Strigoi Soul(Original Urban Fantasy)

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 1

***
"Still say we've got it worse than you, teach." Eric grinned, all fangs, leaning back on the bench and running a hand through his mop of brown hair. He'd never stopped calling me 'teach', even after graduation.

Bogdan nodded sagely in agreement, short raven curls swaying. "Yeah. Can you imagine being eternally thirsty?"

"Moron." Eric ripped off an index finger to flick at his friend's forehead, sharp green eyes narrowed. "Why would he have to imagine something he lives with?"

Bogdan turned to me, a dubious look in his blue eyes as he put a hand on my shoulder. He tilted his head this and that way, humming, before coming to the wrong conclusion. "Are you always thirsty, David?"

Eric groaned. "Come here before you infect him with something."

Shrugging, Bogdan rose from the bench we'd been sharing and flitted to sit down next to his friend and partner. "I meant his girlfriend, you little savant you."

"Oh, yeah!" Bogdan grinned toothily, eyes brightening. "Mia's pretty thirsty. I just thought you meant literal thirst."

"Well, maybe I did." Eric smirked at me, rubbing his chin with one hand, the index finger healed. "She still thirsty, boss?"

"Oh, definitely. Just glad she's not a vamp, otherwise she'd be sucking me dry twice over." I replied.

"Ah, well, we can't all be looking for blood." Bogdan replied, before leaning closer to Eric. "Probably has saltier tastes." He mouthed.

"I bet." Eric said, his smirk slightly annoyed. "Before you derailed me, though, I wanted to clarify what I meant. I didn't say vamps have it worse than strigoi-"

"I don't know, man..."I said in my best philosopher voice. "Vampires suck."

For my troubles, I was caught in a shower of sharp words and sharper gestures.

"I meant," Eric said finally. "That us two have it worse than you when it comes to our jobs."

"Oh?" I said curiously, taking in our surroundings as he gathered his words. We were in the Haunts, Bucharest's undead quarter. Specifically, the Belfry, the area with the highest vamp concentration, where the inhabitants had thick blinds over every window and pooled their weather manipulation to keep everything under permanent dark clouds.

There were lots of blood banks, too. Artificial blood was in far higher demand from vampires than normal people, even though, at thirty-two million, vamps represented barely more than a thousandth of the world's population. But then, normal people didn't chug blood like water.

I kind of agreed with him. I loved what I did. Liked my job, too.

"Well," Eric leaned forward, fingers steepled. The one he'd severad had been crushed in his grip and the remains placed in a bag that would be obliterated. Such things were never left lying around. "I meant the uniforms, mostly..." He gestured at his dark blue pants, yellow shirt and red tie. The tricolor. "ARC dresses you up like a chessboard, yes, but black goes with everything, especially white. We look like someone sneezed, had a nosebleed, then dipped the tissue into ink."

"The fuck, dude?" Bogdan punched him in the shoulder, shooting Eric an incredulous look. "Keep that nasty shit to yourself. I don't wanna hear comparisons like that before drinking."

"Well, the Supernatural Service is fairly new." I said placatingly. "I'm sure your superiors just want to show they have the country's best interests at heart, hence why the colour scheme is a little...on the nose."

"On the nose." Eric repeated, a deadpan expression on his face. "This is not on the nose, David. It's a brick between the yes. Not even Breakout from the States dresses as her flag, patriot that she is."

"Actually," Bogdan said in a snooty voice. "She wears a balaclava with the stars and stripes, and used to wear a sash like that, too."

"Oh?" Eric glanced at him curiously. "And why are you so well-informed about FREAKSHOW's favourite wrecking ball? Studying the opposition, are you?"

"Wake up, man. Freedomland ain't been 'the opposition' for decades."

"Talk like this could have you taken away, comrade! Don't make me send you to the Canal!"

"The one I dug through your mom, or...?"

I smiled as they bantered, happy they had finally found something to fill their unlives with, something they had chosen. Romania was a little better for every supernatural who pledged their powers for the people, or the country, or even money.

Hell. Just not being a supernatural criminal was nice.

None of us were off-duty-in fact, all of us were patrolling, looking for suspicious supernatural activity in case anyone was using the holidays as cover or to draw attention away from themselves. I didn't remain with them for much longer, though, as I was soon recalled to Omu base.

***

Since the Cold Madness and the Headhunt, ARC and its national counterparts had grown sick of being caught unawares. As such, a regime of training against every type of conceivable opponent, as well as some inconceivable ones, had been established.

In ARC's case, this meant agents from different divisions were pitted against each other, as well as whatever construct the people from Salem could cook up. The Air Force even lent us some-doubtlesdly outdated-drones to train against, to hunt or be hunted down by. The spherical machines were barely bigger than a football, but tough enough I broke my hands hitting them, fast enough to fly circles around lightning bolts, and able to raze Romania in seconds with their lasers, plasma bolts, railguns or missiles.

The drones, like many forms of power armour, were powered by a network micro-wormholes leading to the sun and other stars, the energy being funneled through so that the drones would never run out of power, or sunlight to strip vampires of their esoteric abilities with.

I had just beaten a werelynx named Radu, who had come from the Luna division base over in Brașov, while Rivka Peretz had gone in his place, to cross claws with our were colleagues. Incensed at her perceived uselessness during the Headhunt(like she could have done anything to Thor!), and at how easily I'd incapacitated her during the spar before I'd gotten my new cross, the ghoul had taken to eating thousands of times her weight in labgrown meat, her power growing to the point where her movements became a blur to my eyes when we fought, and she could tear through me as easily as the Unscarred had done on Mars, years ago.

She was not as strong as the albino currently was, but, between her power and the ferocity that only grew even as her hunger was sated, I doubted it would be much consolation to the weres.

While Aya Reem and Romania's Director Gelu Malea discussed who would take over as Romania's senior agent after Marc's...after Flavius Marcus had gone missing in action(they still spoke as if Marc was somewhere out there, merely lost), an experienced Crypt agent had been brought from Spain as a temporary replacement.

We just...couldn't tell what he was experienced with.

As I dispersed the air sphere around Radu, the werelynx fell the thirty metres to the ring with his legs coiled, landing on his paws easily.

"Nice move, Silva." He growled as he turned human, fanged smile becoming merely toothy. Unlike most weres, who preferred to fight in their hybrid forms, gaing power and sharper senses while retaining their voices, Radu fought as a lynx, claiming anything you wanted to say during a spar, you could express through actions. He still went hybrid on missions, as far as I knew, but, in training, he chose to mangle people on all fours.

"But I'm not a hamster," He continued, his ruddy face screwing up in distaste. "If you put me into a ball again, I'll tear out your balls and swap them with your eyes."

Pussy! My strigoi side snickered in my mind. It had developed a sort of pseudo-sapience since the Headhunt. Less of a separate personality and more of a really loud, really coarse subconscious, it had been awakened by the tiny quantities of lifeforce I had consumed from dying animals and plants. A strigoi eventually began talking to their instincts like this, if they consumed enough lifeforce, but...after the bullshit Chernobog had pulled in my body, I wasn't keen on having someone else on my head, even if it was still 'me'.

We should tear out that rough little tongue of his, human, it whispered, a smile in its false voice. And shove it down his throat. Do it again and again and again as he heals, until he bloats and falls apart! Then, after he stops being a pile of gore, we will do it again, with a different body part~

Its suggestions didn't help. Especially since I knew, deep down, that it only reflected my darkest desires.

It got real interesting when I was with Mia.

"Alright, me lads!" Marc's replacement clapped twice as he jumped down between us from the bleachers. My ghost colleagues, as well as a few necromancers and the ogre corpses they animated, looked down at us with curiosity from one side. On the other were Radu's colleagues from Luna, as well as a balaur from Drake. Thundertail, as he insisted we call him, had haggled with all of us over 'old things' for his hoard, because he 'knew from experience' that dead people gathered knickknacks around them.

I had felt attacked. I was dead, not retired.

Now, the balaur glanced at us with mild amusement, his electric-yellow body, larger than most passenger planes, sprawled across several tiers of bleachers, muzzle propped in one claw. Thundertail was just as strong, fast and tough as me, healed as fast without any holy weakness, and his lightning breath could and had vapourised me.

When balaurs, and dragons in general, were killed, it was because their killers were favoured by gods or fate, or just had absolutely monstrous weapons.

"Radu, go clean yourself up. You can even use the showers, if you want." Diego Cortez said, his grin just as sharp as the werelynx's, who packed more insults in that smile than I could in most sentences. Nevertheless, Radu nodded in agreement, as his body was covered in blood and guts, his still steaming, mine as cold as ever, from when we'd torn each other apart.

The Spanish vampire hummed to himself, spinning on one foot to look at me with blood-red eyes.

Diego(I was sure his last name was just as fake as his claims of having sailed to America with the Conquistadors; the Shattering might have been an acausal headache, but this guy didn't act like he was centuries old, even if he dressed like he was) had skin as white as his poofy-sleeved shirt, which was tight across the torso, opening to show a chest covered in wiry black hair. Over it, he wore a black and white, unbuttoned ARC vest. He also wore black leather pants, waist encircled by a brown leather belt with a gold buckle. High-heeled, shiny black shoes-he only came up to my chest, even with the added centimetres- and a wide-brimmed black hat with peacock feathers in every colour of the rainbow completed the flamboyant ensemble.

"Now!" He pointed at me, dramatically turning his face to look away, his other hand on his hip. "There is bad blood staining the Crypt's floors. My kind are often called leeches, and, ah, Dios! What a poetic comparison! For the noble leech drains away all is foul and corrupt, leaving the body healthy. Loric!"

I almost gawked at him, but opted to instead turn and look as the wall of the training room shifted to allow in the strigoi I had never wanted to see again.

Szabo looked just as fat and jolly as the last time I had seen him, though there was a faint annoyance in his gleaming eyes, in the lines of his face. He had loathed being restricted to patrols through Hungary alone, I imagined...

But the old bastard had somehow managed to get a new set of 'leathers'.

"Szabo?" I began by way of greeting, crossing my arms. "Please tell me you got those from corpses, at least."

The older strigoi giggled. "Why, David...I only handle dead meat when touching myself~"

My strigoi side laughed approvingly in my mind. Great, now I'd have two groady bastards living rent-free in my brain.

"Why is he here?" I asked Diego, not taking my eyes off Szabo, or his broad smile. He was faster than I could see, but it was the thought than counted.

The vamp clicked his tongue. "David, David, do you listen not!? To clear the air between you! I know you and Loric have your differences, but that is no excuse for dissent among the ranks. Why, I remember once, when my men mutinied against me...it was the summer of sixty-three, that is, seventeen sixty-three, and the grog had run as low as their patience..."

Szabo listened and nodded at the appropriate moments, still smiling, to my bafflement, but I didn't miss the tension in his stance whenever Diego moved. Was he...was he scared of this guy?

"As such!" The vamp exclaimed after finishing his anecdote. "Loric will explain why he attacked you, David, and you will explain your disapproval of him. You can do it before, as, or after you spar."

"That's it?" I asked. "We shake hands then part as friends?"

"You can kiss too." Diego wiggled slim, black eyebrows. "But remember: do not become  too friendly. We are, after all, professionals. Besides, I'm sure David's spitfire of a darling would get mighty jealous, and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Before I could ask when or why he had learned about my relationship with Mia, Diego was gone, and Szabo was ripping me apart. Both events had happened faster than I could see.

***

ARC's training rooms can simulate virtually any environment. Whether through magic, technology, or both, they could create spaces as large as a city, planet or universe, which were still contained in the room.

For today's exercise, Omu base's training room used wards crafted by mages specialised in bending space, creating a copy of the universe equal in size to the original, but simultaneously small enough to fit in the room, which was only the size of a few football stadiums. The objects in the replica were made of hardlight, each just as durable as the real thing.

Something I could attest to as Szabo smashed my face against the ground, breaking both it and Germany into tiny chunks. The strigoi threw me away, disinterested, and I split the Atlantic with my passing, landing to rip through the States, breaking them in half. My body healed just as fast as it was damaged, unlike the fake Earth, but I was still losing. Badly.

Szabo was on me before I could move, stomping through my neck to turn the southern USA into dust. With a pitying look, he kicked me away, and I vapourised several mountains with my passing, each impact bruising my back, managing to stop myself in midair somewhere at the border with Canada.

Szabo was floating in front of me instantly, shaking his head, and I flew away, until he was just a dot on the horizon, whipping the weather into a frenzy with my will. To distract him, I created a sphere of ink-black stormclouds around him, bombarding the strigoi with hailstones that would have crushed cars and rain that would have flayed humans alive. A snap of his fingers dispersed the clouds, and I summoned lightning, looking to cover him in layers and layers of bolts, hoping to blind him.

When the bolts, well over twelve hundred times faster than sound, were milimetres from his skin, he disappeared, only to reappear kilometres away, behind me.

So damn fa-

"I am sorry, David." He said, one fist smashing through my chest to grip my spine. "Not for neglecting to explain myself to you. You should have seen through Chernobog's ploy, no matter what he looked like-"

"Then why are you sorry?" I snarled. Every microsecond, I punched the strigoi several times, each strike packing enough power to vapourise the mountain golem I had merely pulverised in Siberia. My fists broke on his nose and eyes-the softest parts of his face, fucking dammit-leaving him unharmed, if filthy. Szabo flicked my chest, to get my attention, turning me into red steam.

"Why are you sorry?" I repeated when I healed, trying to fruitlessly harm him once more. "For hurting Mia!?"

"Who?" His brow furrowed in confusion, and I roared, summoning a storm fiercer than any that had ever ravaged America, making thousands of bolts tear through the sky every microsecond, and drawing them all into my hands, until I was sure that...that...

Baring my fangs, shaping the lightning into a crude blade, I raised it overhead, and Szabo shook his head at my approach, but made no move to dodge.

I split him in half from exposed brain to crotch, and he healed almost as fast as I cut through him, before flicking me into steam once more.

Szabo sighed as I healed once more, rubbing his forehead. "I am sorry you make yourself so weak, David."

"The fuck are you saying?"

"Let me tell you...three things." Szabo held up three scarred, calloused fingers, then was gone from my sight, as was everything else.

By the time my eyes healed, I was in high orbit, looking down at a world with no continents.

"One: in the time it would take a human's heart to beat once, I dragged you around the planet seven times, shattering the continents with your body." Szabo whispered, suddenly behind me. Before I could turn, his hand ripped through my skull, squeezing my brain, and throwing me at and through the moon.

My constantly-regenerating body carved a tunnel that would have swallowed Germany from one side of the moon to the other as it smashed through countless tons of rock. Szabo was there when I flew out of the ruin, kicking me from the moon through Mars, ripping up an area the size of Europe, and into Jupiter's Great Red Spot. I tried to gather my bearings until he reached me, but he harnessed a fraction of the great storm that was Jupiter to keep me in place, trapped in a hurricane of orange clouds and yellow lightning, moved so fast by his will I was turned to charred pieces several times.

"Two: you are slow. You do not move quickly, either." Szabo said after he flew to me, gripping my throat and forcing me to look at him.

"And three...you fight like the weakling strigoi you were, not whatever impossible freak you became during the Headhunt. What will it take to motivate you, David?"

"I don't know how to use Mimir's power." I protested, angry at myself for feeling the need to justify myself to Szabo, for losing to him, for-

"No." He said firmly. "It is my fault, I am sure. Perhaps you need someone else to motivate you~?"

Szabo giggled as his skin turned ebony, features fading while antlers began to grow from his...his...

"Go to hell." I growled hoarsely, striking him with all my strength, turning my limbs to paste, but sending the grotesque son of a bitch out of sight.

"Oh, David..." A rich, deep voice rumbled as black arms wrapped around me from behind. "Did you think you could ever escape me?"

I roared, thrashing in Szabo's grip as he laughed, unable to dislodge him. Why...w-why...

Why the fuck was his touch burning me!?

Finally, his grip loosened, and I kicked the Chernobog-lookalike deep into Jupiter's clouds and out of my sight.

I w-was hallucitaning, clearly. C-Could strigoi do that? I had...h-ha...I had imagined that he was burning me, like a god would.

H-How fucking scared could I get?

"That was better!" Szabo's normal voice rang out, and I broke my spine with how fast I turned to glare at him. The fucking bastard was smiling, like he hadn't just...just...how fucking  dare he?

"But not good enough..." Szabo triled off, looking at me, nonplussed, as I broke my body trying to leave one, one fucking mark on him. "David? What did you do while I was finding my way back?"

"W-What?" I gasped, voice breaking, eyes darting wildly from his face to his head. He was...he was Szabo. Not...

"Your chest...how did you burn yourself like that? And why aren't you healing?"

...fuck him. Damn him and his fucking, twisted joke. I didn't know how he was doing this to me, but I lost it.

A sound like a blade slashing through air, on an unimaginably greater scale, brought me back to my senses, and I blinked newly-healed eyes to see Diego floating between us, his sharp features set in a thunderous grimace. In one hand, he held a one-edged sword dripping with ruby blood that didn't dry or run out, its gilded scabbard hanging on one hip. His intervention had reduced both Szabo and I to scattered particles, separating us.

And turning Jupiter into a shapeless cloud, spanning the distance between Saturn and Mars.

"End simulation." The vampire said tersely, his goateed chin trembling, one hand clenched tight on the sword. A small corner of my mind distantly wondered how much blood he had drank to become so powerful. He was certainly the strongest vamp I knew of, even stronger than that blue whale that had destroyed Australia, barring a few unsettling rumours from South America.

"No!" I screamed, and Diego turned his piercing stare on me. "I will kill him! The bastard fucking burned me! I don't know how, but-"

"THAT'S THE BLOODY PROBLEM, SILVA!" Diego barked, silencing me. "What just happened-and we're not sure what it was-should not have been possible. We must look for glitches in the simulator, or intruders, or-"

The simulation ended, but not with the created space fading into nothing. Instead, it twitched and writhed like a dying man, before disappearing in a blinding flash of colourless light.

Diego, Szabo and the other agents were on their feet, back to back, when my sight recovered, Thundertail encircling us, wings raised and lightning crackling in his yawning maw.

Every light in the room and beyond was shattered, every device in pieces, or rusting.

And, through the darkness, fey laughter rang out to fill our ears, carried by wind that had not been there before.

[Strigoi Grey]

Interlude: Glimpses

***
Mihai Codrea returns home by teleportation. It's a fairly nice apartment in the Spheres, Bucharest's mage quarter. Everyone wil give you a different answer if you ask for the name's origin and meaning, which is only fitting, when magic is involved.

The wards, which would normally prevent such an esoteric entrance, recognise their creator and let him in. So far, so good.

Then, Mihai realises he is alone.

This is not what unsettles him. He expected to outpace the girls. What is unsettling is the fact that all the lights in the house, which should have turned on at his arrival, are out: the lightbulbs broken, the magelights-spheres of sunlight he crafted in case of a blackout, which he is beginning to think this isn't-snuffed out.

Then, someone almost kills him.

Mihai's reflexes are boosted by his mana, a necessity in the presence of his rowdy friends, with the supernatural bodies they take for granted. Even so, the blade leaves a shallow, thin mark on his throat as he teleports away, cursing.

The line doesn't heal. This is when he gets scared.

Mihai puts his body, mind and soul in a timeloop set to rewing him to perfect health, however disastrous his death. This is paired with an automatic teleportation spell, set to place him a far distance away from the cause of his latest death.

Both of these things are, again, a necessity when around his friends. None of them has killed him, not even accidentally...so far. This doesn't mean it won't happen. He is only human, which means he is frail and paranoid.

Mihai gathers power as he sees his attacker, tall and lean and barely visible under a shroud of shadows. It is smirking, white teeth gleaming in darkness. His eyes dart to the knife in its hands, a dull, almost blunt-looking thing. But he feels the absence within the blade, not just lack of mana, but its opposite.

Antimagic.

Mihai proudly considers himself too boring to have enemies, so he's not sure why grinner over there is trying to give him a new mouth on his throat, but the enthusiasm is neither appreciated nor wanted.

Mihai tries to stop it from advancing, but it walks through spatial distortions that should have flattened it into nothing, and spots of twisted time that should have made it never exist. It deflects his projectiles with its knife, and leaps when he tries to bend the living room's floor around its feet.

Then, when it is in midair, Mihai creates a portal in front of it, then another above near the ceiling. It is followed by a third on the floor. Mihai dispels the first after the wannabe assassin blurs through it, leaving it falling from the second and into the third, over and over. Mihai blasts, not its knife, but the wrist of the hand holding it, sending the weapon flying out of its grip and reach.

Still, he feels it reach out with its will, trying to take control of his portals. With a scoff, Mihai shuts down its attempt.

He's had enough of people taking his things since his arsehole parents removed every 'distraction' that could prevent him from reaching 'true prowess in every domain'. The times they locked him in the cellar, with no light and stale air, were pretty memorable too, if not exactly nice.

Mihai doesn't know this fucker, but, if his parents are the first people it has made him think of, he doubts he's going to like it-

A thin scream, that quickly becomes a gurgle, fills his ears. His heart almost sinks as he imagines his...no. It wasn't his wife's voice, nor one of his daughters'. Just...

'Just' a neighbour whose name he's never managed to remember, despite seeing her every day.

Before dashing out of his home to help, Mihai takes a good luck at the would-be killer, and smiles coldly.

People like it always need some iron in their blood. He might as well give it a present, before going to meet its friends.

Christmas is coming, after all, he thinks as he stabs the Unseelie through the heart with a created iron knife, walking 'on' the floor portal like it is solid, before dispelling it and letting the Fae's corpse fall.

Mihai does not think about this now, but he has just killed a thinking being for the first time in his life.

***
Andrei's current employer is a young rich girl, with a foreign-sounding name. Miranda...something. Her parents were landscaping mages, and left her a fortune when they died. She has all the vices he expects, given her age and wealth. No worse or stranger than any of the gold-digging 'friends' she clubs with.

It's supposed to be a nice, boring bodyguard job, so, of course, it goes wrong. 'Predictable' things always go wrong. Like when he was assured someone would take him from the orphanage. Or when they told him the bear attack had left no wounds because he had imagined it.

(The were turned him before it began tearing him apart, so he could heal and survive everything it did to him.)

Or, why not, when he was given a choice between tirelessly working at the Canal and raising monuments, or a silver blade through the neck. It took him some time, and killing several dissenting coworkers, before the Party realised he'd do better as an attack dog rather than a mule.

Those were the years, he thinks drily, remembering all the dead protesters, the children taken away for stealing food, the soldiers and politicians who were too successful and popular, who stood out.

But it was kill or be killed, reallly. He got to disappear some real monsters too, some of whom he worked alongside in the Security, until his little mishap with Simona got him a black mark. Not because anyone had given a damn about a teenage mother dying in childbirth, or even that he'd slept with a minor without realising, like a moron, but because they had thought he couldn't control himself.

Maybe they'd been right. It had been a stupid, stupid storm of pent-up lust, and a truly bizarre attempt to get at his father Misha by sleeping with a willing woman, proving he wouldn't become a rapist like him.

It seems every son in their family, Andrei thinks, smiling to himself as he wonders what David is doing, is better than his father.

After the regime change(the people got sick of it, as in, rich foreigners wanted in, and a ravaged, hungry, revolutionary population, would provide good workers and buyers. Almost like the forties over again...)he was smart enough to keep his head down, so they let him fade into obscurity.

Security in obscurity is a phrase that will never cease making him laugh his head off...

Andrei tenses, glaring in concentration as his senses try to find what his instinct tells them is there. It takes him an instant, but he junos away from the sliver-covered fist that comes out of nowhere, rolling with the blow so it just breaks his nose.

This will never heal, and dammit, it's not like he doesn't already look like shit, as several people told him in his childhood. Back then, it didn't mean anything as harmless as being ugly. It had more to do with being a 'crow without a murder', as some charmingly put it.

The Fae grins at him between raised hands covered in silver gauntlets, and he tries to remember when and how he's drawn the enmity of the elves off the shelves. He comes up blank, instead focusing on dodging jabs half a dozen times the speed of sound. Then, someone hits him from behind-not with silver, it barely hurts-, sending him flying through the club's ceiling, pulverising a hole, and continuing up, into the cloud layer. Another Fae suddenly has his head in its fist, and pushes him down face-first through the club, turning it and the city block around it into a crater. Bucharest shakes.

And, as bloody mist sticks to his clothes and broken, quickly-healing face, Andrei realises the Fae only refrained from using silver so he could remember being used to kill thousands of people.

A tool for murder, again?

As his beast takes over, and he stands a metre taller and two hundred kilos heavier, Andrei swears to eat one of the Fae alive, spit it down the other's throat, and drown them both in molten iron.

***
His husband, Liam Lloyd realises uneasily, is not responding. Not to texts, or calls, or scrying.

This is strange. Ryan is a meticulous bloke, has been since they hooked up at the mage academy in Yulara. He also knows what a worrywart the lich is. Coupled with the fact his magic consists of placing his mind in devices, this...should not be happening.

Liam touches down in front of their place, nervously fingering the hem of his t-shirt. 'Milk for the Khorne flakes', with a cartoonish version of said Chaos God standing with a spoon raised overhead. The guys at the tournament thought it was a tired joke, but screw 'em. It was funny when he got into the hobby, and it still is.

Everything inside their house is off. Not just in the sense no device is running, another impossibility when Ryan is around; everything feels wrong.

The Fae turns to smile mockingly at him as it tries to stab Ryan's heart with a knife that makes the lich's dead stomach churn just from its looks. His husband is not a strong guy, as one can tell by the beer gut and noodle arms, but he is boosting himself with mana, though he still needs both hands to hold back the Unseelie's extended arm.

Ryan grins as he sees him enter(he'll have to make a joke about this later, cheer him up), his ruddy face split by a broad grin. Sweat is running from his forehead to his grey beard with effort, and his green eyes are narrowed in concentration.

"Die." Liam rasps at the Fae, his magic killing the chance of it living any longer. In the kitchen, an iron knife falls from its place, ricocheting off the floor, then the table leg, the walls, the living room ceiling and walls, until it is close to the Fae, who laughs, expecting to casually dodge the slow projectile.

But even as it laughs, it breaks Ryan's grip and raises its knife to dash at Liam, whom it sees as more dangerous.

"Dumb cunt." Liam grins skeletally at its confused, offended expression. Then, with a burst of mana, Ryan knees it in the crotch, sending it flying into the air just in time for the knife to pierce its skull.

Liam doesn't have time to high-five his husband, though, because the neighbourhood is soon filled by the sound of exploding lightbulbs, crashing cars, dying gurgles and cold, fey laughter.

***
Aaron is off-duty at the moment, and meditating, but nor relaxed.

As such, when the Fae appears out of nothing above him, intent on splitting him in half with a kick, he leans back, all six legs tensing to leap away, out out of the Black Sea and into the air.

It disappears in a burst of shadow just as dark as its hairless, muscular body, reappearing in front of him and punching him in his third head's throat, ripping it off. The impact sends him flying off Earth, past the other planets, and headsfirst into Pluto, which shatters. Aaron barely feels it.

The Fae appears again, but he's prepared now. With a thought, his war-harness becomes armour, and a punch that would have beheaded him again does nothing, the Fae's fist crunching against his faceplate in a mangled mess.

Normally, the Unseelie's presence makes all things built by civilisation fall apart, for they are bringers of chaos, but his armour was forged and enchanted by the Mother of the Forest, a hag just as wise, if not as powerful, as Merlin or Yaga.

As such, blows that would have pulverised the Earth fall harmlessly, soundlessly, as Aaron watches with faint amusement.

Snarling silently, the Fae creates a blade of shadow, and Aaron only stands still until he feels it split his armour. It laughs at his perceived retreat, reshaping the blade into throwing knives, so Aaron decides to make it choke on its laugh.

His harness can create any weapon or tool. And, in this modern age, robots and constructs are often thought of as such. The armour peels off, leaving only a thin layer that, through the Mother's magic, restores itself, becoming armour again. The discarded material becomes an automaton, identical to Aaron in shape and strength. The Fae scoffs, then growls as the process repeats, both Aaron and the construct shedding a layer to make two more automatons. Then, four more. Eight. Sixteen.

