. Dianmu was crawling out of a trench her body had dug in the concrete. Anansi was limping back up the street, using a stop sign as a walking stick.
The super-soldiers nodded to each other and raised their hands.
Oh yeah, Ryan thought sarcastically as he braced himself. Right where we want you.
***
Crystal crouched as the three goddesses charged her, ready for their attack. So they lead off with a rock spike. It hit hard, but I’m sure I can-
The lead goddess vanished, closing the gap between herself and Crystal in an instant. Crystal had a moment to be surprised before her opponent’s hand slammed into her breastbone. The energy in the strike was so immense, it distorted space-time, freezing this instant in time. Crystal stared into the blank, faceless mask of her opponent, her eyes wide with shock. How could she hit like that?
Then time resumed. Crystal was sent hurtling through the atmosphere and into the void.
The hit hadn’t been painful because her physical sensation simply shut down. Crystal’s nerves had no idea how to interpret what was happening to them. No...Crystal thought, barely able to focus enough to even form that protest. The Sur-nah-him…
It was too late. A wave of destruction spread out, a flame storm following it across Shadoth. The Sur-nah-him were already dead. Tears formed in Crystal’s eyes. Beneath her, molten stone burst from cracks that were forming across the world. Crystal managed to get control of her body and reached out towards the retreating planet, gathering her will.
It was too late. The planet exploded along the fault lines. Two hemispheres separated, the space between them filling with enormous plumes of magma that froze as their heat dissipated.
Crystal screamed into the void, a blend of rage and terror. You thought you were so bright, didn’t you? Lead them outside the city, keep the Sur-nah-him safe, Crystal railed at herself as chunks of planetary debris began to spread across the solar system.
The anger helped push down the fear, but it didn’t dispel the realization that these goddesses were as omnipotent as Crystal herself. She wasn’t sure she could create something as powerful as them even if she had tried, and now there were three of them.
A warmth began to spread across Crystal’s back, and she snapped her arms out, halting her momentum before she impacted the green star. Tendrils of green flame lashed towards her as if they sensed her presence and wanted to grab her and pull her down into the immense heat.
She held her hands outstretched, warding away the solar flare, just as the two halves of Shadoth collapsed back into each other, shattering anew from the impact.
Nothing on that world had survived.
How could they? How could they? These three, whatever they were, were of this nanoverse. They should be shepherding it, guiding it. Treating it like a garden. In all her millions of years of existence, Crystal had never obliterated a planet with living beings on it. The idea was unthinkable.
In the dark days after she’d ended the world, Crystal had wandered a dead Core universe. She’d sat on planets that were falling into singularities, she’d walked through the ruins of civilizations, and she’d stared into the nebulas formed by suns going supernova. In those dark days, the only thing that had kept her sane was the knowledge there was one place where she could protect everyone.
And they’re taking that from you.
Crystal screamed again and held her hand toward shattered ruins of Shadoth. Beneath her fingers, stones pulled themselves back to the world. The planetary crust flowed like water, sloshing together until the original crust was back on the surface. Grass began to spread, water coalesced out of the void, and the bodies that had been scattered erupted from the ground or were pulled back from orbit as the atmosphere reformed.
Shadoth had been restored to its former state.
“It’s a stupid, pointless gesture,” said a voice behind Crystal. She whirled to face the three goddesses. “Why do you waste your time preserving a single world?”
“I’d waste my time to preserve a single life,” Crystal spat. “Now...who the hell are you?”
In the vacuum of space, there was no sound to carry her words, so she wrote them into the fabric of reality, a voiceless demand that made a question into a divine mandate. It would have been more impressive if her opponents hadn’t just done the same thing to speak to her. Their armor was unscathed by the explosion of Shadoth, their body language relaxed and calm.
The first of the figures extended her hand towards Crystal. “I am the emptiness that awaits at the end of power; I am all that you need, the gnawing need for more that you can never satiate.” From her extended fingers, she hurled a supermassive black hole at Crystal. “I am Inedia.”
Crystal threw out her hands and caught the black hole before she could enter its event horizon. It kept trying to advance on her, as if it was propelled by some malign consciousness. No, Crystal thought. That’s not what it’s like. That’s what it is. Crystal gritted her teeth and turned the black hole into a wormhole, its opposite end in some distant star. Plasma spewed from the wormhole in an apocalyptic stream towards Inedia.
Inedia stopped it by raising a single hand, canceling out its existence before it could reach her. Crystal felt her hands begin to tremble. It had been so effortless.
The second goddess gestured and spoke. “I am all that you lack, all that you could have been, your squandered opportunities.” Crystal held up her hands to defend against the attack, but the goddess wasn’t attacking her; she was shattering time. Crystal found herself on a battlefield in four dimensions, with each of her opponents able to attack her from different epochs. “You may call me Litura.”
Crystal’s heart pounded. She tried to force time back into a single line, but the fabric of reality had been broken and didn’t just snap to her whims like it was supposed to. Litura was actively maintaining the fractured timeline. Alone. She can resist me without the others. Damnit, I can’t even overpower one of them. Crystal stopped trying to fight the fragmentation and prepared herself to defend against attacks that were coming, had come, and will be coming.
In the future timeline, the third was speaking. Would have been speaking. Crystal put aside the question of pronouns to focus on the threats. “I am all that you will be, the ultimate fate of your arrogance and this very corruption that will remake you.” She gestured. Crystal moved at the speed of light to evade spatial anomalies that surged from that gesture, razor-sharp shards of force withou
t mass. She was able to deflect one, and it careened into the outer solar system. “You will call me Potentia.”