Tens of trillions of automatons quickly fill the void between Pluto's remains, growing more numerous every instant. Aaron knows he could drown the universe in constructs if he wished. There is no need for that.

Both he, without boosting his strength, and they are powerful enough to punch the Earth in half, or turn it to ash with a firebreath.

Grinning under his helmets, Aaron turns his armour to iron, while its enchantment keep it just as durable as before. The constructs mirror him, rushing the Fae as it screams in frustration and anger.

***
The problem with aberrants, the Shaper seethes as it directs the Unscarred towards the intruder, is that they always have to play by their own rules.

Take this ferroallergic specimen, for example. It entered the Collective's domain despite the invisible anti-teleportation screens, the shield that splits unauthorised visitors infinitely and scatters them across the multiverse, and the defenders and drones.

It seems immune to esoteric effects. That is not a problem. The Unscarred is, too, a reversal of the quantum experiment making its existence and nature an unchangeable fact. So is the rationaliser project, meant to ground out magic and its effects in large areas.

The Unscarred teleports next to it, fist raised and clenched, striking hard enough to shatter Earth and shake the sun from core to surface. The Fae turns, grinning, punching its arm to red mist, and leaving an immense hole in its chest.

Aberrants, the Shaper thinks as it shakes its metaphorical head.

The Collective's realm is built on, in and around Earth's core. As the Unscarred's machines shape themselves into a new arm and filling for its chest, the Shaper wonders how moronic you would have to be, as a Fae, to fight on a sphere of iron, which its yoctomachines are already harvesting and shaping into weapons.

The Fae's smirk fades at the Unscarred's new body parts. "We were not told...how did you do that?"

"Yoctomachines, aberrant!"

***
Breakout grins under her balaclava at every punch that rocks her. The dickless bitch she's fighting is swinging hard enough to make poor abusive Mother Earth a new asteroid belt, but that's no problem. Breakout has always risen to the task.

Her power is breaking free of restriction, anything preventing her from doing something, and it works passively. What is preveting her from surviving its strikes? Body too weak? Become more durable.

Breakout is always strong enough to stomp the States into dust and outpace lasers, but this pointy-eared fucker is way stronger than her baseline. Stupidly faster, too. So, her power made her better.

It has always saved her ass, back when she was a dumb lil' bitch in a neighbourhood where a mouthy black chick being the strongest around rubbed people the wrong way. She bullshitted herself into being with an older white mage, to bury the hatchet and lower the tensions. That had been a few decades after the Shattering, with racism still rampant.

The guy had promised she'd become unable to live without or keep her mind around him, and had put a spell on her that had almost made that promise reality. Her power had manifested to remove the restriction of her life and mind depending on him, in time to smash his skull in.

Since then, she'd entered FREAKSHOW(Federal Resources for the Elimination And Killing of Hostile Supernatural Organisms and Weapons-they'd come up with the acronym first) to prevent such things from happening to anyone else. She was really thankful when people had stopped letting stupid shit like race, gender and religion separate them, and instead focused on integrating supernaturals into society, and killing the bad ones.

From outside, the fight looks almost absurd: a dreadlocked woman of average height, if obviously fit and muscled, wearing thick boots, jeans and a ragged blue hoodie, wielding a metal pipe against a muscular Fae so tall she barely reaches his chest.

The pipe is another thing her power helps with, making it durable enough to withstand her strength, so she doesn't have to fight unarmed.

Breakout has smashed the walking refrigerator to red mist several times, and that's when her power gets off its ass to remove the restriction preventing her from winning: her pipe isn't made of iron.

The yamadium pipe changes makeup just in time for her to break the long-haired cocksleeve in half with a laugh. Then, before its halves hit the ground, Breakout pats her jeans pocket, and realises someone, somehow, lifted her wallet when shevwas returning from work.

"Can't have shit in Detroit..."She grumbles, stomping her way through the Fae, pipe slung over one shoulder.

Breakout is angry. This is nothing unusual. She is, however, about to live up to the epithet tattooed on her knuckles. It's ambiguous whether 'worst bitch' refers to herself or the people she punches, but then, they're left pretty ambiguous themselves.

"Yo, rat fodder." Breakout flips the Fae's mangled torso onto its back with a yamadium-toed boot, looking down into its asshole of a face. "Whatever fuckwit sent you should've remembered this real quick, after they were done jackin' off to themselves: I'm like a philosophy book. Whatever bitch meets me suffers an existential crisis."

Then, smashing him into paste, for real this time, Breakout saunters off, whistling tunelessly.

***
The walls of Hades are larger and tougher than any planet. This does not prevent Asterion from pulverising a hole dwarfing Earth through one as he dashes through it, giving Cerberus a curt nod. The dog yawns, tongues hanging out, knowing there's no stopping the man-bull, and there hasn't been for millennia.

Asterion-not the minotaur, not the bull of Minos, he has never been his son or property-spent his first life as a glorified walking stage prop in the play of Theseus' story. After the demigod killed him, he got sent to Tartarus, where he tormented and was tormented in turn.

Eventually, Hades saw his skill, and made him a torturer, letting him eat cannibals abd maneaters, in a fit of irony. Asterion glutted himself on the evil souls, becoming powerful enough to punch planets to dust and brawl with Heracles, but that was only a quarter of the transformation.

Minos has absorbed the powers, skills and memories of those he has eaten, becoming a mage, were, and so, so much more. He has also become able to dial up his strength, speed and durability endlessly, on a whim. Finally, he has become so sufussed with sin only people without evil in their heart can harm him, the evil failing however strong or esoteric their attacks.

Asterion's first deed after Hades 'accidentally' opened the gates of the Underworld for him, centuries ago, was to find and punish the gods responsible for his existence. Poseidon, for his rage at Minos not sacrificing the Cretan Bull to him, and Aphrodite, for making Pasiphae fall in love with him, like a...a...

Asterion shakes his head as he leaps a distance that would take an anvil nine days to fall in a hundredth of a heartbeat. His mother is dead and happy, sane. Let her rest. The guilty have been punished, though not made humbler. They are gods, after all.

Asterion is a member of the Aegis Adamantine, Greece's supernatural defence agency. It is Eidolon, one of his oldest colleagues, who calls him to Earth through the bond they formed decades ago(even after turning to eating criminals, he never got over, heh, eating women).

Minos arrives on the shores of Crete to see a woman who is not a woman. Eidolon looks up at him, her clasically pretty marble features made even more beautiful by her genuinely fond smile.

"Aster." She says, already using her copying power to imitate his traits. Two iterations of his powerset are always useful.

"Eidi. The emergency?"

"It will not arrive for a few minutes. When it does, it will be in Athens."

"It always is..."

"Are you getting cold hooves from visiting your enemy's city?" She teases, head tilted to one side, smile widening.

"Pah! It's always nice to see where his father fell to death after the moron forgot to replace his sail." If you put Aegeus' organs in a new body, would it be a Father of Theseus Paradox? "Why'd you call me? Lowering your standards again?"

Eidolon shakes her head, shoulder-length locks swaying as if they were hair. "Don't put yourself down again..."

"I'd always go down on-for you." He replies, dropping a heavy wink. Honestly, a freak like him making a woman smile in exasperation as opposed to scream in horror is reward enough. The fact she was built to help people only makes him more self-conscious. The last time one did, it was Pasiphae before his hunger, unable to be sated by her breast milk, human food or grass, had driven him to eat her guards and his minders.

"I'm sure. You look...different."

"Do I?" He thinks he looks the same as always. Head and shoulders above humans, broad, body covered in coarse black hair. Backwards-jointed, hooved legs. A tail that is always swishing in anticipation of bloodshed, or in joy at it. Ivory horns covered in the blood of the youths he has eaten, which will never dry. One of them was broken in half by Theseus, and Asterion wouldn't heal it if he could. He can and has healed from far worse, including his body's quarks being scattered across realities, but the reminder of his defeat remains.

A spiked nose rings twitches at every-unnecessary-breath, making sure Minos is never truly calm or unhurt. His torturers put it on when he fell in Tartarus, and, just like the broken horn, it cannot be altered.

"Yes. Your eyes are...blazing."

Ah. It is because of the recent batch of cannibal tribes he has eaten. The Tartarus Engine, as he is known for his ever-growing power, sometimes shows when he has eaten recently through such unintenional displays.

"All the better to see you, my dear." He purrs huskily, leaning forward to place a hand on her waist, and lowering it. Eidolon's stone dress is part of her body. She feels every touch on-

"Seconds until arrival." She says curtly, walking away from him. Already, she is tapping into her copy of his powers, and imitating several other beings. His arcane sense can tell: the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, Typhon...

Much like Samuel Shiftskin, one of his few and best friends, who can imitate and combine the traits of any beast, Eidolon is a signatory if the Syncretic Treaty. Even existing at her strongest is seen as an act of war, unless creation is under attack from overwhelmimg outside forces.

"Iron, Aster." She adds, not looking at him. Asterion nods, asking for an explanation. With a pulse of magic, his flesh becomes iron, while retaining its might.

But, as they dash towards Athens, Asterion can only wonder what is so dangerous, that Eidolon is channeling such power without the pantheons coming down on her head...

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 2

***
The Seelie Fae, depending who, how and when you ask, will tell you their name is derived from or has inspired the word 'silly': happy, carefree, harmless. Whether they are being ironic when they say this is up to debate. They have also been known to claim their name and the word evolved together, but separate, without influencing each other.

At the moment, I wasn't sure which version I agreed with. The Unseelie didn't look unhappy, and definitely didn't sound sad.

Almost all Fae were inhumanly beautiful-as in, inhuman and beautiful. Barring Puck, and some of the more monstrous Unseelie, most Fae had to shapeshift in order to appear anything other than perfect.

Not a problem I'd ever shared. Some people suffer from success, others without it.

Most of the Unseelie who filled the training room, walking from the ceiling to the floor on air, or stopping halfway through to stand on nothing, were grey-haired and grey-skinned, like me, and black eyed, like I used to be, before the Devil gave me my mind back, and threw me out of limbo and back into unlife, though not after I mistook God for him...to His face.

Not my proudest, or smartest, moment. When I concentrated and strained my pure white, godly eyes, I could see one staring back with cold amusement, yellow and black slit like the serpent its owner had once shifted into.

'One eye on you, one on the world', its unblinking, gleaming stare seemed to say.

Not all Unseelie looked like pointy-eared strigoi, though: some had dark-green or black, cracked flesh that resembled wood, with emerald mana shining through the gaps, toothless mouths spread in permanent smiles, hornlike branches rising through manes of leaves. And these were just the humanlike ones; I could point out at least half a dozen redcaps, looking closer to red-skulled, shaved, needle-fanged chimps than anything human, clawed hands closed around the hafts of blades or scythes. A nuckelavee, the taloned hands of its human torso brushing the floor while the horse half paced, skinless flesh twitching, glared at us with a single, balefully-glowing red eye set in the centre of its metre-long skull. That was not the worst, though.

In the middle of the Fae, between the nuckelavee and three redcaps, something that resembled shadows they way I resembled corpses stood. The featureless, almost oval silhouette did not move, but every time my attention shifted even slightly, it seemed to come closer to me, or...

No, wait. Was the room getting smaller?

I blinked, shaking my head, then looked with my new sight, remembering Szabo's jabs. His words had irked me, too.

Mimir's sight revealed a whole bunch of frankly useless information. I didn't need to know the ancestry and childhood of every Fae present, how many people the redcaps had bled to live up to their names, or what the nuckelavee didn't do to people it caught(very few things; in fact, given how drooled dripped from its horse head's mouth, and how something that was definitely not drool dripped from the other head, it was pretty excited to get its claws on us). But the shadow...

You know those 'nothing to see here' people sometimes ironically place around? Mimir's sight might as well have been showing me one, for all I learned. In fact, according to my godly sight, the shadow not only had no future, it had no past, either, nor was it even present in the multiverse, the aether between realities, where the dead who prayed to no god went, or anywhere else. I could only see what it...wasn't.

It was Diego who broke the Mexican standoff. His sword, wide as my hand, its edge dripping ruby blood, trembled in his grip, as if he'd been seized by uncontrollable rage. With clenched fangs, he lowered it, the tip pointing down, a scarlet droplet gathering upon it, milimetres from the floor.

"I can't believe this..." The vamp said in a heartbroken tone, head lowered, face hidden in the shadow of his hat, before he stood up straighter with a snap, eyes glowing red as they bored into the Unseelie. "Do you have any idea how much we'll have to pay these bums extra for repelling an attack right before Christmas!?"

And the blood drop fell.

The Fae looked at him in disbelief for half a microsecond. Then, before the other half elapsed, they leapt at us, moving so fast lightning a ligthning bolt would have looked sluggish.

I knew, because I created several in an attempt to slow them down. My strigoi nature gave me dominion over weather, and, over the years, my skill had grown enough that I could summon aspects of it without manipulating the weather around me itself.

Nearly thirteen hundred times faster than sound, the bolts flashed electric-blue or ivory-white as the streaked through the air, only for even the slowest Fae, the human-looking ones, to casually sidestep them when they were a hand's breadth from their skin. A few of the smug fucks even backflipped over them, and one, using the connection with the natural world all Fae had, whatever their Court, waited until a bolt was nearly touching her black eye, then, smiling, leapt above and onto it, running towards us on the still-flying bolt like an acrobat on a tightrope.

Alright, new plan. I'd hoped to at least blind them, even for an instant, until someone faster than me to get something made of iron we could use to beath them to death with, and make it stick.

I cursed myself from letting my cross behind in my room before coming to train, not wanting to give my partners a chance to snatch it away and use it against me.

There was probably a metaphor for everything important to me, somewhere in there.

I leapt at the acrobat Fae just as she willed the air around her into becoming armour. From the corner of my eye, I saw Radu, this time in hybrid form, holding off four of the redcaps, while the fifth, short legs wrapped around his spine, alternated between punching his skull to splinters or ripping away chunks of flesh the size of dinner plates every microsecond, for all that the were was just as durable as me. Fangs gleaming, Radu jumped onto his back, trapping the redcap between his body and the yamadium floor, while tearing at the other four Unseelie with his clawed feet and hands.

The sixth redcap had jumped into the midst of the other Luna agents, and was currently in the middle of ripping a wereotter in half every time the agent tried to get her paws on it, while its stubby legs kicked a group of wererats to pieces whenever they tried to tear at it. The weres healed just as fast as they were destroyed, but were making no progress.

Meanwhile, the nuckelavee, who was either a jailbird or a football fan, had decided to knock the biggest motherfucker's block off, as a result getting into a ripping and tearing contest with Thundertail. Though far smaller than the dragon, the nuckelavee gave as good as it got, hooves and fists clashing with claws, wings and a trainlike tail, every exchange packing enough power to vapourise mountains. It was only Thundertail's will that kept the hundreds of gigatons in every strike from damaging Romania as a side-effect, though I'd be damned to say why the Unseelie was worrying about collateral. Eventually, the dragon, having had enough, flexed the belly the nuckelavee had ripped a bus-sized hole into, sending the Unseelie into the air. Before it could use its power to make a foothold, Thundertail spat a bolt of unnaturally-powerful lightning at it, blasting it to vapour, just like he had done to me during our spar.

It didn't do anything, of course. Unless hurt by iron, Fae could regenerate from being erased from existence, having the quantum foam making them up divided across endless realities, or even being retconned from the timeline, just like strigoi could, unless harmed by holy power. However, Thundertail's breath attack meant the nuckelavee regenerated in midair, only to be blasted to steam once more. Grinning with satisfaction while his belly healed, Thundertail looked ready to keep this up all night.

I was almost close enough to touch the Fae by the time I processed all of this, but it was not to be. Instead of the grey-armoured female I had expected to clash with, a black gauntlet smashed into my nose from somewhere, sending me through the sparring room's ceiling, as well as every other floor between it and Omu base's hollow mountain peak, then the rock itself, and into the air, where my passage dispersed the thick clouds filling the night sky for tens of kilometres around.

And, dammit, my nose wasn't healing. It actually hurt, too. The fu-

The gauntlet smashed into my back this time, sending me flying faster than my dead eyes could process. By the time the blurs left my sight, I realised I wasn't on Earth anymore, given the thick, yellowish clouds I split with my passage, before smashing through several volcanoes, the force turning them to clouds of dark smoke.

This was not how I wanted to get acquainted with Venus. The planet was infinitely uglier than the goddess it was most commonly associated with, (not that I used to have a crush on her...oh, shut up. Everyone did, especially since she stopped being a vain, vengeful hellion) and my impromptu, unasked-for makeup session didn't do it any favour.

The bruises my head got from vapourising the volcanoes healed instantly, but the pain between my shoulder blades didn't vanish. The reason for it quickly appeared to stand a few metres before me.

"David Dravich?" The Fae asked in a melodic voice, a smile quirking his lips in such a way I could barely wait to rip his tongue out and swap it with his junk. So tall I barely reached the bottom of his broad, black-armoured chest, the Fae's long, silver hair was pulled back by a simple obsidian circlet, framing his grey, angular face. His voice was as beautiful as any human singer's, despite the fact Venus' atmosphere, not to mention the roaring volcanoes in the background, should have made it inaudible.

"Who the fuck told you to call me that?"

"Ah. It was true, then. The truth angers you."

"Your mom, I see. Tell her only she's allowed to taunt me, and that's if she asks my girlfriend first. Don't worry, they'll have time to talk while Mia pegs her-"

The punch broke my arm, and almost tore my shoulder out of its socket, so I forced myself smile up at pretty boy. "Aww, jealous? Calm your tits, I'm sure you and mommy will get to maintain the family wreath when my zmeu is done fisting you-"

A spiked knee broke my jaw, so my laugh was decidedly uglier than usual. "It's fine! I don't kinkshame, bro..."

"You know I could kill you any moment." The Fae sniffed. "Have you heard of me, Dravich?"

"Didn't I see you behind that gloryhole at-"

His slap sent half my fangs flying, along with flecks of congealed blood. I landed on all fours. "Man, you sucked, and not in a good way. I thought maybe I liked guys too, but you convinced me I don't. Guess you scared me straight!"

"Quiet." He snapped, one moment looking down at me from several steps away, the next hefting me above him with one gauntleted hand. Its touch burned me, the jagged symbols carved into it so dark light was drained into them, but it was nothing compared to the pain of my ruined face. Not that I'd let this bitch see it. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of beating me mentally, too, fucking dammit.

And where the hell were Szabo and Diego, anyway? They were our heaviest hitters.

As it turned out, while the vamp would only tell us what he went through after the Fright, while we were counting casualties, the strigoi wasn't far away.

"I've never been able to stand creatures like you." The Fae closed his eyes with a weary sigh. "Acting defiant when they can't achieve anything...what are you hoping to do?"

"Certainly not you, but can I ask for your name?" I wiggled bloodied eyebrows, and my half-toothless grin widened when one of his eyes twitched.

"In the crude language of the Island of Tin, I would be Coldhold, Count of Greyreach. A county, I suppose, in our realm." Coldhold snickered to himself. "Speaking to a dead man, who's about to die again...I swear, I am turning as stupid as you, Dravich. Would you prefer to die like a worm, or on your feet? But remember: whatever your answer, I can kill you with my hands behind my back."

Coldhold only gripped my throat for a fraction of a microsecond longer, before I was sent flying from his grasp, and he turned, staggering, arms severed and gauntlets shattered at the elbows. They had been turned to red mist, but healed even faster than mine would have.

"What a coincidence~" A lilting voice spoke, and I couldn't believe I was thankful to hear it. "I can kill you with your hands behind my back, too!"

And, as a demonstration, Szabo leaned to one side, giving Coldhold a good look at his severed appendages. The Fae stared at him with disgust for a moment, before his face became a mask of disbelieving hatred.

"How?" He asked. "The shadow should have killed you!"

"Oh? The Bleeding Edge is taking care of it. They don't call him that because he's new, you know?" Szabo dropped me a wink, shifting from one leather-booted foot to the other. Snarling, Coldhold poured his will into the world around us, while leaping at Szabo with clenched fists.

But, without his holy gauntlets, it seemed he had no other means to damage the strigoi. Punches that would have shattered my skull only resulted in broken arms for the Fae, while spikes of rock, shaped from a country's worth of stone and shaped to an impossibly sharp and fine point, smashed against Szabo's eyes so fast they glowed white from the heat, only to shatter, not even piercing them. Space bent to reveal portals into churches, mosques and sites of worship so alien or unholy I had to avert my gaze, while Coldhold grasped the air inside them with his will, sending holy objects flying at Szabo, who laughed, disappearing and reappearing faster than I could see, hand buried into the Fae's neck to smash his face into the holy projectiles instead. Cursing in outrage, the Fae tried to bend time and make himself faster, only for Szabo to punch him to mist every time, shattering his concentration. Attempts to erase the strigoi from existence only left him standing, naked and laughing, in huge, unnaturally-smooth pits that extended past the horizon, his nature making Szabo a fact of existence.

Finally, Szabo reached into the chest hole left by his suicide, grabbing something I hadn't seen until then, something that gleamed dully. Smiling, Szabo flashed around Coldhold several times, smashing my cross over his face, flattening it until it was uglier than mine. Then, he cut the Count's legs in half at the knees.

"No need to have you bleed out. You have answers I just know you are eager to share." Szabo mutter, looking down at the mutilated Fae, who spat at him. Coldhold spat up at the strigoi, who, laughing, used his wind manipulation to send it back the Count's throat. Before Coldhold could even grimace in disgust, Szabo smiled widely, grabbing his tongue.

"You want to swap fluids~?" The strigoi asked, before ripping his tongue out and shoving it down Coldhold's throat. Then, not giving him time to spit it out, Szabo did it again, and again, until the Count's bloated throat burst, allowing a mass of bloodied grey tongues to fall onto his chest. "Should I kiss you again, darling?"

Not waiting for Coldhold to regenerate his throat and answer, Szabo grabbed the Fae's silver hair, ripping more and more out each time it healed, and wrapping the clumps around the Count's leg stumps, to slow his bleeding.

"I know it's a hair-thin excuse...for bandages. But..." Szabo shrugged. "Dare I hope you will tell me how and why you attacked Omu base? I know the Unseelie can ignore any defences or means of detection created by civilisation, for you are bringers of chaos. But the wards? The spells?"

"Why don't you ask your toy over there?" Coldhold jerked his head at me, causing the strigoi to laugh. "He seem to have an answer for everyone, and a need to talk and talk."

"Oh, my..." Szabo giggled, eyes closed, smacking my bloodied cross against one palm. "You think I see David as a source of amusement because I try to make him stop pretending he's a hairless monkey? Can you, truly, be as stupid as you look? Have I found the missing link between dense and misinformed fools?"

"Mock me all you want. In the end, you will die as you fear, skinthief-unremembered by history, let alone anyone worthwhile."

Szabo laughed even louder now. "Look at you! You can only attempt to hurt me with words, and are failing even at that. Now...my question again. Will you tell us why and how you assaulted us? We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the haaaaard way~"

"Go to the hell you claim not to fear."

"And here I thought you had that dog in you, like me. But I was wrong. You're a bitch."

And, with a swipe of one arm, Szabo shattered Coldhold's remaining armour, leaving him defenceless but for a gambeson-like garment. That didn't last long, either, Szabo quickly shredding it into dust.

Shifting shape into something that made my eyes cross whenever I tried to look at or away from it, Szabo grabbed hold of the bare Fae, my cross held in an appendage the likes of which I'd never seen on Earth.

Coldhold didn't stop screaming for a long, long time.

***
The shadow, Diego decided, was much like common supernaturals: a law unto itself, telling the universe how it worked. While ordinary matter was erased when it passed through it, Diego's vampiric nature and sword let him touch and knock it around as if it was made of flesh, even though each touch left burns that did not heal.

Kind of like that song about skin. It was far less cheerful than the music Diego usually listened to, which was just a sign of how badly things were going, if he was thinking about it.

Though the shadow shifted mass constantly, Diego currently estimated it at about twelve trillion tons, given how it had quickly turned a mountain and the land around it into gravel by dropping onto it after he tackled it out of Omu base.

As if such weight mattered to any monster worth their salt...

With a cheerful grin, Diego rushed the shadow, kicking it off Earth before it could attempt to erase him. Then, when it was close to the moon, Diego intercepted and tackled it into the sun, for all that it weighed more than a hundred mountains, so fast light would take more than an hour to catch up to them.

Sunlight sealed away his esoteric powers, but he needed somewhere he could cut loose against this unbeing. Besides...he had some tricks up his veins.

Diego's healing, much like his senses and physical prowess, was always at his disposal. So, when he cut his gut open, the cloud of gore hanging in the void, it closed up instantly, just in time for him to repeat.

Diego leapt, legs crossed under him, allowing a tendril of shadow to pass harmlessly, erasing hundreds of thousands of kilometres of solar plasma.

What a dim fellow...

Diego cut himself open again and again, until he was surrounded in a sphere of gore that shielded him from the sunlight. Then, his powers returned, Diego grasped hold of all his blood at once, drawing it out only for it to refill instantly. Then, again.

And again.

And again...

Vampires gained power by drinking blood. However, even when losing it, they regenerated just as powerful as before being harmed. It was not the liquid's presence in their veins, but the act of consuming, that increased their powers.

Which meant that, when Diego was done bleeding enough to cover the sun, turning it red, he didn't lose anything, and gained much.

The shadow tried to erase him or his sea of blood, but Diego, using his weather manipulation, grabbed hold of the solar winds. It didn't matter that they were hardly a real weather phenomenon. It was all about symbolism.

Spinning the star's surface like a disc, Diego mixed the plasma with his blood, beginning to shape his weapon.

The shadow lunged at him, thousands of times faster than light, and the vampire raised his sword, grasping it in both hands.

Then, he dispersed he blood he had shaped to look like himself, and struck the shadow from behind.

The force of the strike was such that its shockwave split the sun, sending the halves millions of kilometres away. The sun gods would be mad, but...he was saving the world. They'd understand, or kill him, thus freeing him from worries.

While the shadow spun in the void, reeling from the strike, Diego grasped the blood sea he had shed, spinning it into a spear that glowed with veins of plasma. The blood would allow it to touch the shadow, and the plasma...would add a little power.

Diego's projectile smashed into the shadow's 'head', splitting it like a rotten melon. But, before the creature dispersed, it flung a part of itself at Diego, faster than it had ever moved before(had it worked itself into a rage?), cutting him in half at the waist.

As he spun in place, drifting towards nothing and bleeding out, Diego laughed drily to himself.

This was like back when he'd been left stranded on that nameless island off the coast of South America, before his sire had turned him to save him from dying of thirst, and instead giving him an endless one.

But, really, the vampiress just hadn't wanted to entertain herself with a dead man. She liked them lively, as she had told him.

His sire had never asked for his consent, especially once his pleas and prayers, followed by curses, had made it clear he hadn't given it.

It had taken him decades to feel human again, let alone like a man.

'Smile and wave, nino.' His mother used to tell him. 'You are not smart, or strong, or brave. But you make others laugh. Do not let them see your tears. No one likes a sad jester'.

Sometimes, Diego wondered what had become of his sire.

Now, he just hoped he wouldn't be found by another monster.

***
"Gerald Reyes, you say? And Sir Ronald, too?"

"The Dragonlayer, yes." The old, captive mage's wrinkled face twisted into a smile. "Grandfather bless him and his wife."

"For giving you research subjects? I mean, unofficial grandchildren?"

"I love all my Knights, and their children, too, uncle."

"And why were they here? Both ARC and New Camelot, I mean. Talk about rivalry..." Especially when the UK's supernatural defence agency had been founded at roughly the same time as ARC's Camelot division, exacerbating the problem caused by similar names, chosen in ignorance of each other.

"The aim is actually collaboration, I think. They plan to break Nimue's prison, so I may walk the world once more." The mage's human mask slipped, his true features casting no shadow, for even the darkness was afraid of some things, even when-especially when-they had turned away from it to serve the light.

"That would be something to see. Maybe you can get rid of the ghostwriter, and finish the Hero's Handbook yourself! It's hilarious, really. I'm sure the Roundhouse would agree."

New Camelot was nicknamed thus both because of how their headquarters looked, and to differentiate between them and the ARC division meant to integrate supernaturals into society, like Arthur's knights had once done.

The mage chuckled. "Perhaps. But tell me more about your new favourite, uncle. I see all there was, is and might be, and your eye is always on him."

"My mark, too."

"Indeed. So...?"

"So. He is interesting. Makes me laugh almost as much as little Faust did, when I sent him Mephistopheles as a poisoned gift."

"Are you planning to paint a bedroom's walls with this one's remains, too?"

"Why, do you want him?"

"...Hmm."

"And you say he should be worried about me..."A great, horned head shook fondly, before its owner squeezed his nephew's scarred hand with something a human might have perceived as affection. "Goodbye, Merlin."

"For now." The greatest cambion mage to ever live agreed, knowing his father was seething at his son's closeness to his lord.

"Interesting, indeed..." The mage smiled to himself, morningstar eyes twinkling. Almost as interesting as when his uncle had taken the name of an old, petty king no one remembered anymore, save as his.

There was a lesson to be learned there. He just hoped David Silva wouldn't become a stepping stone for someone greater before he truly opened and learned to see with his old friend's eyes.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 3

***
Say whatever you will about Coldhold: he never once screamed in fear as Szabo's monstrous form worked him over. He screamed in pain at the cross' touch, and cursed the strigoi in disgust, but received only laughs and comments in a conversional tone.

"Thank you for screaming! If you stayed silent while I touched you, I'd have felt like I was with Csilla again. And trust me, you're way too skinny to remind me of my wife..."

"Do you know sign language? It's for the interrogation, see? I'm meeting my great-grandbrats this Chrismas, and I want to give them your ears! I've been bringing bodyparts home for years, and I hope we'll get enough to build something soon..."

"No, no, stay on your side. The writhing looks better this way..."

"David, want to get in on this?" Szabo smiled at me without turning, instead forming a mouth on something I supposed was his shoulder.

"No thanks. You seem to have things well in...under control." I said, trying to ignore the voice in my head screaming for the Fae's torture. My strigoi side was being pretty insistent, too.

"Oh, brother..." Szabo was now looking humanoid enough again for me to tell he was shaking his head. "You have literally nothing to lose."

"Yeah, well.." I winced, getting to my feet with a creak. Damn, but I actually sounded my age. My broken bones still sent stabs of pain through me with every move, but I noticed that, for example, brushing the ground with my broken arm neither exacerbated nor lessened the pain. My flesh was still numb to sensation, besides the parts the Count had shattered with his gauntlets.

"Maybe I'd get over there if twitching didn't make my brain riot." I told Szabo, looking at the bruises mottling my grey skin with dismay. In the last eight years, only a couple things had managed to leave their mark on my body. The noose I used to hang myself, for one. Chernobog's slap, which had knocked out fangs, for another.

Well...the second one had come with a silver lining, I suppose. Mia had once claimed she could give me a French kiss without me parting my teeth, before showing how flexible her tongue was.

But, now? Now I was not only as ugly as my worse half, I was also half a cripple, and you could fly a paper plane through my mouth.

What a great Christmas gift for everyone. I was sure they'd love to see me getting fucked up permanently like this.

"What, is this the first time you've been truly wounded?" Szabo asked, now back to his human shape. "I'm baffled, with how insufferable you are."

I gave him the most deadpan look I could manage with my messed-up face, receiving only a steady stare and slight raise of his eyebrows in response.

"The cause is the cure, David." Szabo said after a few moments, rubbing his belly. If not for everything else about him, his round gut, covered in wiry grey hair, would have looked comical.

"The hell? Are you saying this bitch's gear had a healing function? The gear you shattered?"

Szabo looked at me once more, then at Coldhold, receiving a cold, hateful glare. Thankfully, the Fae now looked as bad as I did. Then, he pursed his lips, clasping his hands in front of himself.

"I will pretend he knocked your brain loose, brother."

"The fuck's that supposed to mean!? Szabo!" I called after him, walking closer, broken arm swining limply at my side. "Don't you dare pull that cryptic bullshit on me again." I growled, putting a hand on his round shoulder. Szabo held my gaze, worrying his lower lip with his fangs. Was he keeping his anger under control? Or his laughter?

"You know what happened the last time people withheld something important for me." I continued.

"When you learned who your real daddy is? I think I want to hear that story again."

There was no point to trying to wipe the smile off his face. Even on my best day, and this was turning out to be one of the worse ones.

"Yes, it's almost as funny as living through it. I meant when you, Reem, and every damn god out there looked at Chernobog coiling up inside and did jackshit."

"Well said, every damn god. I'm glad you're starting to damn yours, too." Szabo's smile widened when I staggered back, claws digging through my palms s I clenched my fists.

"That's not...you know fucking well I wasn't including Him-"

"Why?"

I searched for words a few times, trying to say anything that wasn't chockfull of invective.

"God doesn't intervene in the lives of His people because He values free will." Look at me, deftly ignoring his question.

Szabo nodded. "Ah, right. The fact the Headhunt resulted in a rather ardent worshipper of his gaining Mimir's perception was just a happy little accident, as Ross would've said."

"Are you scared He'll ask me to use it on you?" I taunted, trying not to sound angry.

"Terrified. But tell me, if he is all-knowing, all -powerful  and all-loving, how come there is suffering?"

"I told you, free will-"

"Hmm? He knows the pain everyone will go through and does nothing? Even I could respect that callousness. Or maybe he's just strong enough to seem almighty, but only knows so much? Are you happy praying to an overpowered idiot?"

"You have children, right?" I asked.

"They died long ago. Though not because I stood by and watched when I could have done literally anything to help."

"But you were a father. If you saw your child about to make a mistake you knew would hurt, would you stop them, or let them learn a lesson?"

Coldhold, who seemed to have grown bored while we debated the Problem of Evil, opened his mouth, only for Szabo to stomp down on it without looking.

"Your example does not work. And you know why? Because it's insane to punish a child for something you knew they'd do and which you could have prevented. Go find Adam's soul and ask him, or ring up old Scratch. He's got his eye on you."

"These examples don't work either. God-"

"Sends people to Hell because they commit sins he knows about, can prevent, and condemns, sins which, allegedly, only became possible because of something he also knew would happen and could have prevented."

"We're going in circles." I shook my head. Maybe, on another day, I-shit! "Szabo, were the Unseelie dead or incapacitated when you left Earth?"

"My stars, David! You finally remembered you're supposed to protect your world and colleagues after you stopped being offended at your god's hypocrisy being pointed out!" Szabo clapped thrice, slowly, but I slapped his handdown when he began to crookedly cross himself. There was only so much blasphemy I could take.

"Don't make me find out what these eyes can really do." I warned him, gripping his wrist. He didn't stop smiling.

"Using a false, pagan god's power to crush Christianity's enemy? Ah, the beauty of religious appropriation..."

***
Szabo, I learned, needed just over three minutes to fly from Earth to Venus. He gripped Coldhold by the throat as we flew, and me by my healthy hand, because I was far too slow to keep up with him.

I bet I was more embarrassed than the Fae. And not just because of how much Szabo had rattled me, again, without actually doing anything horrifying.

Was my faith that weak? Or was I a moron for thinking enough faith left no room for doubt?

But God  had intervened, in the end. He had...had offered to send me to the afterlife. Was I special in His eyes, for some unfathomable reason? Did every dead Christian get a second chance at life? And if not, why was I more deserving?

The thought made me feel almost as guilty as the one that maybe it wasn't so bad if God had influence over the user of Mimir's power, rather than another deity or pantheon.

I...I'd have to talk to Aya Reem. She had experience balancing work and faith.

After Szabo dropped me off at the remains Omu base-the Unseelie had been killed or driven off, but only Thundertail, drooling bloody froth, and a wild-eyed weredeer had survived. The rest lay in twisted poses, impaled by silver blades or spikes, or crushed under silver bludgeons. The necromancers and their servants had been torn apart, never to rise again.

"Take him to a Mobius cell in another base, balaur." Szabo said, tossing Coldhold to Thundertail, who snapped up the Fae with a vengeful look.

Mobius cells simulated the dimensionless Outer Void, and became more harder to break out of the more a prisoner tried. There was nothing to strike or warp, and teleportation and portals simply failed. It was rumoured Fixer used them as brainstorming rooms, because mundane reality was too malleable for him.

I could believe that. The Fixer spent most of his time outside the multiverse, because he could turn it into an eldritch nightmare, or nothing, with a stray thought.

"Szabo?" I asked after he blurred back into my sight, in a new set of leathers over an ARC shirt. I had to wonder if he had gone to Hungary to get dressed, since Omu base had been destroyed, the mountain cracked open like a rotten tooth. "Is there anything I can help with?"

"Yes." He adjusted his coat's collar. "Grit your teeth, brother, or find a way to heal those wounds. We're doing cleanup."

"Where? All of Ilfov?"

"The world, David."

***
The Happy Cemetery, the dust of the dead remade as golems to tear apart their families.

The Redeemer, reshaped into a fiendish monstrosity that destroyed half the churches in Brazil, before a joint effort by ARC and the Circle Bizarre had stopped and returned it to its proper state.

The Great Wall, cracked open to let out the vengeful echoes of the walled-in, sacrificed builders.

Krampus and his counterparts, manifesting to rampage.

And so, so much more...so much worse...Aokigahara appearing over east Asia again, the things under the pyramids rising up in the desert, in the jungle, under the sea...

By the time I got home while the higher-ups tried to get their act together, I could almost fool myself into thinking I was physically tired. I didn't have to fake mental exhaustion, though.

Mia looked worse than I felt, which was saying something.

My zmeu's temporary work for ARC had turned into a job, though I'd be hard pressed to say if she was in for the thrill or to help people.

Not that I dared press her at the moment.

Mia had learned harnessing the magical power inherent to zmei to create constructs and powers by drawing shapes on air. I guess she hadn't found time to heal herself, though.

"Hey." Mia croaked, leaning down to kiss me with a mangled mouth. Her single eye gazed at me with worry, nerves growing in the other, empty socket as I watched.

"Don't worry." She grinned, all fangs, because there was nothing else. "You should have seen the other bitch."

"Are you sure you weren't poisoned, or cursed? Or-"

Sigh. "They checked me, David, before sending me home. Didn't they do the same to you?"

"Even so..."

"I'm  fine." She insisted, lips beginning to grow back. "As you so often tell me. Healthy, too."

"As I so often tell you." I joked lamely. "The Drake base...how did you manage? Are you allowed to say?" I added, just as she shook her head, then sighed, shoulders sagging. "You're alive. That's enough for me."

"She just gotta be female, preferably alive." Mia grunted in a mock-dudebro voice, her contralto lending itself to imitating men. Her voice went from simply deep to 'motorbike', depending on her excitement, as I and my neighbours had learned.

"I mean, I wouldn't mind if you were undead, either..."

"Reaaaaly. What kind?"

"Hmm. Not a braineater. I don't have one around you, anyway."

"One head is sometimes enough, David." Mia smiled, putting a hand on my hip. It didn't stay there long.

"Why, thank you...um. I'm really happy to see you-"

"I can tell~"

"-but...is there something wrong with your power? Why not speed up the healing?"

"I'd rather try to heal you, darling."

I wasn't sure she could. That time she had sewed my head back on had been, well...a miracle. Both God and the Devil had been involved. Mia had essentially dropped out of college, though her ARC training made up for both her studies and lost job. I wasn't sure about her salary, but mine was well over a dozen times bigger than when I was a teacher, not counting the hazard pay for certain missions.

Lucas would have happily let her remain an employee and check in when she could, if not pay like she was working full-time, but Mia had refused, not wanting to get tangled up in too many things.

"Well," I smirked. "I've got this swelling that needs hands-on care. Anything you wanna watch before you play doctor?"

"You, stripping."

***
"Merry late Christmas, love." I muttered, standing up to stretch. The cleanup had taken up all of Christmas Eve, Christmas, and most of the following day, so that it was midnight by the time we got home.

Mia, lying on her back with her muscular arms crossed under her head, didn't reply, instead spitting a fireball that reshaped itself into a heart near the ceiling, briefly lighting up the dark room before being snuffed out by her will.

"Merry Christmas, David." Her smile quickly became sardonic. "As merry as I can feel sitting here like a moron while you limp around like a gimp."

"Mia..."

"Oh, shut up. What's my excuse for not being able to pull it off twice?"

"Not having God's help?"

Mia looked like she was about to say something very biting, before looking away. "What will you do while waiting for orders?"

"You, preferably..."I leaned to one side while I winked, dodging the thrown pillow. "I'll have to make up to my friends for missing Christmas. Pops, too."

"I wanted to meet Lucas before this clusterfuck." As good a word for it as any. We weren't sure how many millions had died in the Fright Before Christmas, as it was quickly becoming known, except several, probably in the double digits.

"I think he and his brothers will be together. They celebrated with their parents, remember? Maybe when I go to Lucian and Bianca, he'll also be present. I'll pass your thoughts along, if you're too tired."

"No. I want to come."

It took me a few moments to realise she wasn't just talking about the visit, and by then, I was on my back. Again.

If only all my problems were like this...

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 4

***
"Shit-!"

Startled, Mia rose off me, allowing me to roll over onto my back, then sit up. My zmeu's scarlet eyes darkened, a sign that she was looking at me as a whole, not just my body.

Well. Literally, I mean. She wasn't masochistic enough to be with me for my looks. I had firsthand experience with her tastes. Secondhand, too.

However, it seemed Mia didn't find anything wrong with my soul, because her eyes quickly returned to normal, even though they were still worried.

Hell, I was just glad she had both eyes back. If I could swear, there clearly was nothing wrong with me besides the usual.

"The sun..." I began, leaning awkwardly to try and gesture at the window, though it was kind of hard to do it around Mia's body.

"It's night, David." She said hesitatingly, as if worried I'd finally gone the bad kind of crazy. "The sun will be up in a few hours. What...?"

"When I was being mangled," Should I be worried by how hot I found her angry growl at the mention of me being hurt? "I saw...God, I'm not even sure I can say I saw it. My sight isn't that good. Not yet. Maybe I should eat more lifeforce..."

"David..."

"Right. Sorry. So, I think I saw something black flash over the sun, and remove a part of it, or-no, wait. I didn't."

"So you didn't see anything?" Mia asked, confused and more than a little frustrated. Not by my bumbling attempt at an explanation, but by the fact it seemed there wasn't anything she could do to help me.

"No, I didn't see it." I did, my strigoi side whispered smugly, its shapeless face becoming half-smirk in the back of my mind. And it was right, in a way. I hadn't seen or paid thought to whatever had happened on the sun, not consciously, but...but it had. Like when you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye, only for it to disappear when you turn to focus. Except, it seemed, I had an entire part of my mind dedicated to this. But why hadn't it said-

"Why didn't you ask?" It taunted, standing in front of me where my unlife had begun.

Ghencea, or, rather, the facsimile of it my worse half had built, looked blurry and indistinct, becoming featureless past the cemetery walls. Above, black shapes wept darker tears into a blazing white sky, while a shattered grey moon danced with itself and laughed, laughed, laughed, rocks the puppets of the nameless, unnameable thing that had crawled inside its core and hollowed it out. It looked up at me as it lowered its head, and nodded down at my strigoi side while it raised its body, returning its attention to its shell.

"Are you ever going to tell me what that is?" I asked, thumb pointing sideways at the moon besides us, and the shape that walked the sky beneath. "Is it some remain of Chernobog? A parting gift?"

"We are the only thing allowed inside ourselves." My instincts said, as if daring me to challenge them. Then, that smirk returned. "Except the zmeu, of course."

"Of course..." The fact it hadn't tried to do anything to Mia in our intimate moments unsettled me almost as much as if it had. But, despite its urges to break and dominate, my strigoi side had been surprisingly quiet, almost as if it was bidding its time.

"I didn't ask because, dammit, we soon had so much more bullshit to deal with." I didn't cross my arms. It would have made me seem defensive and whiny. More than I already was. "But why didn't I remember? If you saw it, and we're one, shouldn't I have seen it too?"

"Do humans remember to breathe? You don't pay attention to all of ourselves, human." Chuckling to itself, it stepped out of the shadow of the tree on which I had hanged myself, shifting shape just in time to disgust me. Instead of the usual white-eyed, ivory-fanged black silhouette that appeared in my mind, it looked like a twisted approximation of my dying human self: tall, gaunt and tired-looking, with bloodshot eyes and a face that had darkened from lack of oxygen. My tattered grey suit hung off it loosely, while my noose surrounded its neck like a tie.

Short brown hair fluttered in a sudden breeze that sounded like the moans of the dead, but I knew there was no one here besides us and the thing in the moon. The graves were just decorations, props. My cracked headstone was the only one with anything close to detail, and I knew that, if I looked into my grave, another mockery of my human body would have stared up with empty eyes and a grimace locked by rigor mortis.

"I saw the sun die." My strigoi side whispered with an excited little grin that made my human face far uglier than it had been in life. "It is not long from now, human. Just a few eons...what is that, to what we will become?"

"Oooh!" I held up a hand, wiggling my fingers mockingly, sick of its smug gloating that somehow revealed nothing. "Whose crystal balls did you lick, that you can see the future? And how did you do it without me noticing?"

"You are an idiot." It replied, now back to its usual inkblot appearance. Hands sunk into the pockets of a barely-discernible jacket, while the noose swayed over its chest like a pendulum. "We have a god of knowledge's eyes, and yet you barely use them to look beyond the present. But the sight is here, buried in the core of our being, and am I not so, so close to that? I would bet I'm better with Mimir's perception than you'll ever be by yourself."

"Then what happened to the sun?"

"Nothing that wasn't quickly undone. You might have noticed the solar system not falling into disarray. Remember the thing wielding that little vampire? You can thank it, from a distance, if you hate yourself."

"What? I don't understand-"

-anything?

I blinked, back in the physical world, and no time seemed to have passed. Mia was in the same position before my little trip to the centre of my mind, wearing the same expression.

"Sorry...again." I said, scratching the back of my head like I was posing for my clueless shonen protagonist portrait. "Just...um, just had a discussion with the other guy. So, when the Fae raided Omu base, I thought one of them might have done something drastic in space. The other guy, who was apparently paying more attention to that than I was, explained that the damage was quickly fixed. Sorry for scaring you."

Mia took a deep breath(you'd think having a non-mammal girlfriend would mean I'm less distracted when she does things like this, but you'd be wrong), before leaning down to press her forehead to mine.

We didn't kiss, or speak. Just thanked whoever was listening that we were both safe.

"That other guy of yours is pretty perceptive." Mia smiled, breaking the silence. "If he can calm you down during moments like this, I think I've found another reason to like him."

"You mean, besides how eager he is to play vampire and thrall?"

"David, your neck even has marks showing me the best parts. Stop complaining about love bites."

"Chomps." I corrected.

"Chomp, chomp~"

***
After Mia was done taking me down a peg(though that was definitely not what I'd call it), and having received no orders except to hurry up, wait and keep our eyes peeled for anything suspicious, we decided to make up to our friends for our lost Christmas.

It was, from a certain point of view, such a stupid, petty thing. Millions had lost their lives, not just their free time, and here we were, worrying about wasted occasions like some spoiled...no. You know what? Back when I regained my will to live, I swore to try and see the bright side of things.

So, after visiting Mihai, and helping him make sure the Unseelie had left no surprises around his apartment, I went to Andrei, and we shared a laugh at the fused iron and flesh sculptures he had made from his would-be assassins, but I had a feeling he was hiding some guilt at the crater that had quickly, quietly been refilled and the new block built over it. The people wouldn't be coming back.

Putting minds in constructs or uploading them to the net was all fine and dandy, and even resurrecting bodies was allowed in certain regions where voodoo dominated, but to truly bring someone back, you'd have to drag their souls back from their afterlives, and....Jesus. Anyone willing to contemplate that wasn't someone you wanted to revive people. Just look at the reason why I was walking again.

And, yes, I was aware of the irony of mentioning Jesus in that context. He was the Son and most human part of God. The point was, only he and his counterparts had the right kind of mindset to judge whether someone deserved a second chance at life.

Alex and a bunch of his ghost neighbours greeted me hefting iron shanks, but I noticedthere were fewer of them than last time, and the ones present sported ragged tears in their ectoplasmic bodies.

"It's alright, David. I'm just killing time." My ghost friend shrugged, tossing an improvised knife from hand to hand. "The world would, once again, not lose much if I kicked it."

"Don't talk like that..." I put a hand on his shoulder, touching him like he was solid, and he smiled.

"Remember eight years ago, when you said you thought I'm only asthmatic, not retarded?"

I winced. Alex had already explained that, after meeting my mother in the aether, and listening to her story, he had gone to Andrei on a hunch, and the were had confirmed his suspicions, before asking him to keep quiet until it was time to reveal it to me. "If you're still mad..."

"Of course I'm not. Everyone uses medical terms as insults, you depressed bum."

..."...I'm no longer depressed, though."

"Glad you're not denying you're a bum."

"Well, how could I? Mia won't shut up about my a-"

"David! Ugh, dammit, why are you turning this talk into one of those?"

"Those?"

"Those!"

***
"I was starting to think this was some sort of slow-burning revenge scheme of my sisters', to get back at you for that time." Bianca said, leaning back against Lucian's broad chest, feet dangling above the floor. The zmeu's tail was wrapped protectively around her, though, save for a few black scars threading through her true form, Bianca's physical body was unharmed. The Unseelie hadn't got far before Lucian had used his control over his domain to fill their guts with carnivorous iron maggots.

He was almost as creative as me when people close to him were harmed.

"But..." The iela continued, blue-on-blue eyes staring at the corner of the living room Lucian had conjured. "I went to them after. They were as oblique as ever, but maybe...maybe this is one of those things when you threaten to do something to someone, have nothing in mind, and just laugh as they drive themselves crazy, imagining worse and worse scenarios."

"Even they aren't dumb enough to shack up with the Unseelie, Bia." Lucian rumbled, caressing her long blonde hair with one hand. "Besides, the attack was global."

"Even so..."

"Yes, David was hurt. But, I don't think the Fae were prompted by anyone, let alone targeting him, specifically. Or he'd be dead." Lucian didn't look at me, nor did he apologise, instead toying with the haft of his mace, whose spiked head somehow didn't tear through the deep purple carpet.

"Hmph." Bianca looked to the side sharply, crossing her arms. She was wearing a red dress trimmed with white fur-the two had been preparing to open their presents when I had arrived-and had discarded her frumpy human form. "Maybe. I just want..."

"Someone you can blame and kill?" I suggested, feeling it was the right time to chime in, the two having let out their worries.

"Yeah." Bianca agreed, shrugging off her current lover's arm and dropping off his thigh and to her feet. She covered the twelve metres to the opposite wall so fast the sound only reached our ears endless seconds later. Both Lucian and I, being thousands of time faster than sound, could, of course, easily track her.

Then, one marble-white, slim hand slid through the enchanted gold, which I knew for a fact was tougher than steel, like it was warm dough. With an easy tug, Bianca ripped out a spherical chunk of gold bigger than her and heavier than a pickup truck.

The iela bounced over three tons of gold up and down in her palm like it was a beach ball, not looking at us as she spoke. "Though I sure hope they'd be nice enough to stand still and let me get a weapon. Maybe even kill themselves for me."

Lucian and I looked at each other awkwardly. Back when I was human, I often complained like this in front of my friends, but Bianca had decades of experience in being talked down to by every supernatural stronger than her and able to resist her power. So, almost everyone.

"Fairy..." The zmeu tugged at his moustache. "You couldn't have done anything. They were too fast for me to physically stop, let alone you. If it wasn't for reality here responding to my thoughts-"

"I'd have died. Yes, Luci, thanks for reminding me how useless I am." With a sarcastic laugh, Bianca clapped her hands, pulverising the chunk of gold. Well over twice the energy needed to vapourise a human, in such a casual action, and yet she felt-was-powerless against so many. It was even worse for mundane humans.

"You know...there was once this sale, books from other realities, in the mid-nineties. David probably doesn't remember." The iela tilted her hand, humming a low note that reversed time, turning the dust back into gold and smoothly repairing the wall. "Quickly shut down after a dormant Necronomicon equivalent woke up. I flipped through a few of them, about supernaturals, and guess what? In some of those worlds, I'd be a physical powerhouse."

Bianca turned back to us with a dry smile. "I can slap bullets out of the air or let them bounce off me, stop a speeding train...you know those tanks most countries keep around to test supernaturals? See how many megajoules they can laugh off, how easily they can react to hypersonic shells and how many tons of steel they can shatter. In my case, hundreds, easily and several. And I'm a wimp." The iela sighed. "Sometimes, I wish we had fewer overpowered bastards..."

"Now, Bianca." Lucian was behind her faster than she could see. "Think about the reverse. I sometimes imagine you stronger. In fact, I have this dream where we..."

Welp. That was my cue to leave them alone.

***
"I'm glad you're alive, girl."

There was nothing erotic in the way Lucas embraced her, pressing her into his chest. No matter how many times she'd joked and teased him over they years, she knew he only saw her as the bratty little sister or daughter he'd never had.

" 'S'alrigh, Luc. I couldn't leave you alone with only Major Disaster and General Principles to annoy you, anyway" Mia reached up to pat his left neck.

Lucas' middle head dipped lower with a huff, probing the air for blood, poison or curses, and finding nothing. He knew he had no right to try and stop her, if ARC was what she wanted, but...

"Please, don't try. Let's just be happy we're speaking."

Mia cleaned her throat after a few minutes of comfortable silence, and the older zmeu opened his arms, allowing her to leap off him and into the air.

Lucas' domain in zmeu country was a field of snow-white and steel-blue flowers, surrounding a silver shape that resembled an orrery they way a jet resembled a paper plane. It changed shape, size and weight every time time Mia's attention drifted, eternally remade by its master's will.

In his youth, Lucas, like most zmei, had been violent. His power and mindset had assured him a spot as a thug for the party, before he had settled down to pain with something other than red, hanging up his morningstar.

Not many knew it, but the zmeu brothers' weapons had names, given to them by the Mother of the Forest. Three Moons Falling, as its name suggested, was thrice as heavy as Earth's moon, and hit hard enough to shatter the world, when swung at full strength-about equal to a kick from Aaron.

That wasn't its noteworthy trait. Three Moons thirsted for blood, and gave its wielder the abilities of those he had harmed. On a whim, Lucas could obtain a strigoi's healing, a mage's power, or a iela's voice, among many, many other powers.

He hoped he would never have to use any of them, let alone all.

"I know we've both thought it, but...I really should've told you earlier." Mia crossed her legs, hovering, looking down at her former employer. "You're like the father I've never had."

"Aw, piss off, hatchling." Lucas said gruffly, fishing three blunts out of his pocket and lighting them with a firebreath. "Don't you start with the daddy jokes, or Silva will get jealous."

"Should I talk about your weapon instead?"

"No. No working the shaft, yanking my chain, or playing with my...tch." Lucas turned his right head's blunt to ash with a snort. "I'm not good at this emotional shite. But...thanks."

"You're welcome." There was a brief pause, then Mia spoke again. "I can feel him, you know?"

"Who, Silva?" Lucas furrowed his brows. Yeah, he bet she felt him all the time...

"No. My father. It's faint, kind of like...like those times you told me you could feel where your brothers were?"

"How far is he? Want me to fly you to him?" Lucas offered, half-jokingly. If he was in zmeu country and she wanted to talk...well, he wouldn't butt in. But taking her to her father would be no problem.

"A hundred fifty million klicks, east." Mia pointed with her tail, shooting him a challenging look. "How many seconds would it take you to fly that far?"

"One." He said simply. Knowing how far you could get to the sun was always useful, just in case you got into a scrap with a stubborn vampire and needed to remove their esoteric tricks. "So? Are we flying or not? My parents will get together again at this rate."

He just hoped they'd still do it in zmeu country. Maws could shatter Earth with a word and punch stars to nothing, but that did little to explain how he had survived their mother...

Repressing a shudder, Lucas took his former apprentice under one arm, and tensed his wings.

***
Mount Meru was large and heavy enough that, in the mundane universe, neutral by Treaty, Earth's sun would have orbited it.

That was nothing to Hanuman. Large enough to swallow the sun as a child, unless he altered his size, he could heft the mountain with one hand, handling weight equivalent to the Milky Way like a human waiter with an empty plate.

Despite his strength, and body even Indra's Vajra could not harm, Hanuman was worried. Not for himself, but to the worshippers, reincarnated before their time due to the actions of chaotic fools. What had the Seelie been doing while their opposites rampaged, anyway?

"Han." His friend's voice interrupted his brooding, drawing his attention to a small monkey that was so much greater than most.

Sun himself was not present, of course. The Buddha Victorious in Strife did not personally dabble in earthly matters anymore, but his avatars, created to protect thhose who walked the Middle Way and nudge them to enlightenment(and which, amusingly, retained some of the Monkey King's personality before he had attained Buddhahood), did.

"You are beyond such worldly things as rage." Wukong's orange, diamond-pupiled eyes shone mischievously. "But if you want a brawl, old Monkey can sock you one. Hmm?"

"Tempting as it is to add a new adjective to your beads," The Buddha adjusted the heavy red beads encricling his golden-furred with a haughty sneer. "I must ask, where are the others? Oberon and Titania have some explaining to do-"

"Unless they send Puck." Wukong said, thoughtfully, twirling Ruyi with his tail.

"Puck." That would be a good for a laugh. "Besides the pantheon heads...have you heard anything? Is Heracles alright? Is Gil coming?"

"You sound like Enkidu!" Sun said in mock-admonishment, tossing his golden-hooped staff into the air and landing to balance on its tip on one foot. "Are you so nostalgic, Han?"

"More like wishing for peacemakers in case fighting breaks out. If you're my only help, then I really need help."

"Oi, pudding-eater! What's that supposed to mean, besides 'beat me bloody'?"

The divine leaders and Seelie Royals were not the only people they were waiting for, though. Several unaligned signatories of the Syncretic Treaty to share Earth-Samuel Shiftskin, Eidolon, FREAKSHOW's Armament-along with Elsbeth Crane, Aya Reem and, it was rumoured, a disgruntled Ying Lung, were also expected.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 4

***
"Shit-!"

Startled, Mia rose off me, allowing me to roll over onto my back, then sit up. My zmeu's scarlet eyes darkened, a sign that she was looking at me as a whole, not just my body.

Well. Literally, I mean. She wasn't masochistic enough to be with me for my looks. I had firsthand experience with her tastes. Secondhand, too.

However, it seemed Mia didn't find anything wrong with my soul, because her eyes quickly returned to normal, even though they were still worried.

Hell, I was just glad she had both eyes back. If I could swear, there clearly was nothing wrong with me besides the usual.

"The sun..." I began, leaning awkwardly to try and gesture at the window, though it was kind of hard to do it around Mia's body.

"It's night, David." She said hesitatingly, as if worried I'd finally gone the bad kind of crazy. "The sun will be up in a few hours. What...?"

"When I was being mangled," Should I be worried by how hot I found her angry growl at the mention of me being hurt? "I saw...God, I'm not even sure I can say I saw it. My sight isn't that good. Not yet. Maybe I should eat more lifeforce..."

"David..."

"Right. Sorry. So, I think I saw something black flash over the sun, and remove a part of it, or-no, wait. I didn't."

"So you didn't see anything?" Mia asked, confused and more than a little frustrated. Not by my bumbling attempt at an explanation, but by the fact it seemed there wasn't anything she could do to help me.

"No, I didn't see it." I did, my strigoi side whispered smugly, its shapeless face becoming half-smirk in the back of my mind. And it was right, in a way. I hadn't seen or paid thought to whatever had happened on the sun, not consciously, but...but it had. Like when you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye, only for it to disappear when you turn to focus. Except, it seemed, I had an entire part of my mind dedicated to this. But why hadn't it said-

"Why didn't you ask?" It taunted, standing in front of me where my unlife had begun.

Ghencea, or, rather, the facsimile of it my worse half had built, looked blurry and indistinct, becoming featureless past the cemetery walls. Above, black shapes wept darker tears into a blazing white sky, while a shattered grey moon danced with itself and laughed, laughed, laughed, rocks the puppets of the nameless, unnameable thing that had crawled inside its core and hollowed it out. It looked up at me as it lowered its head, and nodded down at my strigoi side while it raised its body, returning its attention to its shell.

"Are you ever going to tell me what that is?" I asked, thumb pointing sideways at the moon besides us, and the shape that walked the sky beneath. "Is it some remain of Chernobog? A parting gift?"

"We are the only thing allowed inside ourselves." My instincts said, as if daring me to challenge them. Then, that smirk returned. "Except the zmeu, of course."

"Of course..." The fact it hadn't tried to do anything to Mia in our intimate moments unsettled me almost as much as if it had. But, despite its urges to break and dominate, my strigoi side had been surprisingly quiet, almost as if it was bidding its time.

"I didn't ask because, dammit, we soon had so much more bullshit to deal with." I didn't cross my arms. It would have made me seem defensive and whiny. More than I already was. "But why didn't I remember? If you saw it, and we're one, shouldn't I have seen it too?"

"Do humans remember to breathe? You don't pay attention to all of ourselves, human." Chuckling to itself, it stepped out of the shadow of the tree on which I had hanged myself, shifting shape just in time to disgust me. Instead of the usual white-eyed, ivory-fanged black silhouette that appeared in my mind, it looked like a twisted approximation of my dying human self: tall, gaunt and tired-looking, with bloodshot eyes and a face that had darkened from lack of oxygen. My tattered grey suit hung off it loosely, while my noose surrounded its neck like a tie.

Short brown hair fluttered in a sudden breeze that sounded like the moans of the dead, but I knew there was no one here besides us and the thing in the moon. The graves were just decorations, props. My cracked headstone was the only one with anything close to detail, and I knew that, if I looked into my grave, another mockery of my human body would have stared up with empty eyes and a grimace locked by rigor mortis.

"I saw the sun die." My strigoi side whispered with an excited little grin that made my human face far uglier than it had been in life. "It is not long from now, human. Just a few eons...what is that, to what we will become?"

"Oooh!" I held up a hand, wiggling my fingers mockingly, sick of its smug gloating that somehow revealed nothing. "Whose crystal balls did you lick, that you can see the future? And how did you do it without me noticing?"

"You are an idiot." It replied, now back to its usual inkblot appearance. Hands sunk into the pockets of a barely-discernible jacket, while the noose swayed over its chest like a pendulum. "We have a god of knowledge's eyes, and yet you barely use them to look beyond the present. But the sight is here, buried in the core of our being, and am I not so, so close to that? I would bet I'm better with Mimir's perception than you'll ever be by yourself."

"Then what happened to the sun?"

"Nothing that wasn't quickly undone. You might have noticed the solar system not falling into disarray. Remember the thing wielding that little vampire? You can thank it, from a distance, if you hate yourself."

"What? I don't understand-"

-anything?

I blinked, back in the physical world, and no time seemed to have passed. Mia was in the same position before my little trip to the centre of my mind, wearing the same expression.

"Sorry...again." I said, scratching the back of my head like I was posing for my clueless shonen protagonist portrait. "Just...um, just had a discussion with the other guy. So, when the Fae raided Omu base, I thought one of them might have done something drastic in space. The other guy, who was apparently paying more attention to that than I was, explained that the damage was quickly fixed. Sorry for scaring you."

Mia took a deep breath(you'd think having a non-mammal girlfriend would mean I'm less distracted when she does things like this, but you'd be wrong), before leaning down to press her forehead to mine.

We didn't kiss, or speak. Just thanked whoever was listening that we were both safe.

"That other guy of yours is pretty perceptive." Mia smiled, breaking the silence. "If he can calm you down during moments like this, I think I've found another reason to like him."

"You mean, besides how eager he is to play vampire and thrall?"

"David, your neck even has marks showing me the best parts. Stop complaining about love bites."

"Chomps." I corrected.

"Chomp, chomp~"

***
After Mia was done taking me down a peg(though that was definitely not what I'd call it), and having received no orders except to hurry up, wait and keep our eyes peeled for anything suspicious, we decided to make up to our friends for our lost Christmas.

It was, from a certain point of view, such a stupid, petty thing. Millions had lost their lives, not just their free time, and here we were, worrying about wasted occasions like some spoiled...no. You know what? Back when I regained my will to live, I swore to try and see the bright side of things.

So, after visiting Mihai, and helping him make sure the Unseelie had left no surprises around his apartment, I went to Andrei, and we shared a laugh at the fused iron and flesh sculptures he had made from his would-be assassins, but I had a feeling he was hiding some guilt at the crater that had quickly, quietly been refilled and the new block built over it. The people wouldn't be coming back.

Putting minds in constructs or uploading them to the net was all fine and dandy, and even resurrecting bodies was allowed in certain regions where voodoo dominated, but to truly bring someone back, you'd have to drag their souls back from their afterlives, and....Jesus. Anyone willing to contemplate that wasn't someone you wanted to revive people. Just look at the reason why I was walking again.

And, yes, I was aware of the irony of mentioning Jesus in that context. He was the Son and most human part of God. The point was, only he and his counterparts had the right kind of mindset to judge whether someone deserved a second chance at life.

Alex and a bunch of his ghost neighbours greeted me hefting iron shanks, but I noticedthere were fewer of them than last time, and the ones present sported ragged tears in their ectoplasmic bodies.

"It's alright, David. I'm just killing time." My ghost friend shrugged, tossing an improvised knife from hand to hand. "The world would, once again, not lose much if I kicked it."

"Don't talk like that..." I put a hand on his shoulder, touching him like he was solid, and he smiled.

"Remember eight years ago, when you said you thought I'm only asthmatic, not retarded?"

I winced. Alex had already explained that, after meeting my mother in the aether, and listening to her story, he had gone to Andrei on a hunch, and the were had confirmed his suspicions, before asking him to keep quiet until it was time to reveal it to me. "If you're still mad..."

"Of course I'm not. Everyone uses medical terms as insults, you depressed bum."

..."...I'm no longer depressed, though."

"Glad you're not denying you're a bum."

"Well, how could I? Mia won't shut up about my a-"

"David! Ugh, dammit, why are you turning this talk into one of those?"

"Those?"

"Those!"

***
"I was starting to think this was some sort of slow-burning revenge scheme of my sisters', to get back at you for that time." Bianca said, leaning back against Lucian's broad chest, feet dangling above the floor. The zmeu's tail was wrapped protectively around her, though, save for a few black scars threading through her true form, Bianca's physical body was unharmed. The Unseelie hadn't got far before Lucian had used his control over his domain to fill their guts with carnivorous iron maggots.

He was almost as creative as me when people close to him were harmed.

"But..." The iela continued, blue-on-blue eyes staring at the corner of the living room Lucian had conjured. "I went to them after. They were as oblique as ever, but maybe...maybe this is one of those things when you threaten to do something to someone, have nothing in mind, and just laugh as they drive themselves crazy, imagining worse and worse scenarios."

"Even they aren't dumb enough to shack up with the Unseelie, Bia." Lucian rumbled, caressing her long blonde hair with one hand. "Besides, the attack was global."

"Even so..."

"Yes, David was hurt. But, I don't think the Fae were prompted by anyone, let alone targeting him, specifically. Or he'd be dead." Lucian didn't look at me, nor did he apologise, instead toying with the haft of his mace, whose spiked head somehow didn't tear through the deep purple carpet.

"Hmph." Bianca looked to the side sharply, crossing her arms. She was wearing a red dress trimmed with white fur-the two had been preparing to open their presents when I had arrived-and had discarded her frumpy human form. "Maybe. I just want..."

"Someone you can blame and kill?" I suggested, feeling it was the right time to chime in, the two having let out their worries.

"Yeah." Bianca agreed, shrugging off her current lover's arm and dropping off his thigh and to her feet. She covered the twelve metres to the opposite wall so fast the sound only reached our ears endless seconds later. Both Lucian and I, being thousands of time faster than sound, could, of course, easily track her.

Then, one marble-white, slim hand slid through the enchanted gold, which I knew for a fact was tougher than steel, like it was warm dough. With an easy tug, Bianca ripped out a spherical chunk of gold bigger than her and heavier than a pickup truck.

The iela bounced over three tons of gold up and down in her palm like it was a beach ball, not looking at us as she spoke. "Though I sure hope they'd be nice enough to stand still and let me get a weapon. Maybe even kill themselves for me."

Lucian and I looked at each other awkwardly. Back when I was human, I often complained like this in front of my friends, but Bianca had decades of experience in being talked down to by every supernatural stronger than her and able to resist her power. So, almost everyone.

"Fairy..." The zmeu tugged at his moustache. "You couldn't have done anything. They were too fast for me to physically stop, let alone you. If it wasn't for reality here responding to my thoughts-"

"I'd have died. Yes, Luci, thanks for reminding me how useless I am." With a sarcastic laugh, Bianca clapped her hands, pulverising the chunk of gold. Well over twice the energy needed to vapourise a human, in such a casual action, and yet she felt-was-powerless against so many. It was even worse for mundane humans.

"You know...there was once this sale, books from other realities, in the mid-nineties. David probably doesn't remember." The iela tilted her hand, humming a low note that reversed time, turning the dust back into gold and smoothly repairing the wall. "Quickly shut down after a dormant Necronomicon equivalent woke up. I flipped through a few of them, about supernaturals, and guess what? In some of those worlds, I'd be a physical powerhouse."

Bianca turned back to us with a dry smile. "I can slap bullets out of the air or let them bounce off me, stop a speeding train...you know those tanks most countries keep around to test supernaturals? See how many megajoules they can laugh off, how easily they can react to hypersonic shells and how many tons of steel they can shatter. In my case, hundreds, easily and several. And I'm a wimp." The iela sighed. "Sometimes, I wish we had fewer overpowered bastards..."

"Now, Bianca." Lucian was behind her faster than she could see. "Think about the reverse. I sometimes imagine you stronger. In fact, I have this dream where we..."

Welp. That was my cue to leave them alone.

***
"I'm glad you're alive, girl."

There was nothing erotic in the way Lucas embraced her, pressing her into his chest. No matter how many times she'd joked and teased him over they years, she knew he only saw her as the bratty little sister or daughter he'd never had.

" 'S'alrigh, Luc. I couldn't leave you alone with only Major Disaster and General Principles to annoy you, anyway" Mia reached up to pat his left neck.

Lucas' middle head dipped lower with a huff, probing the air for blood, poison or curses, and finding nothing. He knew he had no right to try and stop her, if ARC was what she wanted, but...

"Please, don't try. Let's just be happy we're speaking."

Mia cleaned her throat after a few minutes of comfortable silence, and the older zmeu opened his arms, allowing her to leap off him and into the air.

Lucas' domain in zmeu country was a field of snow-white and steel-blue flowers, surrounding a silver shape that resembled an orrery they way a jet resembled a paper plane. It changed shape, size and weight every time time Mia's attention drifted, eternally remade by its master's will.

In his youth, Lucas, like most zmei, had been violent. His power and mindset had assured him a spot as a thug for the party, before he had settled down to pain with something other than red, hanging up his morningstar.

Not many knew it, but the zmeu brothers' weapons had names, given to them by the Mother of the Forest. Three Moons Falling, as its name suggested, was thrice as heavy as Earth's moon, and hit hard enough to shatter the world, when swung at full strength-about equal to a kick from Aaron.

That wasn't its noteworthy trait. Three Moons thirsted for blood, and gave its wielder the abilities of those he had harmed. On a whim, Lucas could obtain a strigoi's healing, a mage's power, or a iela's voice, among many, many other powers.

He hoped he would never have to use any of them, let alone all.

"I know we've both thought it, but...I really should've told you earlier." Mia crossed her legs, hovering, looking down at her former employer. "You're like the father I've never had."

"Aw, piss off, hatchling." Lucas said gruffly, fishing three blunts out of his pocket and lighting them with a firebreath. "Don't you start with the daddy jokes, or Silva will get jealous."

"Should I talk about your weapon instead?"

"No. No working the shaft, yanking my chain, or playing with my...tch." Lucas turned his right head's blunt to ash with a snort. "I'm not good at this emotional shite. But...thanks."

"You're welcome." There was a brief pause, then Mia spoke again. "I can feel him, you know?"

"Who, Silva?" Lucas furrowed his brows. Yeah, he bet she felt him all the time...

"No. My father. It's faint, kind of like...like those times you told me you could feel where your brothers were?"

"How far is he? Want me to fly you to him?" Lucas offered, half-jokingly. If he was in zmeu country and she wanted to talk...well, he wouldn't butt in. But taking her to her father would be no problem.

"A hundred fifty million klicks, east." Mia pointed with her tail, shooting him a challenging look. "How many seconds would it take you to fly that far?"

"One." He said simply. Knowing how far you could get to the sun was always useful, just in case you got into a scrap with a stubborn vampire and needed to remove their esoteric tricks. "So? Are we flying or not? My parents will get together again at this rate."

He just hoped they'd still do it in zmeu country. Maws could shatter Earth with a word and punch stars to nothing, but that did little to explain how he had survived their mother...

Repressing a shudder, Lucas took his former apprentice under one arm, and tensed his wings.

***
Mount Meru was large and heavy enough that, in the mundane universe, neutral by Treaty, Earth's sun would have orbited it.

That was nothing to Hanuman. Large enough to swallow the sun as a child, unless he altered his size, he could heft the mountain with one hand, handling weight equivalent to the Milky Way like a human waiter with an empty plate.

Despite his strength, and body even Indra's Vajra could not harm, Hanuman was worried. Not for himself, but to the worshippers, reincarnated before their time due to the actions of chaotic fools. What had the Seelie been doing while their opposites rampaged, anyway?

"Han." His friend's voice interrupted his brooding, drawing his attention to a small monkey that was so much greater than most.

Sun himself was not present, of course. The Buddha Victorious in Strife did not personally dabble in earthly matters anymore, but his avatars, created to protect thhose who walked the Middle Way and nudge them to enlightenment(and which, amusingly, retained some of the Monkey King's personality before he had attained Buddhahood), did.

"You are beyond such worldly things as rage." Wukong's orange, diamond-pupiled eyes shone mischievously. "But if you want a brawl, old Monkey can sock you one. Hmm?"

"Tempting as it is to add a new adjective to your beads," The Buddha adjusted the heavy red beads encricling his golden-furred with a haughty sneer. "I must ask, where are the others? Oberon and Titania have some explaining to do-"

"Unless they send Puck." Wukong said, thoughtfully, twirling Ruyi with his tail.

"Puck." That would be a good for a laugh. "Besides the pantheon heads...have you heard anything? Is Heracles alright? Is Gil coming?"

"You sound like Enkidu!" Sun said in mock-admonishment, tossing his golden-hooped staff into the air and landing to balance on its tip on one foot. "Are you so nostalgic, Han?"

"More like wishing for peacemakers in case fighting breaks out. If you're my only help, then I really need help."

"Oi, pudding-eater! What's that supposed to mean, besides 'beat me bloody'?"

The divine leaders and Seelie Royals were not the only people they were waiting for, though. Several unaligned signatories of the Syncretic Treaty to share Earth-Samuel Shiftskin, Eidolon, FREAKSHOW's Armament-along with Elsbeth Crane, Aya Reem and, it was rumoured, a disgruntled Ying Lung, were also expected.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 5

***
"...Mia." Lucas began, making the younger zmeu stop staring forward and look up at him as she stopped to hover in midair. "Don't look down.'

Mia did not. Not because she was particularly inclined to do as told without being told why, but because she knew Lucas hated being around the bush. If he was trying to be tactful and take things slow, then...

Zmei, as a rule, did not form attachments with their children they way humans do. Lucas could attest. Neither did they instinctively feel anything towards their parents. Mia had never even heard of hers, let alone seen or meet them, so a subdued reaction was understandable-expected, really, she told herself.

Or maybe, a voice whispered in the back of her mind as she walked closer to her parents' remains, she was so shallow, she wouldn't have felt anything even if they'd been murdered in front of her eyes after raising her. She certainly couldn't brag about her ability to form attachments. Take her relationship with David, for example. What did loving him, when they were together, however long that lasted, mean when she'd eventually have to switch partners, lest she go mad? Even if she never grew close to anyone else, would it truly be love?

She hadn't talked with David about it yet. Hadn't wanted to ruin the happiness of a relationship he could enjoy, one that didn't consist of her partner burning her, not even metaphorically. She had, she supposed, fooled herself into thinking they were both truly, completely immortal, with all eternity to look for a solution.

That had been before she'd come home with half her head a wreck, to find him limping around, ecstatic at seeing her, not at having survived.

The worst part was that David would probably go along if she told him. Blazes, she could practically hear him...

'It's...it's fine, really. We all have our needs. Not like you choose to...not like you can control yourself.'

Yes, David, she thought to herself. Just smile and nod as this floozy bitch puts horns on you. Fucking dammit...

She was jealous, really, of those people who didn't need to sleep around every once in a while. Cheating because you wanted to was....well, 'a luxury' was probably the wrong way to put it. But not something she'd do if it was her choice, she believed.

There was, of course, the other extreme. David was one of the chillest Christians she knew, and had never even joked about any bullshit like choosing for her, or not allowing her to do something, but would he draw the line at...hell, what would she even call it, when the time came? Polyamory? A harem? No, definitely not that. She wouldn't let herself bond with someone else like that while abusing David's tolerance.

Either way, it would end with him as a cuckold, and she was scared of how it could end for her.

His strigoi instincts, she knew, had become stronger, louder, gaining a sort of pseudo-consciousness, like they did in all his older kindred. The 'other guy' hadn't tried to harm her in bed, but would he always remain so calm?

She just didn't want to wake up to David ripping her throat out, whether it was him or his worse half at the wheel.

"And now I'm wondering whether my boyfriend would murder me or not." Mia grumbled. "I fucking hate this shit."

Good thing the corpses were there, she thought sarcastically. A surefire way to distract herself.

Her father was a yellow, five-headed zmeu with half-lidded purple eyes that had glazed over after death. Somewhere between Lucian and Lucas in height and bulk, he lay on his back, wings shredded and scattered across tall grass that left grooves on her scales. His lungs had been torn out to be placed on his wingless mate's back. Her seven-headed, orange-scaled mother was much larger than her father, so he was hardly visible with her lying on top of him. The killer had ripped their chests open so they could bend and twist the incredibly strong zmeu bones together, like a twisted cat's cradle, and their organs had been placed, seemingly at random, across intestines positioned to form a heart around them.

The cherry on this gore cake, however, was the way the bodies had been left. The killer had come for them while they were mating, like the killer in a slasher movie, and left them like that, with her mother on top of her father.

Mia took one long look at the parents she had never gotten to know and now never would, lowered her head, and looked away, shoulders shaking.

Lucas hesitantly walked closer at her thin, hollow laughter, wondering if it was too much. Perhaps he should've just torched the miserable scene from the sky, leaving nothing and pretending there wasn't anything to find. Mia's instincts were just wrong.

"Girl?" He said, as softly as he could manage, tail coiled up with tension, not touching her. "Why are you laughing?"

"Oh, you know." Mia said in a deceptively light tone, forcing herself to giggle while waving at the corpses with one hand. "Just thinking...about whoever was not only edgy enough to come up with this bullshit, but also strong enough to do it. Must've had a lot of time on their hands. And blood!"

Lucas didn't laugh. This gallows humour was unlike her, and he didn't like it.

"And the best part?" Mia said, eyes wide in mock-excitement. "I can't even dredge up a damn tear at this shitshow, because I never got to know this people, never mind love them. So, I can't help but wonder...why the fuck leave them like this for us to find?"

"You assume they were left for us-or, indeed, anyone." Lucas said carefully. "I'm not sure you should."

"Oh, really!?" Mia turned to look up at him, hands on her hips and a wide, fake smile plastered on her face. "Gee, boss, you make perfect sense. I'm sure some murderous rando just wanted to get their rocks off in this super special way, then just left the toys lying around." She shook her head. "Come on, Lucas. Even if I, specifically, wasn't meant to find them, you don't do things like this unless you want attention."

"Maybe." He said grudgingly, still not liking the thought. What kind of spiteful freak hated Mia enough to try and shock her like this, whether they knew it would work or not? He dearly hoped he wouldn't have to wait long for an answer. Silencing Three Moons' howls for blood and paying back whoever was responsible at the same time? Really, he had nothing to lose.

Then, another thought struck him. "Girl. You say you don't really feel anything about your parents? Besides disgust at how they died, maybe some pity?"

"I think anyone would feel that." Mia replied, smile fading.

"Be honest. You don't have to play tough for me." Lucas said, maybe coming off across harsher than he'd intended, judging by her frown. Not that he'd ever expected to be halfway decent at expressing his feelings.

"Do I have to repeat myself?" Mia asked stiffly, marching past him, bumping his side with a wing. "Let's g-"

"If you're only appalled, as anyone would be," Lucas said, putting a huge hand on Mia's shoulder, stopping the zmeu in her tracks. "Then why do you sound so angry?"

Mia stood silent for a few moments, then that empty, ugly laugh returned, setting his fangs on edge. "Hey, Luc...how the fuck do you handle your urges?"

"What?" He asked, confused. "Why do you...Mia, if you've gotten bored of Silva, that's your business. But don't try to come onto me, please."

Her laugh was warmer as she shook in his grip. "Fucking...Romania's most eligible bachelor, aren't you? Blazes, Lucas, that's not what I meant. I meant, how come you, and your older brother, now that I think about it, act like the polar opposite of every other zmeu I know?"

Normally, Lucas would have told her, or anyone else, to piss off. But...there was clearly something bothering Mia. And, judging by the way she had tensed when he'd mentioned Silva, he had the feeling something had gone wrong between them. "Don't tell anyone this," He began, lightly grabbing her crest between two fingertips, pulling her head back so she could look into his eyes. "But the Mother of the Forest didn't only give me my weapon. She also took away some things, at my request."

"And Aaron?" Mia asked, not showing any reaction towards the reveal.

"I don't know." Lucas lied. "Now...you were right. Come on. I'll treat you to something. You can tell me what's bothering you, too, if you want."

Mia didn't respond, lips pursed, worrying the ground with her tail and claws.

Groaning inwardly, Lucas let go of her arm, reaching into his pocket to take out a blunt, filled with a thick, dark blue powder-the grass that grew in his domain, and could intoxicate a being immune to poisons able to wipe out billions of humans. "Careful, girl: this is the second time today I do something I never thought I would. If this goes on much longer, I might get sappy or something, too. I'm scared."

Smirking weakly, Mia took the cigar in one hand, then sliced it in half with one claw. Putting one half in her mouth and lighting it with a puff of orange flame, she gave the other back to him. Surprised, Lucas nevertheless took it, ashing it in one surprised breath.

Sloppy. Another thing he'd never thought he would do. He'd have rather been sappy than waste good grass...

As he wrapped and arm around Mia and took off, Lucas turned one head to look once more at the mangled corpses. Focusing his arcane sense into his side, he saw...nothing. No traces of magical power, or wounds they had taken in life. Like the zmei's bodies were the only things left of them. Come to think of it, how come they hadn't healed from their wounds? Zmei could heal head-sized wounds through the chest in moments, never mind some twisted bones and missing organs. They could even reattach their heads, as Aaron had been forced to do recently, for the first time in decades.

A part of the blue zmeu wanted to burn the unnatural husks to nothing, and forget they had ever existed. But he knew ARC, or whoever else was going to bring the killer to justice, would need all the information they could get.

If he didn't find them himself first. As he took in Mia's blank expression and faraway eyes, Lucas mused that he had always wanted to see how long he could keep someone alive in zmeu country, anyway. Maybe he'd even teach her to warp reality herself.

***
The only texts I'd received so far were more vague warnings about staying on guard, as well as a creepily-cheerful message from Szabo, who wanted me to meet his family. It wasn't the offer to teach me how to raise corpses and bind spirits that weirded me out, though, but the other one.

'Think as long as you need, brother! I know you and your zmeu love each other, as baffling as the thought two beings like you can-this is not an insult. It is truly memorable, though do not think you will be remembered above Loric Szabo, David! But, once you drift away(you know it will happen; either the voices in your head will drive you mad, or her whorish behaviour will), you should know my great-granddaughter is young and single. I take no small pride in having helped raise a family consisting of sane, stable people, as opposed to mad sadists, as one may expect from a strigoi. Indeed, it is such things that separate the great from the mediocre...'

I wasn't sure what made my cold blood boil more: the implication I'd ever let my distaste at Mia's needs cloud my love for her, or the fact he'd called her a whore. I had half a mind to go just to kill Szabo, and was pacing in the yard when my zmeu touched down, mouth surrounded by a mixture of ash and what looked like Lucas' smoking powder. Smiling at my raised eyebrows, Mia approached me, staggering slightly. I almost moved to support her, but she waved me off, a somewhat dazed look in her eyes.

"Hey, David?" Mia rasped, grabbing my right hand and squeezing slightly. "What would you be willing...to forgive me for?"

"Anything..." I said, uneasy. Was she high? Fuck, what had Lucas even done? He was more serious than this. "Mia, what's wrong?"

"Should I tell you...or show you?"

I gently pushed her away as she tried to bite at my noose marks, not liking where this was going. "I'd rather you told me, thanks. Come inside. After you calm down a little, we can talk about whatever you want."

Mia's smile turned to bitter ash she shook her head. "Tell you...huh?"

***
Zeus scowled at the book in Yahweh's hands. No god present had been allowed to bring weapons(not that they'd need them, with their powers), and personal effects, such as crowns, had been placed at the centre of the round table balancing on air above Mount Meru. The book, however, was not even a Bible. So, what...

"The reports of my death," Yahweh replied, as if reading his thoughts, white, long beard swaying slightly beneath a featureless face of light. Abraham's God held a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra-an old and cherished one, judging by its weathered, well-thumbed appearance. "Are greatly exaggerated. A minor spoiler, if you intend to read it."

"Tch." The Olympian patriarch crossed his olive-skinned, muscled arms, lighting crackling in his beard-grey when he had arrived, now black as his eldest brother's realm. "If I wanted to hurt my eyes with Friedrich's ramblings, I'd dare Borson to scribble while drunk."

"You want your eyes hurt, lecher? 'Tis a pity I could not bring Gungnir, but we could try a more hands-on approach." Odin said in a cold, amused whisper, runes flashing in and out of existence across his black eyes. Zeus had heard rumours that his pet ravens were no more, and neither was he, as it seemed, famously one-eyed. No coincidence.

It was unfair, really. Not only had the warmongering bastard escaped his fate, a fate some gods could only dream of, but so had all his bootlickers. Not just unfair, absurd! What had the Aesir lost, besides a dead old fool's shrunken head? Even now, Odin pushed his worshippers to fight among themselves in grand tournaments all across the northern hemisphere, raising the brave dead as Einherjii for his army, to be rallied around the ghosts of his sons.

"Watch it, weakling." Zeus narrowed his eyes, and Mount Mheru, heavy as the milky way and more durable than all matter in the galaxy put together, was blasted to subatomic particles by his power. Then, with a thought, it was remade, the particles rearranged so it stood even prouder than before.

"Destruction should serve a purpose. That was unnecessary, lord Zeus. " Shiva replied with a moue of slight distaste, four purple hands clasped together. At his side, Vishnu nodded, red lips set in a serious line, while Brahman hummed in agreement, stroking his four white beards. The Trimurti did not sit on chairs, instead levitating in the lotus position, or, in Vishnu's case, lying on his back across Shesha's hoods. The King of Serpents' hoods were large enough to hold all the mundane universe's hundreds of septillions of planets, and he was strong enough such weight was barely felt, but such was Narayana's size and weight, even Adishesha strained. Nevertheless, he would never refuse to bear his friend, whether on Ksira Sagara, or in this place of neutrality.

The serpent was uncoiled, keeping time flowing across the universe mankind inhabited. Were it to coil up, reality would be snuffed out like a candle.

"It was not, destroyer." Ares smirked, leaning down over his father's throne to place an arm on his broad shoulder. The war god's scarred, tanned face was split by a lazy smirked that fooled no one present. All could see the bloodlust raging beneath the forced nonchalance. "The weak-especially weak enemies-must be reminded of their place."

"Both you and your father forget-as expected, for small minds think alike-that, with fate gone for me and mine, I am no longer limited to my baseline power." Odin said calmly, smiling as Ares' expression turned murderous. To his surprise, Zeus did not throw a tantrum at the insult. Immediately.

"I would kill you myself, old man, if the other weren't here to stop me. You and your ilk...not even immortal. You sicken me."

"So, you do not strike me because you know you would be overcome? Thank you for admitting your weakness. Or...is it cowardice? Should weak cowards be reminded of their place, too?"

Ares' fists-accustomed to holding a brazen spear not even his father's thunderbolts, able to blast the universe to nothing or vapourise enough water to fill it-could break, closed around nothing. "I can create dozens of stars with a thought, and remake them the same way. All my half-siblings can. What can you boast of, wretch?"

"A family tree that doesn't look like a crossword puzzle?"

"You foul-"

"Brother." Hermes drawled, leaning on his caduceus at Zeus right, smirking slyly in the shadows of his winged hat. "He is mocking you. And, while it is hilarious..."

"And working."

"Begone, Thoth!" Ares growled, receiving an amused looked from the ibis-headed god.

"And working, yes, thank you, lord Thoth...it is not the purpose of this meeting. Speaking of...lord Dagda?"

The nature god did not speak immediately, his bearded face hidden by the hood of his green cloak, one hand toying with the lorg anfaid. Lately, the club's wielder had contemplated using the killing end more often than in the last five centuries together. "I am a fool."

On his left, Morrigan scoffed, pacing on air in raven form. Lugh, sitting on his friend's left, smiled at him encouragingly with all faces, his shining, brilliant white skin making the sun appear dim.

"Before all else, I must apologise to lord Odin." The Dagda's nod was not returned by the Aesir. "I should not have intruded in your domain, even if Nidhogg's existence was not linked to its fate. I should...I should have remembered our Treaty, to keep mundane reality neutral, and not intervene in each other's realm on a whim."

"Why did you do it, druid?" Yudi asked, his voice far more subdued, perhaps, than one would have expected of the Jade Emperor, though no less benevolent. "You have never been rash. What madness could possess you to...?"

"Madness, indeed!" Sussanoo harrumphed, black beard and moustache whipping in the wind created by his fierceness, ignoring his sister's exasperated look, if he was even aware of it. "According to David Silva's testimony of Chernobog's claims-"

"Are we willing to believe Yahweh's dog after he was gifted what should have been our prize by his master's misbegotten spawn?" Shango thundered, paying as much attention to Obatala mouthing that he stay silent as Susanoo did to Amaterasu gesturing for him to stop wondering about the Dagda's possible mental afflictions out loud.

"Ah, your prize." Odin nodded with a dry grin. "I'm glad you do not even pretend not to have desired my lost possession."

"Thunder does not dissemble! Thunder screams the truth into the ears of liars, just ask the pervert over there!"

"Silence!" Zeus bellowed, sphere lighting crackling around his fist as he stood up to glare at the boisterous Orisha. "Do not lump me in with yourself, fool! My results are visible to all, and have brought nothing but peace to the universe." The Olympian retorted, pointing across the table.

"I like to think I have succeeded in life despite my heritage, father." Elsbeth Crane replied, expression blank. Zeus' incredulous glare almost unmade the elaborate braid her hair was in, but the Scion Head did not even blink. On her right, Aya Reem sighed, not meeting Thoth's eyes, despite the god of knowledge being the only representative of her pantheon. Osiris could not leave the underworld, and Ra was fighting Apophis, as he did every day, alongside Horus and Set.

Samuel Shiftskin put a reassuring hand on the mummy's shoulder, his strength almost denting the enchanted golden pauldron. Aya's neutrality in the Headhunt had left her with nothing except her (admittedly impressive, for she dwarfed Loric Szabo the way he dwarfed David Silva, and could flick him into red mist, killing him forever, faster than he could see) physical prowess and ability to order the physical world and the Duat, as a champion of Ma'at. But the blessings of her gods were gone. For someone who had left behind a home torn apart by conflict between a Muslim father and a mother who kept the old gods, it was almost as devastating at the thought something she would need those powers to prevent would happen. Aya knew her gods were not so petty or spiteful to keep her depowered in such a case, but...

A few seats away from the ARC Heads, Armament, as Hans Miller was known by FREAKSHOW, looked to his sides, blowing a raspberry at Asterion's earnest expression and Eidolon's literal stone face. Hans was a blond, blue-eyed man of average heigh, muscled in a wiry sort of way that his his white sleeveless shirt helped to emphasise. Black suspenders reached across shoulders that could bash continents to gravel, and his arms-both covered in eagles, the bald ones on the right grasping the stars and stripes in their claws, the golden ones on the left holding the black, red and yellow. His mixed ancestry was almost as much a point of pride for him as the ability to become any weapon, mundane or divine, real or fictional, that had given him his name. It was the ability to create endless copies of such weapons that had resulted in him being asked to sign the Syncretic Treaty, swearing to never do so unless creation was overwhelmed by invaders. Much as Eidolon and Sam were not allowed to copy or transform into certain beings, unless that was the case.

Hans was a man of action, as he liked to say. Growing up in Texas hunting rogue weres, he had entered FREAKSHOW to shoot and blow up people and things legally, and even be paid for it. A power like his, backed by a mind like his, was not exactly reassuring for the gods. Hans might have tattooed the brain' areas and his purposes across his shaved head, but no one who knew him believed he actually used his.

Take, for example, the Excalibur copy he had created and was now tossing up and down like a knife, catching it by the hilt each time. The Sword of Promised Victory could cut almost anything(save for, Hans thought with a grin, the other swords that could cut anything, or certain indestructible artifacts, like the Nemean Pelt), and warp reality so its wielder would always win, if not live after, unless it was paired with its scabbard, even if thir opponent was infinitely stronger, faster and smarter than them.

"Unmake that." Amaterasu said, her pale, soft features already taut with irritation from her brother's antics. "No weapons, mortal-"

"Aww, then you'll have to disarm me, babe." Hans flashed the goddess a wink, before tossing the sword in the air and kissing his biceps. "I can't help it if 'em guns deadly..."

Amaterasu held back a smile as the cocksure human tilted his head back, catching Excalibur's hilt in his teeth like a rose. She would have never admitted, but humans had gotten more and more amusing these last decades.

"We should give everyone of y'all one o' these," Hans claimed, moving Excalibur from his moth to his right hand. "Then every good guy alive, so we can never lose."

"I agree with the mortal's outrageous idea-to a degree," Ne Zha said from besides the Jade Emperor. Having lived like a human himself once, something Wukong never hesitated to remind him, the Third Lotus Prince took every chance to point out others' mortality. "Or, we can simply match the strongest ones so they can breed strong children, as they do in my country. Just look at our cultivators."

"Eugenics?" Sam sneered, his beady shark eyes gleaming. "You know, I might be biased, but I hate your idea. In fact, I think you should remove yourself from the gene-pool before trying to control it like that."

Shiftskin's reaction was understandable, if tactless. As a child in the Navajo Nation, his skinwalker parents had flayed him, then taken him while wearing his skin, so he could see his own face while he learned to love himself-an attempt to coax out his magic through self-loathing, if his mind didn't break. The young skinwalker had flayed them in turn, then wandered far north, where he had eaten a murderer's heart out of hunger combined with hatred. Not long after, the young wendigo had gained the power to transform into any and all beast, from kitsune and Garuda to Typhon and Tiamat. Then, he had spent years as a murderous, manflaying vigilante, before Aya Reem had captured him, giving him a choice between ARC and prison.

Perhaps interested in more than her power, Shiftskin had grinned, saying he was very eager to serve alongside, or even under her, if she asked.

"I can't believe I'm agreeing with the maneater," Ying Lung muttered, more to himself, as he refilled his pipe. Today, the dragon was in his pale-skinned, white-haired human form, white eyes gleaming through sunglasses as his thin moustache twitched in disbelieving amusement. "Prince. You can try to kill me again, if you're offended. I have the guts for it, so to speak."

"Indeed." Wukong chimed in. "I saw them hanging last time. His guts, too."

"What side are you on, monkey?" Ne Zha asked in distaste.

"Your right, his left." Sun replied, pointing at Ying with his tail while accidentally poking Ne Zha in the eye. The Prince struck the Buddha hard enough to unmake all matter in mundane reality, but left only a bruise that healed instantly on his smiling face.

"This circus has dragged on enough." Thoth said, though with no small amusement in his voice. "Lord Dagda?"

"I should not have taken my brother's sword to kill Nidhogg." The Dagda lowered his head in shame. "But these...these women...they were Seelie, you see? I was returning to Bru na Boinne one day, and saw them sitting down by the road, covered in weeping sores. They told me they had gone to tour the Yggdrasil, and the dragon had mauled them for not reason. I was seized by such a rage...rage like I had never known. But, you must understand...they wept and sang like no Fae I had ever known..."

As he spoke, the Dagda slowly clenched his fist around his club, before blurring over the table, smashing Thoth out of his chair. The god was sent flying by a blow that would not have shamed Odin, his ibis head changing to a baboon's, then a shapeless, featureless black mass. His body soon followed.

" 'Thoth', you say." The Dagda snarled, hefting his club. "So nice, so arrogant, to dangle a fraction of your name before us, thinking we would not notice! Messenger!"

The black shape seemed to smile for a moment, before vanishing. The Dagda sat down with a huff, preempting any pointing of fingers or demands for answers. "We have been compromised." He said bluntly. "The things in the Void have learned to imitate our shapes, our mannerisms, enough to fool even godly senses-"

"How do we know you aren't one yourself?" Sussanoo demanded, drawing the Totsuka Blade. "Because you blew that one's cover? Perhaps it was to draw away attention from yourself!"

"I know, because I think I have been tainted by it once...the madness you spoke of, lord Susanoo? Now that my mind is clear, it feels quite similar to the aura of that being. And...I am starting to think Chernobog spoke true. Nidhogg's 'victims' might have been a trap to bait me into rashness, after all. Perhaps they were working together with the Crawling Chaos."

The silence that followed was deafening. If one looked with a keen enough eye, though, they would have been able to see the so-called supreme gods' auras bordering and overlapping each other, like coloured light coming out of a prism. Indeed, the way the Unmoved Mover was separated by perception was quite similar. Even the Blind Idiot God, whose messenger crawled in the screaming void beyond all Gates, was one such aspect of it.

"Before the others arrive, and we begin guessing at a purpose beyond chaos for the sake of chaos, or childish amusement," Odin broke the silence. "Lord Dagda...where are Oberon and Titania?"

The Dagda let out a self-deprecating laugh. "You know how the Wild Hunt is formed from the Fae who chafe under civilisation's laws...? Of course, you have led it yourself, lord Borson. Imagine the surprise of everyone in Otherworld when we learned that, to end their unceasing, bloody rivalry, the Seelie Royals went to the Unseelie, and proposed a Hunt consisting of both Courts, as well as every unaligned Fae and supernatural they could cajole or pressgang. Bonding through atrocity, I suppose. We...should not expect the Seelie to strike against their opposites-for, truly, I do not know if such distinctions exist in their minds anymore."

As silence returned, some gods mused that, perhaps, not only the Dagda had been touched by the madness from beyond.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 6

***
"I'm fine."

"You sure are, love, but you're not alright." I joked, one eye on Mia, one on the living room clocks: analog, digital, magical. In case of a something breaking, a breakout, or a mass dispel, we'd hopefully be covered.

Since she'd moved in, there had been some changes around o-my house. For example, one of the guest rooms had been converted so my zmeu could safely practice her constructs, drawing and painting in it, which meant it was covered in everything from burn marks and acid holes to patches of frost and crystal. Not to mention the projects she often left lying around unfinished when her whims took her and she started a different one in the middle of another.

My girlfriend was disturbingly good at drawing organs. Almost as good, in fact, as we both were at drawing them out of bodies.

Despite my doctor's handwriting convincing many people my hands were dead and numb long before my undeath, I was, actually, not completely clumsy in this regard. I coul sketch the anatomy of most supernaturals that actually have one, a skill I learned by necessity in college, and which I had hoped would make my books more interesting, back when I was a writer. It didn't work, but, well. you already know that.

Sometimes, I wondered how writers with ideas as uninspired and unsuccessful as mine find the will to not only keep writing, but keep living.

Maybe I should just have gotten a foreign publisher, like so many mangaka did? Kishimoto was fairly successful in his adopted country of Brazil, despite claiming that, back home, his manga would have never gotten off the shelves, due to being heavily inspired by Japanese legends and folklore. Then there were people like Oda, Togashi and Shimabukuro, who only referenced such things and simply dreamed up their own grand, adventure-filled worlds.

But...I was trash at drawing anything besides anatomy sketches, dammit. Or I'd have written a fashion comic or something, like Kubo does.

Mia, who often flicked through the tankobon I was just thinking about, still had her apartment in Bucharest, on a street straddling the Old Centre and the Spines, the supernatural reptilian quarter. She had also started working on her domain in zmeu country, though it was far from complete, according to her. She wanted it to be perfect before we wrecked it for the first time.

The thought made me smile briefly, but I still wished the others would get there faster.

While Mia sat on my reinforced grey couch, an arm behind her head, I paced holes into the carpet. Before describing my house even vaguely, I must warn you my tastes are offensively boring: my floors are all brown parquet, my walls are all white(give me that cheap, cheap paint) and my ceilings are grey. My bathroom, which is only ever used by other people(the times we use it when showering together notwithstanding) had some pretty nifty navy blue tile. Still white walls and ceiling, though.

While I was musing about my bland rooms, I heard two sets of approaching footsteps: one accompanied by the tinkling of icons and crosses, the other weighted down by the burden on his shoulders.

Andrei's coat was pretty heavy, too.

Pops entered without knocking, knowing my door was always open to him. My father had recently become sixty-nine, a birthday I had missed due to work, as it was on Christmas Eve. But, he had assured me, I wouldn't have found him home, anyway. A demon had appeared, turning every inanimate object in Jilava into its opposite, and he had been sent by the Patriarch to work together with the city's senior priestess and the Supernatural Service to banish it.

'Doing good unto others is all the present a man could ask for, David.' He had said.

Andrei was wearing his black longcoat, still paranoid after the Fright. The floor creaked as he entered and sat down opposite Mia, in a recliner that, thankfully, easily supported him and the equivalent of a horse. Pops, dressed in a white button-down and grey slacks, sat on the other couch, so he could keep both Andrei, my girlfriend and I in sight.

My living room is arranged pretty simply. Being the first room you enter through the front door, part of it is dominated by the staircase leading to the second floor, containing Mia's studio, our bedroom and the smaller two guest rooms. The rest is split between bookshelves, the TV, and a table surrounded by the couches and recliner.

While pops smiled reassuringly at us all, Andrei looked between Mia and I like we had declared the cake was a lie, the reason for my request to help with a delicate problem now clear. The only reason I hadn't elaborated had been because of time constraints, mind.

When Mia had come home, half stoned out of her mind, half ready to break down into tears, I had...panicked. Stupidly. Or, well, hadn't trusted myself to handle her alo-damn, I'd have to make a joke about that later. So, maybe overreacting, I had reached out to someone I trusted and respected, and Andrei too.

"Guys..." Mia sighed, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand. "There's...no need for you to be here, alright? I guess David called you for advice or whatever-I get it. He values your opinions. Great. But this is between us two." She gave me a meaningful look, and I stared back steadily, but held out a hand for her to grasp. At first looking surprised, Mia shook her head with a small smile, then grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.

I had managed to convince her to wash off Lucas' smoking powder-by herself, despite the offers to join her; I didn't want her when she wasn't thinking clearly, which I guess made me a hypocrite. She never objected to the voice in my head, but I'd rather be hypocritical than take advantage.

"I promised to talk all you want, and we will, as soon as they leave. But, if you're feeling unsure about us, I thought you should hear from a man who once made a mistake bigger than any we may or may have not made so far combined."

"He's talking about himself." Andrei piped up, reaching into one of his coat's many pockets for a flask. I could smell the wolfsbane-vodka mixture from metres away, and, though I knew it was harmless to him, I had once asked him why he would drink something so foul.

"Well, you see..." Andrei had started. "One day, during the Long Watch, I met this American werefolf in London..."

I had no idea if his duties had really seen him sent so far abroad, or why. And, of course, after talking my ears off for hours, telling me about every mauling and rooftop chase, he still hadn't mentioned why he drank that. Bastard.

"But," The werebear's boyish, eighty-five year old face grew sharper, more serious. "I don't think I ever told you about it, girl. If David has...well, I guess I'll bore you for a while. But I still think it's worth it to hear it from the horse's mouth...so to speak."

***
"And that is how babies are made!" Andrei finished, sarcastically spreading his arms. "No storks, no cabbage patches, just two horny idiots with too much time and too little brains.'

Mia didn't reply right off the bat, instead resting her head on my shoulder, arms wrapped around me as I sat in her lap. Being undead, I couldn't feel her breath, but I knew it was warm and, thank God, now steady. Her system was clearly working out whatever Lucas had given her in an attempt to help her relax.

"Did she like it?" My zmeu muttered finally. To a human, it would have been inaudible, but to Andrei's hearing, even in human form, it was as clear as thunder in a library.

"She liked everything until the pregnancy reminded us how people work."

After another, shorter silence, Mia kissed my neck, lightly brushing my noose marks with her fangs. I could tell she was smiling slightly, and I almost pumped my fist. "Hmm...she sounds really adventurous. I'd have loved to meet her...say, David. How do you think she'd have reacted to learning you call me mommy, too?"

Pops chuckled before I could reply. "I am sure you'll have all the time to discuss that once you are alone, my dear. But first, why don't you tell us what is bothering you?"

And Mia did.

***
"So..." I began carefully. "It wasn't your parents' death that bothered you? You were just...worried about me?"

"Not just about you." Mia replied, her arms briefly tightening around me. "I'll tell you more, but, please...you said you'd be willing to forgive me for anything. Don't...don't put what you think I want before what you want."

Pops rapped his fingers on one thigh while I tried to come up with a reply, before lowering his gaze, smiling self-deprecatingly. "Have I ever told you why I became such a boring old priest, David? Seemingly no flaws, no vices? No excess of zeal?"

"I once heard you wanted to diddle some choirboys, but the Catholics cut into line." Andrei said, tilting his flask at Constantin with a knowing smile.

He was joking, of course. Overly-zealous or corrupt sects resulted in vengeful angels descending to punish their members after stripping their priests of power. Several movements and schools of thought-having as many children as possible, even shunning birth control or abortions, believing faith will make you wealthy and prosperous, or disinterested donations will get you into Heaven-had been shut down this way.

"Alas, they were too fast for me." Pops said, before sitting up straighter, eyes glowing with an inner light. "Hear ye, then..."

***
"Mommy." Costi says one day. "Why aren't we rich?"

Elena, running a hand through her close-cropped grey hair, does not look at her son, who is chopping wood in the muddy yard alongside her, but she smiles, as warmly as her mangled face allows her. A strigoi once tore out her right cheek and eye after she refused to be with him. In response, he had taken her in front of her husband, breaking his legs and cutting off his eyelids to make sure he'd have no choice but to watch, cursing himself, the strigoi and God as he cried and tried to crawl closer to no avail.

That was over seven years ago, when Constantin was little. But, though his mother does not know this, he remembers. He cannot forget the night he stumbled to the window on stubby feet, drawn by the screams of his mother and the laughter of a man he did not know.

Then, he hadn't sounded human. Definitely hadn't sounded like his father, who had screamed such things as Constantin had never heard him before or after.

What should have been a younger sister became a miscarriage, the fetus mangled by the force that had laid her mother in bed for weeks after.

Constantin was not surprised to hear this later, when he grew. He is now twelve, and has seen his parents cry for every lost sibling, heard them wonder what they are doing wrong when they think he is not listening.

Constantin does listen, though. He knows, as surely as he knows Jesus Christ is in Heaven, that he is the first and will be the last child of his parents.

"We are poor because..." Elena tries for a lighthearted shrug. "Everyone is, baby. But don't worry-that won't last long. As soon as the comrades in Bucharest get things going, we won't even need money anymore. You'll see."

"The comrades." Costi echoes. "Not God?"

Elena shrugs again, not so flippant anymore. "I don't think He is going to help anyone, my boy."

Constantin does not mention that, in his opinion, God should reward them with wealth for their faith. They pray every night, attend church whenever they can, help their lame, blind or deaf neighbours...his father, Costel, cannot walk, but scrimshaws for anyone interested, for he as nothing to occupy his time with, sitting in bed all day.

Elena, bearing the name of an emperor's mother like her son bears that emperor's, never learns this opinion of his. Both her and Costel die that night, and their son wakes up to a nightmare, wearing the face of a smiling man.

When Constantin open his eyes, his parents' bodies-they sleep together because the bed is small, and they need all the warmth, for all the weak heat of their stove-are cold and unmoving. His father's eyes are dead and glassy, mouth open in an eternal, silent scream. His mother was, perhaps, smiling in her sleep when she died. Now, she looks hideous, like a mannequin whose mouth and face were carved to mock humanity.

The doctor, for who else could the man in the white coat be, smiles pityingly at the boy, hands clasped behind his back. He explains about hypothermia, about shock and old hurts and ills coming home to roost, but Constantin is dead, willing his father would stop screaming, his mother would stop smiling and the Devil would stop laughing in his soul.

The doctor nods his head in sympathy. He understands the shock, and will take the boy to his clinic, where he will get the life he deserves, like all the other children.

That morning, the strigoi takes the spawn of his old toy to his car. But, before they drive away, the boy has a question.

"Why didn't God kill me as well?"

"Why, Costi..."He ruffles his hair. "If God wanted you to die with them, do you think you'd be with me now?"

They drive to the Southern Carpathians, to a village the boy doesn't know is false, built by the strigoi for appearances and populated by smiling, raised corpses. That night, the strigoi returns to play with the woman once more, and, why not, the father too. Their boy will soon follow, though he likes them warm rather than cold. By then, the other villagers have found the bodies, drained of lifeforce, though they do not have long to scream before they meet the same fate.

The next morning, the false village gets new inhabitants.

The clinic, Constantin quickly realises, is not a place of healing. It is a madhouse.

Quite literally, too. The madmen who alternate between laughing themselves to bloody tears, smashing their heads against concrete walls when they do not prowl the blood-spattered halls in search of victims, are not the only tenants, though. There is a thing that was once a woman, but now sits in the corner of a room, morbidly obese and featureless, womb churning as it spits out things never meant to touch human flesh. There is a man whose limbs were cut off and replaced with blades, and now he prances around, singing to himself as he looks for people to maim. There is a woman whose feet and hands have been melted together, and who dances, dances, dances.

Constantin has meet them all. The strigoi wants his family to know each other, he tells Constantin one night, trailing kisses down his neck. They boy has song since ceased reacting with horror to his affections, for it only spurs him on, and instead resorted to praying silently.

"Where is your God now, my dear?" The strigoi asks, annoyed at the lack of reaction, squeezing him so hard Constantin cracks his teeth as he grits them.

But the Lord answers. An angel of His descends, and she is terrible and beautiful, burning down the nightmare place. Constantin can only ask her why she is so late.

God's servants, she explains, can only interfere so much. But such horror could not stand. She can train him, help him sharpen his faith into a weapon, if he wants to prevent such things from happening to anyone else, though.

Constantin accepts, and the angel, whose name he never learns, becomes the object of his love.

It is absurd, really. The lesson of the nephilim's failure is fresh in Heaven's mind, and she is more like a mother to him, even though Constantin, guided by rage, is not empowered by God for years. He tries to convert the people of other faiths, and condemns atheists as blind fools, can't they see God exists and saved him?

One day, the angel throws herself in front of a demon summoned by one of the young man's many enemies, and dies. Constantin weeps, and burns the demon with holy fire. It is the first time he does this. It will not be the last.

He realises how pointless forcing your beliefs upon others is, and how love can blind one to the desires of the one they love, desires thay may not even include them.

***
After pops left, Andrei promising to treat him to something, Mia and I sat to ruminate what...what we'd learned.

It seems my kind never ran out of fantasies to act out. But, as disgusting as that experience had been, it had resulted in pops meeting his angel...and beginning their doomed love.

"I don't want us to end like that." I whispered hoarsely to Mia, hugging her as hard as I could without hurting her as we laid in bed. "I don't want to do something for you without thinking, and hurt you, or lose..."I gulped. "So please, tell me, is it my fault? Did I upset you?"

Mia looked almost ready to cry, again, and my heart sank. My fault, wasn't it? Fucking damn it all-

"You're willing to give me everything, David." She said softly. "When I can't return your favour. I...I cannot. So...here is the best I can do. I promise to love you as much as I can, as often as I can. And...I hope, the rest of the time, you'll find it in yourself to forgive me."

You won't be surprised to learn I started crying before her.

"Hey, hey..." She rocked me, trying to sound her usual saucy self. "I just don't want you to rip me apart in anger, alright? At least do it the fun way."

We did not have more to discuss or make other promises, though. I was called to Giza, with a specification I'd be sent to the UK after, while Mia was called to a classified location in the Pacific.

[Strigoi Grey]

Interlude: Monsters

***
Szentendre, Austria-Hungary, 1900

Loric is playing to win. He does not play to win because he is particularly good at tag, or even because he likes the game. He likes it about as much as he does anything-that is to say, not at all.

He does not  dislike tag, or the other children, all street urchins like himself. He just...does not feel anything about them. Loric does not know the word 'apathy' yet, for he is four and has never seen a book, but he would likely say it fits his feelings, or lack thereof, towards the world.

Suddenly, Loric falls to the ground, yelping. The baton's blow was softened by the dog skins(skins them himself, mostly old strays too weak to defend themselves from a shiv through the neck) he wears, but it still hurts, driving the breath out of his lungs.

Loric does not know this, either, but the reason he is always short of breath has nothing to do with physical effort.

The man who struck him is tall and stern, with steely eyes shining in the shadows of his cap, which hide half of his clean-shaven face, all hard angles and lines.

Staggering to his feet, Loric notices his friends are all gone. This does not hurt. He wonders if they care as little about him as he does about them.

Before Loric can ask why he was struck, the uniformed man-Janos, as Loric will later learn- points to a side alley. He and his rat friends were blocking the main street, he says, and the villagers don't need or want to see orphans.

Loric asks what an 'orphan' is, and the explanation that it is a child with no parents results in a blank stare, for he does not know what a parent is, either. Janos shows him his pistol, but still has to hit the boy with the butt for him to get the message.

***
Szentendre, Austria-Hungary, 1912

Loric learns about Janos' funeral from a friend, who curses the man and mutters 'good riddance', crossing himself mockingly. One less pain in the arse, he says. That day, the teen watches it from a distance, and sees Janos had no family, or at least none that came to tell him goodbye, for he devoted himself to his duty.

A miserable fate, in Loric's opinion. That grubby headstone is going to fall apart in years, he knows, ground away by wind and rain.

Still, trying to put himself in the history books the way he does is...not advisable.

Loric only notices the woman halfway through running at the thug with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other, but it just makes things even better. It's like something out of the fairytales. He'll be a hero!

Loric's legs never heal properly, for all his human life, but the thug runs away, not because he's scared of him, but because he's scared of drawing attention. The woman eventually thanks him for his courage, after berating him for his stupidity. She takes him to the village doctor, and here, he learns her name is Csilla, she is four years older than him, and she works as the doctor's assistant. Given how diminutive and mild-mannered the man is, Loric bets the square-faced, heavyset woman does all the hard work, though he keeps his opinion to himself. Csilla is burlier than him, not that that's a high bar.

From the doctor's records, Loric also learns his family name, and that he comes from a family of tailors. The Szabo patriarch, father of half a dozen children, threw his last son away, unable to provide for one more mouth, for the work only paid so much.

Loric asks the doctor how come he hasn't met his parents yet, as the village isn't that big, and learns they died over a decade ago. Disagreement with the law, turned into a brawl.

Loric shrugs. "Can't ask anything from the dead."

Csilla snorts. Neither knows how wrong that statement is. Yet.

***
 Szentendre, People's Republic of Hungary, 1958

As Adalbert returns home, Loric cannot help but muse that they really shouldn't have named him 'noble'.

He and Csilla married after it became clear he wouldn't die in World War 1, at least on the front, crippled as he was. They had children late, though not so late that their son didn't get to fight in World War 2.

He doesn't know where Zoe is nowadays. His daughter's inclination towards women makes her about as popular as Bence, who avoids public places like a bat avoids light. Bence is not a true 'changeling', as they used to be called before the Shattering brought true shapeshifters into existence. Still, having three children, including two strange ones, is memorable, and this is all Loric could ask for.

He killed himself two years ago, when the Revolution failed, and it became clear his country would never be remembered as anything but a sattelite. Loric doesn't want the Soviets writing history. Hungary's story should be its own.

Csilla was horrified at the change, and died shortly after. From stress, he supposes. She considered herself a widow until her dying day, with children who didn't come to sit by her deathbed.

"Father." Adalbert tries to not to look smug, and fails. He always had his mother's poor control of expressions, and the magical power received during the Shattering hasn't helped. "They sent me to kill you."

"Hmm." Loric nods. His son is wearing the uniform of some service or the other, he can't remember all the secret police's names or branches. His mother's raven hair is cut short under a green hat. "Did they tell you why?"

"To prove my loyalty to the state, as oppossed to my family-"

"No, you little idiot." Loric waves him off, laughing. "Did you really think they care about an old tailor? Or couldn't you imagine them wanting to get rid of an overly-ambitious, gullible fool?"

He drops his human disguise, and has Adalbert's crushed throat in one hand before his neurons can fire.

Draining your would-be patricidal son of life...truly memorable.

***
Siberia, 2030

Szabo cannot believe the new strigoi. There is clearly some trauma at work here-religious household with violent parents? He hasn't read the history section on David's file yet, but why else would his brother hold on to faith in the only thing that can truly hurt them?

He does not have long to wonder, because the little bitch they came to stop brings her puppets out to play. Szabo is extremely unamused by children who try to kill her parents, and Sofia might as well have, given the braindead vegetables that are restrained by the Strangeguard.

When it becomes clear David won't put down her golem anytime soon, Loric steps in, slapping it to dust. Then, he looks for something to teach the girl a lesson, sees the dog, and smiles.

Yes...even if they censor him again, ARC will remember. It will be almost as memorable as that time he filled that pregnant witch with maggots!

***
Arizona, 1950

Dibe is on all fours, breathing heavily. Not because of the effort, as he is not doing anything, only enduring, but because of the pain. His father likes him like this.

Yee naaldlooshi can become the beings whose skins they wear, but Dibe can only wonder if his parents are beasts wearing human skin. He once asked them that, to their amusement.

No, they replied. The only human skin they have ever worn is his, so he can touch himself without doing anything. Aren't they generous?

His mother is working him over today. She is something big and heavy, perhaps a buffalo or moose, though he wonders where she found the skins, and it hurts so, so much. She always picks the skins of males, animals or otherwise, because she likes feeling the changes almost as much as what they let her do.

This is all so he can awaken his magic, his mother grunts in an inhumanly deep tone, and Dibe does. Their plan works, perhaps, better than intended, for his burst of mana turns their hut and bodies into ashes.

***
New York City, 1976

Berkowitz, Dibe muses to himself, is, like most serial killers, a perverse idiot. He does not know why they are all so obsessed with sex, either having or denying it. But then, he's had his share of women and men for ten lifetimes, so maybe he's jaded.

The Son of Sam smirks to himself as Dibe walks into the warehouse, the skin of the dead hooker snug across his body, not that Berkowitz sees it. All he sees is another stupid victim. If the manhunt outside hasn't found him yet, why not profit?

That night, Sam gains a new name, and his second human skin.

***
Ontario, Canada, 1980

Sam does not know the murderer's name. He doubts the savage moron even had one, stalking the woods as he did for his whole life.

The idiot had even less contact with civilisation than he, supernatural vigilante that he was, did. From what Sam could gather, he had never gotten out of the forests, instead stalking hikers and hunters, before making them wish an animal would come and maul them.

The problem, and Sam knows this is a problem, is that he's hungry, and will never stop being so. With winter keeping almost everyone in the cities and most animals in their dens, he has little to eat, even with the herbivore skins on his back.

Maybe it was the hunger, maybe it was the spite, but Sam ate the bastard's heart, and wore his guts for as long as the warmth lasted.

By the time he makes it to the cave, which he swears sprouted out of thin air, Sam is nearly three metres tall and six hundred kilos, but gangly, potbellied and thin-limbed. The body reflects the soul, and the wendigo is ever-hungry.

Sam enters the cave out of...fear of discovery? Punishment? Maybe it's just his repressed urge to hibernate, he thinks drily.

Two things are waiting for him inside the cave, just as they are waiting inside the core of his being.

One of them is ever-shifting, from bird to reptile to fish and things that have no names and never will, every moment. It greets him with a shriek that makes his soul shrivel.

The other is human, at least in shape. Small, sexless and hunched, the thing's leathery skin is wrinkled and cracked. Its thin, wispy white hair frames its face like a curtain as it grins at him with a toothless, tongueless mouth, fondness gleaming in empty eye sockets. It loves him, and wants to have him inside it, forever.

The Beast recognises this, and bellows in challenge at its newly-revealed rival. Hunger laughs breathlessly to itself, and beckons Sam to come closer, so it may consume him.

Sam walks in between them, and the Beast tears him as part just as Hunger bites down on his flesh. Their powers slip over each other like oil and water, but, with all of his dying will and power, Sam grasps them, and draws them into himself.

Samuel Shiftskin emerges from the cave that never was, healed through the Beast's power, only to be bound by chains of order that shackle his power even more securely than his body, and pulled down facefirst into the snow. A golden, armored heel grinds into his neck, and Sam grins. Smells like woman. Is she one of those who like stepping on people?

Well. There could be worse deaths.

"Dibe of the Navajo Nation. Postcognition confirms you are guilty of fifty-three counts of murder, twenty-five counts of identity theft, four hundred seventeen counts of unauthorised magic use, and-"

"Add 'cannibalism' to that list, babe." He chuckles, though it turns into a wheeze when she presses down harder.

"Thank you for the honesty, vigilante. Would you like some broken bones with your sentence? Case like you, no one would bat an eye if you resisted arrest."

"Bullshit! Maybe if you were that weregryph with a telephone pole surgically inserted up his ass, but..."

Sam is given an offer between execution, or ARC service. He smiles when he asks Aya if he'll serve under her, so of course they end up in different divisions.

***
Salem, USA, 2030

Sam is playing when Szabo and Faith arrive in his wood-panelled, leather-covered office, the former humming to himself, the later weighted down by her latest acquisition.

"We are going to the UK." He preempts any questions. "Joint op with the Roundhouse. I hope you believe in fairies, my darlings...hello there. Who do we have here?"

"A black heart and a darker mind." The Fivefold replies, smile twitching spasmodically. She glances at him for permission, and Sam nods. Her aura briefly darkens, then one of his basilisk skins blackens and fades out of existence.

"That will be very useful for disposing of evidence." He says brightly, fingers steepled. He doesn't like the lack of self-control, though. He'll have to inform Tamar, if he doesn't already know. There are some demons like that lovesick fiend that calls herself Fernandez's wife, and then there are obvious pricks like this one.

Maybe he could ask Fixer? Ned was the one who first helped her manage multiple trains of thought without losing her identity, and there's still some lingering affection, even if the attempt at matchmaking fell flatter than Faith's chest.

"Any questions?" He adds, rising from his seat. It's covered in the skin of a particularly-annoying weredonkey, who repeatedly told him to kiss his ass in their fight. Sam decided to turn the tables on him.

"What were you playing when we came, sir?" Szabo asks, rocking on his heels with his hands behind his back.

"You came upon seeing me? Aw, shucks. Didn't know I was  that loved..." Sam shakes his head, as if shocked. "As for what I was playing?" The Salem Head gestures at his instrument with a flourish.

The lungs, bones and intestines are meant to resemble bagpipes, but Sam clearly has no Scottish blood in him, because it sounds like the building materials wailing. Which, while lovely, was not, perhaps shockingly, his intention. "Organ music."

Dammit...and the thing was still steaming when they arrived. Sam hates it when good flesh goes to waste.

***
Sparta, Greece, 2030

"Lord..." The empousa breathes, kneeling before Asterion's shrine. She has sacrificed a bull, placing the best parts on the Black Hunger's altar, while eating the rest in a display of humility. She has slit her wrist, too, and let her blood drip at the hooves of his brazen statue. She will heal.

Asterion's cult is not large enough to have its own temples. As such, the Bull Rampant shares houses of worship with Zeus Cthonios. Hades has gained popularity in recent decades, while his relatives have lost some. The ebony temple is not as large as Ares', but it is large enough to hold the shrines for Hades himself, his wife, and his champions.

"I am driven to deceive and consume men. Is it possible to overcome one's hunger, like you have?"

"If you think yourself worse than me, I fear there is little I can help you with."

The empousa looks up in shock. She had spoken to herself, and her senses, mundane and arcane alike, have detected nothing. And yet, the brass statue is now looking down at her, arms crossed and onyx eyes blazing.

"Are you...are you in the statue, lord?"

"I have been in the statue, though not this one. Sorry. It's an..." Asterion flashes a fanged grin. "Inside joke. I am merely speaking through it. As for your question? I can answer it, though you will have to listen to a story first. Will you give me some of your time?"

"Of course, lord!" She says excitedly, still kneeling despite his gesturing for her to rise.

Asterion shrugs. "Then, if I may be so brazen..."

The Tartarus Engine, the empousa realises, has rather unusual methods of verbal torture.

***
Hades, 1990

"Leaving again? Going to eat some children, are we?" Minos asks, chin in one hand, the other tapping on his Judge's desk. The dead demigod's blonde locks have become almost white in the sunless underworld.

"Sorry. I've grown used to them being sent to me. Why don't you do that again? Or do you need to demand tribute from a loser first?"

Asterion does not look at his mother's husband as he strides past him, nor does he wait for his reply. He briefly considers bumping into him, accidentally, but that would be too petty.

Hades' throneroom is utterly lightless, but Asterion does not need his eyes to see. His king blazes like a trillion galaxies to his arcane sense, and that much is, indeed, within Hades' power to create or destroy, with but a thought. Still nothing compared to his youngest brother, but Asterion considers him a far worthier king.

"Zeus spoke to me today." Hades' mouth barely quirks in his dark beard, and Aster wonders if he's going to suffer through another of his master's attempts at joking. Judging by how tightly he is gripping his obsidian throne's armrests and how his inky eyes are narrowed in his chalk-white face, he is probably just angry, though. Persephone is on Earth, so...

"Through Hermes." Hades continues, and Aster nods. The messenger is always bringing souls in, and often drops by to try and cheer up his dour uncle. "Zeus asked me, through him, to ask you to find a certain child."

"A demigod?" Asterion is about as masochistic as any regenerator, but Hera is not someone he wants even vaguely interested in him. The woman's spitefulness makes Demeter seem forgiving, which no underworlder can say with a straight face.

"I think so. Hermes spoke obliquely."

"Did he give a description, my king?"

"No." Hades leans back in his throne, and Aster realises he's not angry. He's waiting for the anvil to drop, like in those bizarrely violent human cartoons, and holding in his laughter. "He dares not even look for them, he says."

"Then..." He's going to be the chump of this story. He just knows. "Then how am I supposed to find them?"

"Given how concerned Zeus is," Hades gestures, and something darker than any shadow on or beyond Earth floats down from besides his throne to Asterion's side. "They must be powerful. Either his or the Earthshaker's."

"That is hardly helpful, my king." Aster complains, and Hades blasts his body, able to withstand Earth-pulverising force with hardly a bruise, to subatomic particles with an annoyed look. The minotaur regenerates a fraction of a nanosenond later, hands up, palms out. "I'm just saying."

"If they look like they belong in a brothel, they're Zeus'. If they look like they belong in a zoo, they're Poseidon's. Now take my Helm, and go."

Asterion grabs it out of the air, and it moulds to fit his horns and muzzle, removing him from perception, mortal, supernatural or divine. As far as creation is concerned, he does not exist.

That is how Elsbeth Crane, so named for her favourite kick, is rescued from the fighting ring Hera made sure she would end up and hopefully die in. Her mother was only too happy to sell her, afraid of the goddess' wrath.

***
"...but, lord." The empousa's brow furrows. "That...how does that answer...?"

"How? Do you think the minotaur," Asterion sneers. "Would have obeyed his king, or saved a child as oppossed to eating her? A child that might have been the god's who arranged for his birth and the way his mother's life fell apart? Events which, as you well know, are linked? Now...please, return home. I have been dividing my attention between Earth and..."

***
TOI-849b, 2030

Heracles is fighting a monster. This is not unusual. What is unusual is that this monster is his friend, and, according to some, his chthonic counterpart.

The planet Asterion and Heracles are fighting on is several times larger than Earth, forty times heavier and orbits a sunlike star. By all right, it should be a gas giant, like Jupiter, but it has almost no atmosphere.

This bothers neither of the warriors. They move around the planet hundreds of time faster than light, covering well over a hundred metres every nanosecond and circling it thousands of times every heartbeat. Each of their strikes has the power to shatter this world, yet their strength is directed only at each other by their will, so the planet is undamaged. So far.

Heracles was sewed back together by Hephaestus himself, and healed by Apollo, yet a darkness hangs over his soul, visible as the stars to Aster.

His friend is not one for brooding. Heracles' mood swings from boisterous joy to murderous rage, but he is not inclined to dwelling on things that upset him.

"Wait." Aster says after Heracles heeds his gesture to stop. "This fight was meant to lift our spirits, but I feel like I'm sparring with Thanatos here."

"It was meant to sharpen our skills for the coming war with the voidspawn." Heracles corrects. His loincloth is ragged and his beard long and wild, but his eyes are the worst. The deep blue is almost black with...

"Will you tell me what is bothering you?"

A sigh. "I wish Thor was still here."

"I heard his father brought back his gho-"

"He should not have  needed to be brought back!" Heracles tugs his brass nose ring, and Asterion grabs the back of his head in turn, before smashing him facefirst into the planet, shattering it and propelling the fist-sized fragments in all direction at near-lightspeed.

When Heracles shakes his head, unhurt but exasperated, Aster huffs, before punching him to the sun and rushing after, running on nothing. He is on Heracles half a second later, and pummeling him with punches that make the sun shake and ripple.

"Only one person can do that," Aster says conversationally. "And you are not her. Are you feeling better?"

"My nose felt almost numb after you shattered that planet with my head." The god of strength replies. "But I'm better. Why?"

"Put on your armour. I'm going to punch you."

"So?"

"Hard enough to mangle your father, eventually." Aster grins, raising a clenched fist. "Armour up."

Shrugging, Heracles summons his adamant full plate around himself. Then, Asterion wills himself to be stronger, and strikes him so hard the shockwave obliterates the star and atomises TOI-849b' remains, even as it loses strength traveling. The Olympian is sent flying thousands of lightyears away, faster than he can react, but Asterion has willed himself to be faster too, so he catches up instantly.

The minotaur's next punch sends Heracles flying out of the Mily Way, destroying thousands of red dwarfs on the galaxy's edge, and into a spiral galaxy twenty-three million light years away. Asterion closes the gap in a blink, before punching his friend out of the observable universe, with such force the nameless galaxy, dwarfing Andromeda, is erased from the face of reality.

"This is what will happen if you don't fight back!" Asterion bellows, lifting Heracles by the gorget with one hand. "Surtr overcame you because he was stronger. So what? Thor died. So what!? He is still with us, and would beat you himself if he saw you like this, you long-faced bastard. And don't get me started on Hebe-"

"Fine, fine!" Heracles tries to growl, but ends up laughing. His push sends Asterion careening into a rocky planet larger than any gas giant, which becomes gravel, before being turned to dust by the minotaur's laugh. "Just stand still, you overpowered prick..."

Asterion spreads his arms as his friend summons his bow. The arrow, tipped with hydra venom, would reach Earth's sun from the blue planet's surface in a second, but to his eyes, which make a mockery of light and its laws, it is frozen, unmoving.

Nevertheless, the arrow pierces Asterion's body, for all that it is tougher than anything and indeed, everything in this universe. The venom unmakes him on such a level that the quantum strings making him up are destroyed, as completely as if Atropos herself cut them.

Then, Asterion wills himself back into existence, smiling.

The clapping is unexpected, though.

Asterion does not recognise the newcomers, except from stories before his time.

"Impressive show, m'bull." Solarex looks similar a golden statue of Sol Invictus, and is just as insufferable, though he lacks the self-awareness to realise it. His body, golden and muscled, shines brighter than all the stars in the universe, which empower him, combined.

"Indeed! Ischyros is delighted to meet a friend who can choose how powerful he is, like itself!" The grey alien bounces up and down like a child, six ham-sized fists clenched in excitement. Its headless, fat body has no genitals, and its voice is androgynous.

"Hello? How and why did you two find us?" Heracles asks, friendly but wary.

"Well, y'know how it is..." Solarex drops what he must think is a roguish wink to Asterion, who stares back, blankly. "The Watcher asked for some outside expertise. You know, for when the voidspawn come to fuck your pretty little blue world sideways, and every other way too."

"The Watcher?" Aster echoes.

***
Atlantis, 6000 BCE

"We will die together, my love." Zhalkhos gurgles, eyes barely visible in his mangled face, as he stares up at his limbless, weeping wife.

All their works, their empire, are gone. Falling down around their ears, just as the continent itself is falling into the world-spanning ocean. It has already covered the mountains, and is still growing.

The last two Atlanteans, just as they were once the first among their people, do not believe their last gambit will work.

It was only natural, they believed, that the greater should rule over the lesser. Like the gods themselves, who treated them as peers, until the landwalkers stopped praying for their overlords' mercy, and started praying for salvation from gods the world over. They had walked the Earth before this flood, the Flood, was sent to wash away the sinners. And the greatest of them all...

Xilema laughs bitterly at the old saying. Her body, once flawless, is covered in tiny silver scales, and thrice the height of a landwalking woman. She does not feel like the 'greatest' anything anymore, except the greatest fool.

In response to the gods' punishment, the Atlanteans bent all their knowledge and craft to create a monster that could destroy them. The Horror unmade this reality, and an infinity of others, before the Unmoved Mover denied this catastrophe, reversing the events and sealing the Horror away.

As the king and queen of Atlantis are dragged beneath the waves, they drown, byt not in water, for that, they can breathe. No, they drown in horror, and Horror.

All the suffering inflicted upon the landwalkers, the humiliation, the fear of the Empire Endless crushing them out of amusement, rushes into their minds and souls.

Their beings fall apart at the seams, but their love holds. They are offered a choice, or perhaps not. Perhaps they have always been like this, and are waking up from a dream of life.

But they accept, and finally, truly become one, to Watch over the Horror they wrought forevermore.

***
"Indeed." Solarex replies smoothly, golden teeth shining in his beard. "They know skill when they see it. I think they are still tickled after my first visit to Earth..."

Solarex sees through every star, like Nacht sees through shadows. When Primus attempted to put out the sun, he intervened, to the dismay of the first vampire, who had the worst day of his unlife as a result. Solarex would have killed him, if not for Earth's gods telling the alien King Sun to mind his own business.

"And Ischyros will always help a friend!" The six-armed alien adds. It was named 'mighty' by Zeus himself, after a battle where the King of Olympus blasted a dozen realities to nothing, while uterrly failing to even scratch the grey alien, much like everyone else. Its strength and speed are limited only by its will, but its body is, as far as anyone can tell, invulnerable.

"Mmm. I wonder what prize I will be given for my selfless aid." Solarex does not seem to realise, or mind, the irony of his words. "Earth has such gorgeous breeding stock! Is the little vampire still around? After I modify him, he will make a great stud and broodmother!"

Asterion grimaces, and is sure that, behind his faceplate, Heracles is doing the same.

"Don't you have enough breeders?" The Bull Rampant asks with distaste.

Solarex laughs. "You can never have too many. My son!"

The Son of the Sun is half-machine, half-alive. One of Solarex's many children, he serves as his father's ship, centre of operations, and favourite house of worship. A golden shell, denser than neutronium, surrounds and dwarfs a purple giant star from another reality, which makes UY Scuti looks like Mercury. It is only Solarex reality-bending will that prevents the ship from disturbing the universe.

Especially when traveling from one of its edges past the opposite one in less time than a human would take to blink. The structure houses countless octillions of worshippers, aliens who fell at Solarex's feet out of gratitude for helping their worlds, or fear, or in defeat after oppossing his whimsical will.

All of them utterly adore their god, their every breath a prayer. Many of them, male, female, both and neither, have borne King Sun's children, the Solarians: the power of a hypernova in a godlike body.

"I get so bored of them..." Solarex whispers, then draws upon every star in this universe and innumerable others, channeling their power into a beam directed at his son. The ship, which has weathered Big Crunches with no damage, is vapourised. Solarex's servants moan in ecstasy as their god destroys them, their rapture, pain and terror bringing a brief smile to his face.

Then, he snaps his fingers, and recreates his godly court.

"See?" He turns to Asterion. "Boring. I do this so often, it..." King Sun shakes his head. "You two are almost as gorgeous as you are powerful. Do you want to sire life or bear it first?

"You will  not lay a finger on any inhabitant of Earth." Heracles snarls, summoning Marmyadose. Asterion snatches it out of his hand faster than he can comprehend, putting the unstoppable tip at Solarex's throat.

"The Watcher does not speak for Earth. We neither need nor want you, you damned-"

"My! But what do you have on that dreary rock that's so precious? Don't worry. After I break both you and them, you can love me together~"

Asterion almost thrusts the blade forward, but Solarex places a golden hand on his arm, stopping him, and another on his waist, before lowering it.

"So powerful~"

"You damned murderous freak-"

"Friends!" Ischyros is suddenly between them, two hands holding them at bay, buried deep in their unimaginably durable chests, which heal instantly. A third clutches Marmyadose by the blade, as if it is a foam sword. "Ischyros senses you are not about to battle with joy! Please, stop this!"

"Whatever." Asterion grunts, ripping the blade away once the alien slackens its grip, then glaring at Solarex, who blows him a kiss. "I will have words with the Watcher, who feels entitled to call shameless maniacs and utter fools to Earth's defence. In the meantime...many broken realities overflow with monsters, let alone the Void. Why not purge the chaff before the true horrors arrive?"

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 7

***
Camelot division headquarters, Birmingham, 2030

Gerald Reyes is a meticulous man.

Pay attention, lad.

He is a cautious man.

Good. Cringing when shown the back of my hand is how any son should act.

He does not make mistakes.

Do you want to be punished again? Do you want to feel the pain and shame of everyone who couldn't do this, along with yours?

He grew up surrounded by rules. Of course his magic is to make laws.

Nature versus nurture? Nonsense. I will mould even a failure like you into something halfway resembling a man. The others broke, but you will bend.

The protection of Earth is being spearheaded by nearly two hundred national supernatural defence agencies, and, of course, ARC. The world's armies, usually sent to purge eldritch monsters in their lairs, are waiting to meet them at the gate today.

Gerald is not nervous about what he has been chosen to do, no matter how high the stakes, and consequences of failure.

I swear on the dead gods dreaming, boy, you'll fear me long, long after I am gone.

Gerald...does not lie to himself.

Anymore.

"The people of this world shall be sent to the afterlives of their faiths, or to the aether, if they follow no gods. They shall be placed into a trance-like state, starting now, and until the world is safe once more."

Nearly seventeen billion baseline humans are whisked away by his magic, beyond mundane reality and into the Clusters. Even some supernaturals are affected.

But not all.

Across the multiverse, Earth, this Earth, is seen as an impossibly dangerous backwater. Not only are some of its inhabitants faster than lightning and strong enough to pulverise mountains, they are also immune to esoteric effects, barring specific powers or materials.

These, however, are not his business. His fellow Head, Alemoa Elga of External Affairs, will deal with them. Gerald, personally, thinks EA has long since outgrown its remit to liaise to instead become a political circus.

There are ARC agents giving interviews on TV! Only non-classified information, of course, and some of it still has to be censored, but...no one wants Gaol John coming after them.

Gerald shudders at the thought of his colleague. Even here and now, preparing to defend Earth from chaos itself, he can still feel John's cold, dead eyes burning through him, all the way from the Internal Affairs headquarters inside Uluru.

John...terrifies him.

And not just because of the sheer hatred he feels for him and every countryman of his. The Head of IA began as a gestalt formed from the souls of Australia's long gone prisoners, those who had never found peace with their gods, but...no one can really tell what John is, nowadays.

Perhaps not even, or especially, himself...

Gerald's head snaps up as the ocean under Australia ripples, followed by the crust and the mantle. Something like snapping jaws, like a serrated beak, like a closing flower or a hand of shadow, is closing around the continent-

Clang.

There is a sound that is not sound, chains whipping flesh until it is raw and bleeding, then dropping onto a stone floor. Then, the chains twist, and the flesh tears. The monster John caught is larger than the planet, and would eat all worlds, given the chance.

John gives it none. The chains tighten, and a scream that would have shattered the Earth or reduced all its mundane inhabitants to gibbering wrecks, is silenced by a door slamming closed, forever.

For John does not let the guilty escape. He never has. He never will.

John's gaze moves away, and Gerald lets out a breath he only just realises he has been holding. Foolish. He does not need to breathe, nor would his colleague harm...him...

The world really  is going mad, if he's thinking like this.

"Gerry." A bubbly voice, usually brimming with amusement at the irritation it brings him, fills his dark office. It is filled with concern, and that almost scares him.

Alemoa Elga is like something out of the Third Reich's propaganda pictures, all curves, blonde hair and blue eyes. She hates the comparison, so, despite the delight she takes in needling him, Gerald never mentions it.

"Elga." He does not turn, looking out at the window at the still-lit city. So full and peaceful it looks, for an empty soon-to-be battlefield. A microcosm of the world.

A pair of cold, ghostly arms wraps around him, and Elga buries her face into the crook of his neck. Her touch makes his blood curdle, but he does not push her away. This time.

"Thank you." The ghost whispers. "The evacuation went perfectly. Now, my people can concentrate on those your magic can't touch."

"I'm just doing my part, old bird." Gerald stuffs his hands into his suit's pockets, like they're on that disastrous first date as recruits again. His gold-rimmed glasses are all fogged up, too. He supposes the universe wants to recreate that moment.

Elga does not answer, instead reaching through the mage's chest and gently squeezing his heart. Gerald takes a sharp breath, but stands still. In her own way, she's just as awkward at him, though for different reasons. He is, he thinks, the only man who has been with her and lived.

"Can you say something inappropriate? I would kill for some normalcy, before it all comes crashing down." He jokes.

Elga hums, a sound like wind through hollow bones, and twitches a finger. Her telekinetic grip reaches across the world, stopping a falling dropship aping the shape of a meteor in its tracks. Force that would have shattered South America is rendered harmless, and a pulse of Elga's will throws the ship off Earth and into the sun, so fast the alien captain might be forgiven for thinking the warp drive has been activated by mistake.

An instant later, he and his crew crash through a dozen solar flares, before beginning to sink towards the core. It will be long before they die.

"Inappropriate, for me?" The ghost grins. "I'm just doing my part."

***
Giza was only thirty-two hundred kilometres from Urziceni, which meant a fairly short flight, from a human's perspective. From mine, seconds passed millions of times slower than they did back when my heart beat.

Still, you'd think not much could happen in one and a half seconds.

And yet, I got hit by a shaped sandstorm somehow strong(say that six times fast) enough to flay my face off, almost got tackled by a squad of Nigerian army werecrocs who were doing long jumps across Africa, and got a power washing when something that looked like a rainbow chestburster slips into the Nile and reshaped it into a water golem reaching into orbit.

Before I could even stare drily at the bullshit, a watery punch hit me like the world's biggest jet, sending me out of Egypt and to the North Pole, which became two islands as my body smashed through it. Thank God Reyes emptied the underground habitats...hope he'd fix this, too.

I was back, angry, though, thankfully, no longer drenched(high speed flight will do that), a few seconds later, but the monster was gone, as was the possesser. I'd have liked to think it fled, cowed by my righteous anger and the image of virile, warlike masculiny I presented, but the truth was that my boss took care of it, or so the postcognition inherited from Mimir insisted, showing me the strange creature getting ripped out of its watery construct and torn apart by invisible hands, before the river was redistributed across the continent.

Isn't it always that way? Behind every strong man, et cetera.

I touched down in front of headquarters, went through the rice-counting test, and went to Reem's office as fast as I could through the twisting corridors. Her marble guardians didn't twitch, but I could practically hear them rolling their eyes.

'Look who's entering like he's at home'.

Reem wasn't really undressed(and I'd have to thank my worse half for that mental image-Mia would like it-later, after I slapped it), but she felt like she was. I knew that feeling of being vulnerable before the world. I saw it in the eyes of my reflection, sometimes.

In the mirror, too.

So, as a mummy, Reem was always wrapped up in linen, covering her from toe to neck. Now, she was wearing a suit of golden armour, the helmet held under one arm and her thin, stringy salt and pepper curls reaching down to her shoulders. I briefly wondered if it was the death mask from her sarcophagus.

That wasn't what struck me, through. Reem's eyes were gone, empty sockets turning my way when I entered. Her face, looking even drier and more cracked than usual, slowly gave way to a smile.

I hadn't realised her eyes were an illusion, but it made sense. During the process of mummification, everything but the heart was removed. I wondered what had made her stop keeping up appearances, though.

"Agent Silva. Agent Szabo left shortly ago, to rendezvous with Head Shiftskin and agent Faith." The smile widened slightly. "And, if I know Sam, they're already in the UK by now, and he's carping about you being late."

"I didn't receive a deadline, ma'am." I said, maybe more gruffly than I had intended. "Nor any information about the mission. Which, I presume, is why I was called here?"

Reem nodded. "With Cortez incapacitated, we have no time to look for another Romanian senior agent. As such, I will be debriefing you."

"What happened to that vampire?" I asked curiously as Reem sat down, setting her helmet, with a faceplate that resembled her face, if it was made from gold, with sapphires for eyes,on the desk.

"You will be coordinating with New Camelot. Their Grandmaster is expecting you, but not expecting you." Her look would have probably been meaningful if she hadn't been eyeless. Maybe it'd have helped me realise why she had ignored my question. "I fully intend to make the most of your strange new ability, Silva, and the best place to grow is in the field."

Was that a fucking farming joke? No, wait, don't grin, what if she was serious?

"However, that does not mean you should reveal it to our opposite numbers, unless it is absolutely necessary. Unlike the gods, if they want to exploit your power, they can just join ARC and rise through the ranks to become your superior."

Inter-organisation politics? Oh, just kill me again-

"No can do. We need you, Silva." Damn, was I awful at concealing my thoughts. "And on that note..."

Reality rippled, falling away to reveal a realm of colours that had never existed on Earth. Reem reached through it, ignoring energies that would have reduced Szabo to nothing, and pulled out what looked like a scroll.

"Is that a list of our, ah, opposite numbers' weaknesses, ma'am?" I asked, while she pinched the distortion in space between two fingers and closed it.

"Close. You might or might not be aware of the ARC equipment lost during past joint ops with the Roundhouse-minor supplies, guns that refill and aim themselves, things like that. Since none of your teammates have the temper for it, I would like you to request them back."

"Huh." I blurted out before my brain caught up. "So they follow the British Museum's approach to acquiring stuff? Dangerous. What if they steal me and put me on display?"

Reem gave me the most deadpan look I'd ever received from an eyeless person, which instantly endeared her to me. "And what would you display, Silva?" She asked in a voice drier than the desert outside. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe I should ask Sam."

The instant Shiftskin's name was mentioned, the world shook, and reality lurched sideways. A huge ivory triangle, dwarfing any mountain, pierced thousands of kilometres every second, before coming to a halt.

My jump saw me end up in high orbit, though I quickly flew further away. The thing that had just pierced Earth, almost as thick as the planet, was just one fang in one of the many mouths of something that resembled an octopus the way Aaron resembled a gecko. Other fangs had skewered the rest of the rocky planets, outright turning Mars and Mercury to dust, while a tentacle the colour of blood lazily swiped through the gas giants, dispersing them.

I only perceived this by tapping into my sight to the point everything slowed down to merely blindingly fast.

The monster's body was wrapped around the sun, which was slowly shifting from plasma to a tumour-riddled, fleshlike substance wherever it made contact with it.

There were many beings on Earth whose power blinded me, by being either too bright to look at or too dark to see through. And they were all tensing in anticipation, waiting to see if Reem could pull this one off or if they'd have to step back from the incursions they were fighting.

The star-sized monster's body twitched once, twice, before cracks that glowed a blinding white spread through it-its insides, revealed to the universe.

A circular shape covered in beaks and glassy, lidless eyes turned to nothing as Aya burst through it, before grabbing hold of the monster with gauntleted hands. The mummy spun on her heel, twisting her torso until the armour creaked, then let go, throwing the thing that outmassed the solar system out of it.

The Oort Cloud became atoms as it smashed through it, not slowing down. In fact, it seemed to grow faster and faster, through the sheer, impossible speed reduced its body to almost nothing as it left our universe, and kept going.

I turned my eyes to Reem, who had put her hands together and started muttering an incantation that made my bones shake. Space folded, then regained its normal aspect, the planets reappering in their orbits. My sight, though, showed me the shape behind the curtain of reality, its throat bulging up to spit out the things that looked like worlds, but were not. Its eggs, perhaps, sent to our universe to grow by feeding on the inhabitants they tricked into living on them.

Aya sneered, hands on her hips. "No, you don't. Gilles!"

A black and white blur flew at and through the false Earth from nowhere, smashing it to smitheerens. A moment later, it was on the sun, now a sphere of cancerous flesh.

"Aya! Think you can make a new one?" The weregryph asked in a booming voice. At the mummy's nod, he gripped the sun, arms flexing, and threw it so it smashed through all of the fake planets, before continuing in its flight.

"Now...time to restore the proper order of things." Reem said, more to herself, before putting her hands together again.

I couldn't tell you if time was rewound, or if she just made a new solar system from nothing. My sight fluctuated, when it came to precision. Or, maybe, I just couldn't make the most of it yet.

Either way, I was back on a restored Earth moments later, pulled back to the mummy by an irresistible force whose touch burned me. Reem smiled as she looked at me, still with the list in my hand like a chump, and I told myself it was just the aura of order she radiated that made me want to ask what she wanted, then do it.

"Now that distraction has been dealt with...please do request the listed items back from the Roundhouse, agent Silva. Oh, and be sure to give Sam my regards." She put on her golden helmet, regarding me from behind a face just as unblinking as her natural one. "That will be all."

***
"You're Silva?" Shiftskin asked as I landed on London's southwestern outskirts. "Hmm..."

"That's me, sir." I said, not sure whether to shake the towering wendigo's ever-shifting hand. I didn't want to brush against his hooded leather cloak.

Fucking hell...did he really have to spell his victims' names out in their teeth?

Ask him how he maintains them!

Fuck you, you Mr. Game and Watch-looking arse. We're not going to do that, I thought back at my strigoi side.

"You look like your voice sounds." The wendigo sighed, before running a hand through his shoulder-length hair. His face changed from a flayed old man's, to white-furred and apelike, to a fanged, grey elk muzzle, but the hunger never left his eyes.

Szabo smiled and waved at me from Sam's left, while the Fourfold nodded from his right. The woman had to be sixty-four by now, but, save for a few streaks of grey, her hair was still black and thick.

"We are not four anymore, David."

I blinked, but nobody had spoken-out loud, that was. Unable to directly speak to my mind, she had instead spoken into the aether, letting us hear her.

"Then..." I began.

"You and the Fivehold will have time to compare mindmates later. Hell, have a tea party. We're going to the Smoke, after all." Shiftskin crossed his arms, cloak rasping. "You went to Aya's office before coming here, Silva. My candies. Do you have them?"

I stared at him, unsure if I was being made fun of, but this guy was insane. Had Reem forgotten to give me something she'd promised him? And if yes, would he take his anger out on me?

"She didn't give me any, sir." I replied carefully.

"Well, I would hope so. I haven't been getting any lately, either."

Shiftskin was one of those guys people were too scared of to know whether their jokes were jokes, and if yes, whether they should laugh at them or not.

We saw why moments later.

Picture an universe where Freeman Dyson's dream became reality, then surpassed his imagination a septillion times over. An universe where every star is encased in a mechanical sphere, all energy harnessed to serve the purposes of that reality's masters.

Now, picture a septillion stars being converted into energy, then shaped and focused into an energy beam the size of our Earth, barely small enough to fit through the sky-filling breach in space.

The beam flew down at us as fast as light, intending to shower Earth in a frankly disgusting amount of overkill.

Or, perhaps, given some of the beings that lived on pur world, those aliens should have armed for wendigo.

The Hunger intertwined with Sam's being rushed to the fore as he opened his fanged mouth in a broad grin, nearly unginging his jaw, before swallowing the galaxy-destroying energy beam like it was water.

He didn't stop there.

While, I imagine, the aliens were elbowing each other and mumbling their equivalent to 'you seeing this shit?', Sam swirled enough power to reduce the Mily Way to a memory in his mouth. Then, with a deep breath, he drew in all the heat out of the other reality, stopping every particle's motion.

Snickering to himself, the wendigo opened his mouth and spat a fusillade of energy beams through the tear in reality, which curled around each other to make sure no Dyson Sphere remained that wasn't molten debris.

With a satisfied hum, Sam shifted his neck into a snake, before stretching upwards. From my perspective, it looked like his fangs clamped down on the portal's edges.

Then, Sam closed his mouth, and the portal disappeared, filling my ears with the clanour of a million shattering mirrors.

Shifting back to his default form, Sam sketched a sarcastic bow before the laughing, clapping Szabo and the approvingly-nodding Fivefold. It looked like, unlike me, they had both expected...this.

Maybe they'd worked with the Salem head before.

"Wanna become Crypt Head, Silva?" The wendigo asked me, smirking. "Maybe I'll convince the mummy to retire and let me take care of her. Then, you can deal with shit like this on a...well, not a  daily basis. But often enough it will feel like that."

"You don't seem overly bothered, sir." I said, trying to keep my voice from wavering.

"What?" Sam scoffed. "If I let Gilles' uptight ass show me up, I'd have to kill you all for knowing, then myself out of shame. Motherfucker threw the sun! I'm sure Amara had to erase that thing before it evolved into something...don't know how his wife can stand him. I'd call her a trooper if she wasn't already in the army."

As fascinating as the wendigo's ramblings were, we still had a job to do. I suppose I was excited to meet the Round Table's heirs.

"Oh, and Silva?" Sam asked, taking point, his long legs covering what I would in two steps every stride. "This is a joint effort by the Global Gathering. Hope you liked working with the Circle Bizarre, because they've sent someone too. So has FREAKSHOW, the Karma Delivered..."

And...everyone else.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 8

***
Travelling a city the size of London was laughably easy at my speed, especially with no traffic or bystanders to slow me down. And yet, I was by far the slowest of our little party, only able to keep pace with the Fivefold, who, I got the feeling, wasn't trying her best.

Out of curiosity, I focused my mindane senses on her. I didn't want to use Mimir's sight and see her soul-that would have been violating. And, it seemed, my senses were far sharper than eight years ago.

From a dozen metres away, the Fivefold's heartbeat was as loud to me as a lion roaring in a normal human's ear would have been to one. And yet, it was not the sound that caught my ear. That honour went to the wet ripping and tearing, combined with the slurping and dry cracking, like someone was folding an autumn leaf.

Interesting. I couldn't see anything on her exposed skin, and her suit wasn't bulging, so...

"Not all demons can be placed in seals, David. Some must be bound in a rather cruder manner." The Fivefold said, without looking at me, while walking on the Thames. Seemed she was still better at reading me than the reverse.

"I'm sure you won't leave me hanging on a hint. Maybe you can tell me, after the story of how you met my father."

"The fact Constantin hasn't done it himself should tell you how boring it was."

"Right. Boring." Something told me the thing making that strange sound-probably that demon she'd said was immune to everything but simple strength; did that include holy seals and inverted pentagrams?-was connected to the way they had met. Perhaps even the cause.

The Roundhouse(that is, New Camelot's headquarters) floated along the sane, doing a tour of the city all day, every day. The tall, yet somehow squat-looking building was circular, with square watchtowers rising from the sides, like a medieval recreation of the Coliseum.

'Um, yeah, David, but what do you mean by  medieval? Early Middle Ages? Late? High?'

I'd be high to answer that, yes. Wouldn't wanna embarrass myself more than usual. For me, 'medieval' meant when Roman marble was swapped with grimier, grittier brick. Feel free to bury me again for how wrong I was. Just tie me down, this empty head might make me float away.

At the moment of our arrival, the Roundhouse was close to Buckingham Palace, which was empty but for the Beasts of Britannia guarding it: the lion, the unicorn, the red dragon. Each strong enough to rip Earth in half like a rotten apple, not to mention fast enough to make me look human. It wasn't their physical prowess that made them impressive, though. It was their nature.

Plato had been, if not right, at least closer to the truth of reality than other philosophers. Just like a square was the shadow of a cube, which was the shadow of a tesseract, and so on, for there was an infinity of dimensions, there was a realm beyond the multiverse and the aether, which were its shadows. This Realm of Ideas, if you will, was both the bedrock of creation, on which all was built, and its beak, from which all grew down, like an inverted tree.

But how did the Outer Gods and other eldritch horrors fit in with all this? Well, how could a grim, nihilistic writer half-glimpse this realm, beyond everything and empty but for the blueprints of reality, and name it anything but an Outer Void?

Thank God such ideas, whether sentient or not, lost much of themselves when manifesting in the multiverse. The Beasts on Earth were infinitely lesser than their true selves, that is, the dimensionless, unchanging things beyond time and space: the image of the United Kingdom, carved into the wall of creation's cave. Which meant that, as long as that idea existed, they could heal from any damage, any maybe increase their power at will, or even clone themselves, if the rumours were true.

The Roundhouse's wall, white as ivory and only looking like brick, shifted to form a locked gate, which, if you ask me, was kind of redundant. The wooden scales that rose out of the Thames were more interesting, though. For a moment, I thought I saw a pale hand let go of the scales, and a flawless, inhumanly pale face smile at the sight of my eyes.

I guess she didn't limit herself to lakes, anymore. Kind of strange she would appear so close to her trapped, former lover and teacher, but Nimue had never been shy, especially when it came to taunting Merlin.

My musing was cut short by a quack. Such an incongrous, mundane sound, after everything, that I almost stopped hovering and fell into the river. Going by Sam's grumble, and Szabo and the Fivefold's smirks, they had caught my blunder, and I'd bet the wendigo was annoyed I hadn't fallen.

So, the Round Table. You wouldn't believe how many adaptations of Arthur and his knights had been made before the Shattering, and even a few after. Some overflowing with supernatural elements and actors, others with barely any at all(those tended to be more liked; after all, if you could ger good special effects without magic or supernaturals, it meant you were skilled, and knew when people wanted something new). Out of them all, the Monty Python version was my favourite, to the surprise of no one who had even a vague impression of my attempt at a personality.

Merlin's too, it seemed.

"Why is there a duck on the scale?" I asked, almost to myself, aware of how incredulous I sounded. It was then that the Knights made themselves known.

The gunmetal-grey armour of New Camelot's Knights wasn't worn: it was part of them, as much as their flesh and souls. It could be summoned or dismissed with a thought, but automatically appeared when a Knight was threatened, and allowed them a range of abilities, from walking on any surface, regardless of density, gravity or lack thereof, to surviving in any environment, planetary, otherworldly or void of anything we could describe as real.

As such, when the Knights leapt over the outer wall to land in squads, they landed on the water like it was solid ground, before marching towards us.

Most of the Knights were human, at least in size and shape, but I saw a few hints at other species: the insect-like gait of a Fae or hybrid, languid when not bursting with speed and dashing all about; the weightless, stiff movement of ghosts; and, of course, the Knights that weren't even similar to humanity, and made no attempt to hide it.

The armoured dragon that filled the sky above us was so large, it should have never been able to fit in the Roundhouse. Either it shifted size when inside, or the place was a TARDIS moonlighting as a building. I wouldn't have been able to tell if the building had grown to let the dragon pass, or if it had become larger after exiting-it moved too fast for me to see.

The Knights that drew my attention, however, stood aside from the others, and not just because of their size, though they were huge(she said), if small compared to the dragon above.

One of them was eighty-one metres tall, and almost as broad, with six wings covered by an armour so fine every feather stood out in relief. The nephilim's androgynous figure burned my eyes, bringing tears of thick, cold blood to them, which crawled down my cheeks like tree sap. In one gauntlet, they held what looked like a shepherd's crook, if made from a radio tower.

It was the third time I had seen it. Auspicious.

The Knight at its side was far smaller, merely thrice my height and several times broader, but no less impressive. The armour covering its amorphous body looked more like a sheet of metal, for it showed no features to suggest separate parts.

The cambion smelled like death, literally, for all the distance and the river. Corpses let to rot in a swamp while flies feasted on them and maggots filled their hollow bodies with eggs, or toseed into a desert to dry under the sun. The sludge that somehow dripped through the armour was thick and a dark so green it was almost black. The lidless, bloodshot eyes swimming in each drop of sludge stared at us with desperation, and I-

Please.

Kill us again.

Death is no release. Merely respite.

Pain, pain to forget, we are BEGGING-

They all lied to us. This is not how things should be.

They are lying to you, too.

Closed the ears of my mind to them.

The cambion giggled discordantly at my disgust, an armoured tentacle rising from the central mass, the end shaping into sickeningly human long fingers that waved mockingly at the Fivefold.

She didn't wave back.

"Please, brother." The nephilim said in a melodious, tired voice that held an undercurrent of...fondness? Resignation?

The fact I had trouble telling the two apart said a lot about my relationships.

"Do not start something I will have to end. At least, not until this crisis is over." The nephilim's featureless helmet then moved to look down at us. The Knights could see through the metall of their armour like the clearest crystal, though it immediately darkened or remade itself to protect them from blinding or mind-blasting sights. I doubted the nephilim needed such protections, though.

"Welcome to London, agents. I pray you shall not be as cold to us as you are towards your own countries." It held up a hand to preempt any reply. "I find that rather admirable. The realms of grasshoppers come and go like sick mayflies, lasting scant millennia at most. Only a bleeding heart would attach themselves to such ephemereal existences."

"I think the segregation based on species is worse than our nonexistent patriotism, Master." Shiftskin said, muzzle twitching as he gnashed yellow rat teeth.

"Indeed, Head Samuel. Not all forms of stupidity are equal...thank grandfather."

As the nephilim's faceplate drew back into the helmet, I noticed the Knights were staring at us, unspeaking, unmoving, if relaxed. Perhaps it was a test, like I was sure the duck would be, too. Of our patience, maybe.

The nephilim's steely eyes were as grey as its armour, unblinking stormclouds in a face that could have been male or female. Its expression remained pitying as it took us four in, though the disgust in its eyes grew with every movement of its head, reaching its peak when it took in Szabo. Every orifice of the strigoi's face was gushing blood while he grinned up at the nephilim, who hummed in what sounded like consideration.

"I am the Master of New Camelot's London Chapter, working directly under Grandmaster Bedivere." The nephilim said, hefting the crook I realised was its staff of office. Most Masters preferred batons, but I guess it was making a statement about shepherding. "You may call me Vyrt, as my brother mangled 'virtue' while we were learning English, in a childish attempt at mockery." The weary fondness had returned to its voice. "Tonight, provided we do not have a resounding success or failure at breaching the wall between realms, you are to rest."

"You came at a beautiful moment." The cambion giggled in a silky smooth voice wholly at odds with its slimy appearance. " 'Understand, the only way to reach the monsters we must put down is to march through Ireland unopposed. We swear it will go better than the last hundred times!'."

"The actual proposal was longer, and even polite, but, essentially, the same." The nephilim replied while nodding to the Fivefold. "Agent Faith, know that my brother has not gone senile. We share your disappointment."

"We are ready to face him, and greater than the last time." The Fivefold replied, face blank, hands clasped behind her back."

"So I can see." Vyrt smiled thinly. "Hello, Christine. Xelkhe. Ylvhem. Zhannar. Greetings to you too, uncle. Have you chosen a name?"

A howling blackness filled my sight, physical and arcane alike, before it was dispersed by Vyrt's bell-like laugh.

"It would be easier to erase your sins than me, uncle. Stand down!" The nephilim thundered at the Knights, who had summoned all manners of weapons into their hands at the demon's unexpected attack, from maces and warhammers to wide-barreled rifles that hummed as they glowed a metallic blue.

"Agent Faith is a greater asset than she is a threat...the same cannot be said for her fifth self, at the moment, but you will control yourselves. Unlike my uncle, you are able to." Vyrt said, then turned to me. "Agent Silva, I would have words with you." Sigh. "After you go through my cousin's absurd test, of course."

"Is this one of those tests we fail by asking about details before it?" Sam smiled, eyes narrowed at the scales.

"No. You step on the scales to prove you are not an eldritch abomination in disguise. If you are a supernatural inhabitant of this reality," The nephilim continued, eyes dead. "You will weigh as much as the duck."

***
As I paced on the desk in Vyrt's cavernous office-you could've fit my hometown in here, with space for a few villages; more points to the TARDIS Roundhouse theory-, I took in the skyscraper-sized portraits of Knights past, from the first Round Rable to their heirs across the twentieth century.

Damn me, but I've never been able to understand the obsession so many leaders have with looking sternly constipated. It's like they're trying to say 'I'm too stressed to smile, too proud of my work to frown, and not bored enough to look neutral. Hold on, let me clench my cheeks. The ones on my face, too.'

I've seen it with everyone from politicians to gods to portraits of the voivodes. Țepeș has one where he looks fairly serene, though, or maybe just contemplating what stake to use next.

Someone should make a vamp porn flick with that theme, one of these days. Call it 'Stakeholders' or 'Rising stakes'.

Vyrt's arrival was not preceded by anything, nor did I notice the nephilim until it sat down in a tungsten seat larger and heavier than most buildings.

The clang caused by it sitting down almost drew my attention away from its clothes. I hadn't expected it to keep its armour, but this looked like a bathrobe-

"It is, David." Vyrt replied, leaning forward, hands clasped on the desk, shoulder-length curls, the same colour as its eyes, swaying. "I am off-duty, at the moment. If you expected the me who saw comfort as sin, you will have to travel back in time."

"Sounds fascinating, sir. May I ask why you wanted to speak with me?" I smiled. "You know, I saw you twice, when I last came to London. You were hovering above the Roundhouse, looking over the city."

"Actually, you saw me thrice. I was at that con you were, as the Doctor."

Wha- "There were...a  lot of Doctors there, sir. Which one were you?"

"All of them." Vyrt smiled self-deprecatingly. "Apparently, I look too masculine for the Thirteenth and too feminine for the rest. The things you learn..."

The Master trailed off, looking past me and the dumb look on my face. "But how? All Doctors? Did you change costumes mid-con, or...?"

Instead of replying, Vyrt jerked his head at something behind me, and I turned lightning-fast at the shadow that suddenly fell over me. Another Vyrt, this one armoured, stood behind me, clutching his shepherd's crook. Both of them then cleared their throats and pointed at another pair of nephilims, who had appeared beneath a portrait of Gawain, standing triumphant over a slain knight at one.

Soon enough, the office was filled with armoured half-angels- and, according to my senses, they were all as powerful as the original, who felt like...like Odin, that time he'd come to me after the Headhunt to suggest I should become ARC's liaison to Asgard. Between Vyrt and the hundreds(more? Their presence was blinding) of copies, I was positively drowning in power.

"I take after my father and grandfather." The original spoke, making me turn to him. The others had disappeared, lessening the pressure on my soul. "I create. I build. I strengthen. I can," It gestured at the now-empty office. "Replicate myself ad infinitum, each copy as powerful as me, and with the same abilities. You can imagine the demands I receive, when I can do this...using it for harmless entertainment, rather than filing every place in every moment of this universe's past and future with nephilims, is what I would do, if it were my choice."

"That's a creative use of power." See? I'm so slick, I make puns without even trying to.

"Thank you. But, as I was saying, this is the fourth time we meet. Please do not look for patterns in everything. Or are you the type to see shapes in clouds, too?"

"Sometimes." I said defensively, not crossing my arms. I was  not feeling called out. "So...this meeting?"

"Aya Reem hopes you will grow in power and prowess, David. I intend to help you. If you are uneasy about my opinion of you, calm yourself. I am used to working with loathsome creatures."

"Wow." I scowled. "Thanks for the fucking honesty."

"You are welcome. Your existence is only half as disgusting as the fact a being like you bears a name like yours."

"Well, forgive me for not seeing my suicide while in diapers, and choosing a fitting, evil name." I bared my fangs. "Is this why you called me here? If I wanted to listen to someone insult everything I am, I'd talk to myself."

"Choice...fascinating, isn't it? And so, so burdensome. Sometimes, I wonder what God was thinking when He created it. Animals are shackled by their instincts, but people? Angels, fallen or otherwise? I always thought grandfather gave Samael too long a leash. If He had imposed His will, there would have never been a rebellion." Vyrt's eyes darkened, white flashing in them. "There  should have never been one."

Alright, discussing theology with someone closer to God than I'd ever be, even if it was way too honest when it came to its opinion of me, was not the worst way to spend my time. "God has always valued freedom."

"You are a mayfly, David. You do not remember the hundreds of millennia before the Flood, the slaves, broken in body and essence alike. So few who walk the Earth do...you should ask the young Watcher, someday."

Young? Hundreds of millennia? "How old did you say you are?"

"Ah." The nephilim smiled. "You think the Shattering started everything. How do you know events before it weren't directed by beings like me? Were you there?"

"Well, were they?"

In response, Vyrt plucked a feather from one of its blazing wings. Larger than me, it was surrounded by ivory fire that left strobing afterimages whenever they flickered. "What is this? A feather? A gathering of atoms? A construct of holy power? So it is with time."

The nephilim let go of the feather, which blurred out if its hand to seamlessly move back into its former place. "Alas, however the past might be viewed, one thing is certain: we all chafe under the yoke of free will. Can you imagine, David? Can you imagine the Lord's mind filling our bodies, directing our every action and thought? We would never know doubt, or fear, or sadness, for the Lord does not feel such weaknesses."

I didn't like the feverish grin on the nephilim's face, but I couldn't exactly escape, either. "I do not know. I have heard...theories, about us all being dreams in the mind of an unfathomable creator."

"Those theorists are more right than they are wrong. What do you think about their ideas?"

I shrugged. "Even if all I feel is fake, I might as well enjoy it, for it feels real to me. And there are worse lies to live with than love."

" 'His greatest lie was convincing the world love is real'." Vyrt quoted wistfully. "You are indeed right, David. My wife tells me this whenever I start acting, and I quote, mopey."

God bless that poor woman, having to brave this creepy zealot's ramblings every day.

"You might meet her after she finishes tearing down the aetheric barrier alongside her fellows. I think you would enjoy it. You see, she follows the teachings of a rather fay woman, whose name we try not to say in these halls." The nephilim said with a conspirational grin, before lifting one hand to show me a gold ring you could have probably driven a car through.

"She sounds lovely."

"Oh, she is." The wistfulness was back. "Loves tearing things down, for that is her magic. Calls me a man, though she does not treat me like one. In private, that is."

Riiiight..."I-"

"Your stance on love is the reason you are an admirable person, despite being a vile creature, David. Much like my brother. Well, half-brother. Can you believe Vykt and I share a mother? He took all her good looks." I wasn't touching that statement with a barge pole.

"Strange to hear someone like you say this about a cambion." I said, sticking my hands in my pockets. Unlike Vyrt, I didn't have a multi-story, fluffy white bathrobe(woe, woe!), so I was still in my black ARC shirt, pants and boots, with the grey headstone inside a white shield Crypt symbol on both shoulders. ARC was going through a few changes in looks at the moment, and we weren't sure what we'd end up looking like.

Vyrt's eyes were disappointed as he shook his head. "If you cannot separate who people are from what they are, David, you might as well crawl into your empty tomb and stay there."

"Um...you mean grave. My death wasn't exactly planned for, so nobody had time to build me a tomb. And we haven't made any modifications since."

"Ah, linear time." Vyrt put his chin in his hand, smiling crookedly. "Were I able to sin, I would envy your innocence, David. Briefly...hmm. The skin of what you call reality is going to break in short order. Keep calm, carry on, and open your eyes."

I felt something like a flick across my face, then saw the solar system as if from outside, except the sun was far closer to the Earth than it should have been. In fact, I could see the planet's surface superheating into plasma, as the black-veined sun opened in the middle, becoming a slit black eye.

It wasn't a patch on its owner.

The worm that filled my sight could have eaten that octopus Reem had thrown out of our reality without opening its circular mouth fully, and its segmented, sickly yellow body surrounded the solar system countless times, the pull of its unimaginable weight beginning to tear apart the planets.

Being so big and heavy, it probably wasn't expecting Vyrt to fly straight through it, splitting flesh tougher than yamadium for light years on end. The nephilim burst out of the cosmic maggot, its puslike blood not touching him, and grabbed it by its shredded tail with one hand, before tossing it out of my enhanced sight. The last glimpse I caught of it was the maggot flying straight through thousands of stars, turning them to nothing or causing them to explode. The resulting supernovas couldn't even harm its dying body, unlike Vyrt's strength.

Before I could breathe in relief, the stars in Earth's skies also split open, black veins bulging as a swarm of thousands and thousands of maggots tore through the Milky Way, perhaps driven by hunger, perhaps by the desire to avenge their dead kindred.

I could hear their brutish thoughts as they covered thousands of lightyears every heartbeat, see images of Vyrt torn open and filled with their eggs, dead but alive, screaming eternally as their larvae ate their way out through his heart and eyes and mouth.

The nephilim's aethereal laugh drowned them out. A blazing white streak smashed through the cosmic swarm, splattering them and sending chunks covered in yellow gunk flying across the galaxy, which had been turned into a diffuse cloud by the clash.

"Such simple desires..." Vyrt muttered to himself, putting his hands together. Then, new matter flowed into existence out of him, filling the holes in the Milky Way, before quickly being moulded to remake the galaxy's former shape.

It must have moved at trillions of times the speed of light, because otherwise, how could such quantities of matter covered such immense distances in seconds? And yet, Vyrt was relaxed as he fixed the damage. With a fingersnap, the nephilim removed the eye-bleedingly bright tear in space that had swallowed the galactic core, through which only madness could be seen. Spinning a finger, he bent space, recreating the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's heart.

Then, he was back on the Earth he had restored, moving a hand across the empty sky and recreating the stars. A smile made the sun blaze into existence at the centre of newly-wrought, familiar planets.

"What did you see, David?" Vyrt asked, sitting down like he hadn't just played Minecraft with the galaxy.

"You, probably terrifying every alien observing us?" I snarked weakly.

"Actually, they are familiar with Earth. Hence why they stay far, far away. I meant the worms. What did you  see?"

"They were big, but..."

"They were worms, David. Also known as bait." Vyrt smiled mirthlessly, showing teeth bright as the sun's core. "Shall we see what is biting?"

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 9

***
Cosmic fishing, much like Earth fishing(whether for food or compliments) seemed to consist of a lot of sitting around, trying to make boredom look at concentration.

Or, at least, I thought so. Like the angels of the Third Sphere I had once seen in a bestiary of pops', Vyrt's features differed from a statue's only by colour. He didn't blink, didn't breathe, despite the perfectly healthy organs in his body. His immense heart, for example, didn't beat. If it did, it would have probably drowned out the thousands of others in the Roundhouse-between the London Chapter and the auxiliary staff, I could hear thousands of hearts, spread over the spatially-warped equivalent of kilometres beating in eerie unison, like an army marching. I'd heard rumours of how the Knights drilled in order to match each other's movement as much as different physiologies allowed, but this was...

Huh. They actually breathed and blinked at the same time, too.

One had to wonder how much the telepathy their armour enabled was really necessary, with such cohesion.

"You do not have to stay here, David." Vyrt spoke eventually, mouth unmoving, no air entering or leaving his lungs. He was so concentrated, he'd forgotten to fake human mannerisms. "Unless, of course, you wish to. Mimir's sight could be helpful with spotting things mine might miss. He always saw things clearer than most..."The nephilim sighed. "Ironic, isn't it? He could see the future, but not his own death in time to warn the Aesir."

I nodded along while Darth Vyrtgueis talked, only watching him with one eye, the other moving from portrait to portrait. C'mon, stare back. The paintings' eyes always move in the cool places...I'm looking at you, look back. Eye for an eye...

"That is, of course, assuming Mimir didn't simply accept his death, or even helped bring it along. After all, we still do not know how Chernobog managed to steal him away from Borson. Perhaps he left himself, using his knowledge to hide until he reached the Black God's grasp."

I turned to give Vyrt my full attention, staring up at him incredulously. He sounded like he knew more than he had been letting on-would inquiring cause him to spill more? I wouldn't even have to fake interest. "Those are certainly possibilities, Master."

"Thank you for using my rank, David. Be careful not to roll your eyes any harder, they might fall out."

"I did not-"

"Metaphorically. I see you are still feeling called out, though."

"Mimir?" I asked gruffly. "Chernobog?"

"They are both gods associated with the Northern Hemisphere...oh, you meant what I was talking about. Yes, that is interesting too. Mimir could have chosen to die, knowing the chaos it would cause. Perhaps, tired of being used as a glorified search engine by a knowledge-monger, he chose to make sure as many gods as possible died." Vyrt shrugged. "I have seen less productive suicides."

"That would mean the Headhunt was all a sham." I said warily. "That..."

"Would it no be heartbreaking to learn you ate people while your mind was raped, because an old man was feeling spiteful?" The nephilim smiled. "I'm certain Odin would be devastated if it turned out everything he built was almost torn down out of pettiness. Such rage would take him...I have not seen him truly mad in millenia, you know."

"Unless you want to, I would argue not telling him about these theories."

"But of course." Vyrt raised a grey eyebrow. "Odin hates having his ideas repeated at him. It makes him livid, truly. Why, the only thing worse would be if he learned the responsible were still at large."

I will not lie: the moment I saw Vyrt's smile and the gleam in his eyes, an image, of white teeth in a black, otherwise featureless face flashed into my mind, and I stumbled.

"Stop talking." I whispered. "You are trying to scare me."

And then I left, jumping off the desk and-I will not lie-running out of Vyrt's office. His chuckles followed me for a long, long time.

***
I didn't know the Roundhouse's layout, let alone where the others' rooms were, and I didn't trust myself to open Mimir's sight. As luck would have it, after minutes of walking around corridors lined with the armours of dead Knights, standing eternal watch under their late owners's portraits, I found my wall into a chamber of worship.

It was an interesting change of pace after the countless dead ends and the staring, mournful eyes of Knights fallen in the line of duty. Few of the human ones had been old. None had died pieacefully; I knew, for their portraits showed the moments of their deaths.

They all looked like they were judging me. Their eyes had followed me, too.

The chamber I was in now could not be called a chapel, for it was larger than most churches I had see, and Christianity wasn't the only religion represented. I saw Jesus and Buddha, Amaterasu and the Trimurti, Odin and Zeus and Cernunnos. I saw gods of war and peace and death, and even a group of humble-looking deities deities I didn't recognise, before seeing the 'we will never forget you' plaques left by said Knights' descendabts.

Ancestor worship? Or just attachment?

"At what point does one become the other, strigoi?" A voice like hailstones on wood drew my attention.

I turned to look into Cernunnos' shaggy, green-eyed visage. After everything, I was less surprised at the god manifesting, and more at the fact he'd pulled the cliche of stepping off his statue's plinth.

"I suppose it depends, as so many things do, on faith, and how it is shown." I replied, adjusting the cross that had started stinging more than usual, for some reason.

"Indeed it does. Answer me this, then: do you believe in me, David?"

I blinked at the odd question. But, judging by the Celtic god's warm, earnest smile, he was being serious. "Do I believe...?"

"In me. Do you?"

"Well, yes. In the sense I know you are real."

"That is the correct answer, David. I  am real."

A black blur, claws around my throat, and Chernobog was pressing me up against a wall. I gaped at him for half a microsecond, then glanced frantically about the room. Cernunnos' plinth was empty-what the fuck!? This wasn't an illusion?

Had the Black God come back,  and somehow snuck into the Roundhouse? Why? How? Or were the Knights in league with him? Vyrt's talk of hidden alliances, bargains struck to watch the world burn, came back to me. But why would the nephilim point my thoughts in that reaction, if he was in cahoots with Chernobog?

Fucking dammit. I was doing half his job, driving myself insane like this.

"You are already mad, David." Chernobog said, voice just as warm as it had been in his disguise as Cernunnos. "Who would worship the thing that hurts them, but a madman-"

I spat in his blank, ebony face. "Szabo already rambled about that." I sneered. "And he was worse than you could ever be."

"Is that a challenge?" Chernobog sounded delighted at the prospect. "I'll be sure to take you up on it. But first, let me show you the face of your saviour."

Another blur, and my back smashed through the thick cross that bore Jesus' statue. The Messiah's cracked image fell on me, robes falling apart like they were cloth rather than stone, showing a rotten spear wound in his side. His features had gone from serene to a silent scream, mouth parted in a grimace that revealed rotten teeth. The crown of thorns on his head pulsed in rhytm to Chernobog's shaking shoulders, pressing into his forehead, but drawing only a thick pus, rather than blood.

"He was afraid, in the end." The Black God said softly, squatting down and nudging the statue with one finger. "Of death. Can you  imagine that? An aspect of the thing that called itself God, like it was the only one! Live enough among humans, and-"

"What? You'll become scared, like them? You must've lived an awfully long time among humans, what with how Nacht killed you." I tried to smirk, and move the statue, which felt heavier than the world, off of me, and manged neither.

Chernobog snickered. "Says the one too scared to stop hiding behind jokes. But...I should not be surprised. It is a sign of deceiving oneself, and you  are Christian, after all. You have all convinced yourselves your god is not a bloated tyrant, toying with you out of boredom, then devouring your souls. But observe..."

With a deep, rattling breath, the Jesus statue shuddered to a mockery of life. Bloodshot eyes were wide with horror that almost eclipsed the horror blazing feverishly within them.

"I have seen the truth." It said in a broken voice that was all the uglier for how beautiful it must have been once. "D-Death...is only the beginning. But there is no  life after it. There is no Heaven. Hell is a lie. They...t-they all are..."It gibbered to itself, sludge-like tears slowly trailing down gaunt cheeks; I realised, to my disgust, that they were worms, transparent and bloated with eggs that pulsed within them, even as they crawled out of the statue's hollow eye sockets and through its flesh, eating it.

"I must partake of you." The statue and the worms spoke in unison. "Give me your body and your blood, so I may stave off death."

Before I could do anything, the worms rushed forward, dashing down my throat. One wrapped around my lungs and dead heart, growing as it fed, filling my throat so I couldn't talk. The other moved lower, into my stomach, devouring its lining as it grew and grew, until my abdomen burst. Then, they began laying their eggs.

All the while, Chernobog and the statue looked down, beaming; then, the latter unhinged its jaw, and bit down on my chest, shattering my cross.

I didn't scream. I couldn't.

***
When I came to, it was in a small, dingy room, a bare lightbulb hanging from the dirty grey ceiling. And yet, even the meager light hurt my eyes, like I had lived my whole life underground.

"He's awake."

The cold, detached voice drew my gaze to the man in the chair. My father had never smiled so darkly, in all the decades I had known him. His clothes were shabby and torn, showing patches of pale flesh covered in blotches. Where had his muscle gone? Where were the scars?

"You gave us one fuck of a scare, there." The man said, leaning forward, rubbing his bearded chin. I gaped at the swear word-Constantin would never talk like this-, then saw my mouth was hanging open my itself. My lower jaw dangled from a series of thin metal strings bolted into my skull, and my teeth and tongue were gone.

Constantin grinned-my expression must have been hilarious-, and turned to speak over his shoulder at someone I couldn't see, someone in the hall beyond the room. "Did you record that? That juice really feeds your imagination. Though I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Ever since I adopted the little fuck, he came up with some shit even  I wouldn't have thought of. Guess he thought if he contributed himself, it'd hurt less."

"Won't you ever get tired of him? It's been decades." The person in the hall spoke, in a flat voice that held only the barest flicker of curiosity.

Constantin laughed, the folds of his belly jiggling. "You fucking kidding me? The meat might not be freshed any more, but he's still good to go until he dies. And-why not?-a lil' bit after." His eyes narrowed with malicious amusement. "Turn off the painkillers."

Instantly, tubes I hadn't even seen ripped free of my flesh with wet pops, flooding me with pain. I screamed until my throat was raw, but couldn't move, couldn't even thrash in place: my limbs were gone, and the phantom pain was killing me.

"Enough of that!" Constantin parked, clamping a thick collar around my neck and attaching a chain to it. "They wanna use my toy to test their shit? Fine, long as I get paid. But that's over and done now! C'mon, David. We're going home."

Whistling, he dragged me out of the nightmare hospital bed by the chain, not even slowing down when I fell to the floor with a wet thud, tears mingling with the blood from my stumps. As he dragged me out into the hall and towards the exit, the last thing I saw was a woman, who looked exactly like Andrei had described my mother, except decades older than when she had died, her curly brown hair almost grey.

"Why couldn't you have died, too?" The corpse asked, trailing a skeletal hand down its distended, stretched belly.

***
Darkness.

"Can you believe he lasted this long?" Mihai asked, sounding far, far away, yet deafening.

"Fucking putz had an epiphany; finally caught on to how sad he was making everyone's lives by being in them." Lucian rumbled.

"Any of you curious what I could do in his body?" Alex suggested. "Not like anyone'll miss it..."

"Oh, I would  love that." Bianca breathed. "He never even realised I was eyeing him. It would've been a pity fuck, but he was funny. In a sad away."

"Throwing that rat away was the best idea I ever had." Andrei chuckled, before taking a swig of something. "Too bad he didn't die of frostbite before you came home, Constantin."

"Alas. I would have rather burned that little body than raised such a disappointing man. All those hollow prayers, and for what? He couldn't even faithcraft. And killing himself? Even if I had ever considered David my son, this would have been the end of it." I heard him clasp his hands and kneel on my grave, two metres above me. "God, forgive me for keeping this wretch within my home. May You smite his place of rest, so the world may forget him, as we shall..."

***
"So many nightmares...some of them quite nonsensical." Chernobog said, striding around me as I tried to stay on all fours and not drop to the floor again, dragging the tip of one claw around my neck. My blood pooled around the edges, oozing down slowly, like tree sap.

 Drip.

"And you call  me afraid, David? I should kill you again, and spare the world your existence."

Drip. Drip.

"Do it, bastard." I rasped. "You can only hurt me with my own fears-you think I give a fuck if you break my body? Go ahead and kill me. Admit you can't win." I smiled, showing my mangled mouth. "At least I knew some love on this Earth, unlike you ever will."

Chernobog didn't reply for a while. When he did, his voice was as still and cold as the razed Siberian village where he had manifested befire the Headhunt. "I regret I could not make you give up your grinning mask, David. But do not worry. One day, I will show you, and everyone else, what you are."

"Sounds fancy." I said, not looking at him. He didn't deserve it. "I only regret that Nacht didn't keep you alive as its toy. We could use some jokes at ARC...and I've yet to see one bigger than you."

"I never died, David. Nor will you. I will keep you alive, forever, until you forget how to beg for death." He stomped down on my head, pressing it into the floor. "And then, I will teach you true suffering."

"Experience is always useful." I said, releasing the bundle of will I had gathered in my eyes, which snapped open, showing me the room's aetheric incarnation. "Begone!"

The black shape wavered like smoke in the wind, before dispersing with an agonised scream, briefly filling the room, then disappearing.

My mundane sight returned, and I chuckled breathlessly to see Cernunnos' statue was back on its plinth. The samsara wheel-shaped clock mounted on one wall showed no time had passed since my arrival.

A hallucination. Nothing more. Vyrt's words had stirred up old fears, and my mind had spun horror out of them. I was sure that, once I took a trip to the centre of my mind, my strigoi side would bark a cold laugh at how it had fooled me.

"Um...look. I get that you want to show reverence to Christ. I respect that. But this place is not for private worship, so, uh...would you mind  not telling me to leave?"

I tried to turn in surprise, but ended up crabwalking-I was on all fours before the Messiah's statue, and the sight of it whole and unblemished brought tears to my eyes. I wasn't Protestant, I was used to icons, but...

"Hey...you alright there? Silva, right? The strigoi with god eyes?"

Now that my wits were back, I could tell the newcomer was female, with a voice used to being obeyed. Armoured boots briefly filled my vision, then the Knight squatted down to look into my eyes, tilting my chin up with one hand.

Her nose had been broken several times, and her left cheek was dominated by a fust-sized gouge that showed glistening bone under pale-green skin, but she was still beautiful. Jesus, Mary and Joseph-anyone would have been beautiful after...after...

Emerald almond eyes regarded me with concern, brown furrowing beneath a shock of copper hair. "I am Lady Theo, Castellan of the Roundhouse." She said in a calming voice, like I was a startled animal. "I lead when the Grandmaster and Master are away on business, and maintain the castle the rest of the time. Are you alright? Do you need medical attention?"

I tried to speak, but ended up with something between a hiccup and a cough. The demifae wasn't reassured when I shook my head, either. "You look like shit, agent. You didn't even hear me when I entered, and didn't respond when I nudged you. What...what were you even doing?"

"What do you mean?" I finally managed to ask in a thin voice.

"You were prostrating yourself before the statue, but...you weren't praying. You...I had half a mind to throw you out of the room for blasphemy. We weren't told you would be like this." The broad-shouldered woman said, before reaching into the metal of her armour and pulling my cross out through it. "Took this away. You could have killed yourself with it-"

"Thank you." I hissed, wrapping my arms around her knees, not caring how pathetic I looked. "I...I don't want to die again. Not yet."

The Castellan briefly froze, hands in the air, then awkwardly patted my back.

"Dust yourself off. The colonials sent some bumbling twats to trip us all up, and I think you could use a laugh." Theo said with forced levity, gently prying my arms off of her, pulling me to my feet, and gesturing for me to follow.

"And a psychiatrist..." I didn't hear her say it. But my eyes showed me it was what she thought. No matter. The hallucination was gone.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

***
"Brother! You were praying all night, you pious little bastard, weren't you?" Szabo taunted, slapping a meaty hand on my shoulder when I arrived in one of the courtyards. It was indeed morning. We had arrived before eight...yesterday, but I hadn't felt time pass.

I was so fucking grateful at what passed for normalcy in my unlife that I wrapped my arms around the older strigoi, lifting him off the ground in a tight hug. Judging by the Fivefold's parted mouth and Sam's uncomprehending expression, they were half as surprised at me, put together.

Szabo didn't speak for several moments, remaining still. "David?" He finally asked. "If you've decided to embrace me as your brother in death, I am flattered. If not, and this is a bizarre attempt to kill me, know it will not work."

Laughing, I put Szabo down, then put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. His expression grew more stumped with each moment, but I didn't care. He was  real. They all were!

I moved to Sam and the Fivefold, but neither was feeling sentimental.

"Watch it, Silva." Shiftskin grumbled. "There's only one dead mouth I let touch me, and it ain't yours. Europeans..." The wendigo muttered, glancing aside.

"Let us imagine you did it, and move on." The Fivefold said with a sheepish smile that begged me not to make things weird in front of the Knights.

I nodded, grinning at them, and looked around the courtyard. A tiny old man, wearing nothing besides loose white pants and the white, black-striped sash of the Karma Delivered around his narrow waist, floated in the lotus position amidst a group of Knights, manipulating a distortion in space like a touchscreen. He was trying to view the Unseelie realm, or rather hunting grounds.

"Awwww, dun' harsh his mellow, Shiftyyyyy~" A voice thick with drink slurred. Its owner was wore a three-piece suit and pair of heart-shaped sunglasses in all the colours of the rainbow, which shimmered like fireworks when he bobbed his head. His diamond-bright teeth were a stark ontrast to the mop of raven hair, but not as much as the man he was standing next to was a contrast to him.

He was over two metres tall, but not whipcord-lean, like some human his height were. Instead, he was covered in slabs of muscle, visible even under his brown leather longcoat and dark blue button-up shirt. His pants, boots and hat were of the same make as his jacket, and older than some countries.

"Shut yer yap." Dust Devil mumbled, adjusting his Stetson, during which I caught a glimpse of old, old steel-grey eyes. "No one wants yer opinion in the rare instances yer sober, let alone now."

"Awww, but Clyyyyde~" Randy-name and description-whined. "The dude's in a bad place! He's hit a snag and it 'it 'im back, can't ya teell!?" Randy burped, gesturing in my direction with an exasperated grimace. Dust Devil scoffed, fingering his holstered revolvers. Neither of them was ever at peace, though for very, very different reasons.

"Ooooh..."Vykt's voice filled the courtyard, as the cambion's presence did soon after. "What a shame~. Now Vyrt will never blow that gasket...I was hoping FREAKSHOW would send either or both of the raging meatheads, not the dumb one and his minder..."

"Ha!" Randy barked, crossing his arms so triumphantly he almost fell forward. "See!? E'en Jabba over there knows you're angry 'cause you're stupid!"

"Mephistopheles was right." Dust Devil said, struggling to glare at both simultaneously. "Hell  is other people."

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 10

"Ack!" Randy grabbed at his chest, making something in his left breast pocket jingle. The FREAKSHOW agent stumbled on shiny black pointed shoes, but it was all theatrics. I could tell, even without using Mimir's sight.

The man had more strength in every finger than I had in my whole body. There were very, very few things on Earth he couldn't walk through, never mind trip over, and the Roundhouse's tiled courtyard was not among them.

"How could you say that, Clyde?" Randy gasped, lips trembling, a single, shining tear trailing down his right cheek. "You are lucky Hans wasn't here to hear you. But I'll tell him, oh yes I will. He doesn't see himself as Hell, he-"

"Identifies as 'a fucking threat! My pronouns are try/me!' "Dust Devil said with the air of someone quoting something he had heard far, far too many times. After fiddling with his left revolver, he stuck a liver-spotted, thick-fingered hand in one of his longcoat's pockets, taking out a toothpick and putting it in his mouth.

I wasn't fooled by his appearance, either. He, just like Randy, Armament and Breakout at her baseline, was just as powerful as Szabo, able to turn continents to dust with single strikes and move at lightspeed. He might have appeared old-and probably was, given the claims of him being  that Clyde's son, not counting the stories of him predating the robber by decades-but he was not weak, in body or spirit.

Dust Devil caught me looking at him and stared back blankly, until I caught the hint and looked away, causing him to smirk thinly around his toothpick.

"Where's Brazillion?" The gunslinger asked, both hands on his pistols. "Not that I give a damn 'bout 'im, but I'd rather not be whined at 'cause I didn't wait for everyone promised."

"Careful, 'human'." Vykt burbled, sounding amused, especially once the old man gave him a look that could cut steel. "With talk like that, you might end up with more companions than you can stomach."

"Indeed." Came a baritone tinged with a faint Welsh accent, sounding like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere. Then, Bedivere was suddenly in the middle of the yard. He hadn't teleported, or arrived through a portal. He had just entered the courtyard faster than I(or, judging by their suddenly-stiff stances, Szabo and the Fivefold) could see. Sam and the FREAKSHOW agents stopp up straighter, but didn't seem shocked, nor did the Knights, though I'd argue the latter were simply used to this.

The Grandmaster of New Camelot didn't look too impressive, when seen with physical eyes. Muscled enough, but a head shorter than me, and wearing the same armour as his Knights, only distinguishable by his Union Jack cape. And, of course, the famous missing hand.

But, metaphysically? Bedivere was a font of faith-not just in God, himself or the country and ideals he fought for, but in humanity itself, and I don't just mean the species. Hope, clean and bright as a torch in a dungeon, radiated from his aethereal self.

It was said that, after returning Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, the old knight had retired to a monastery, to contemplate God and the life he had led. No one knew how he had survived to modern times, as he wasn't a faithcrafter, mage or any kind of supernatural, as far as anyone could tell. The old man spoke of faith and clean living when asked, always with laughter bubbling beneath his words.

"Let us not tempt faith, gunslinger. She is fickle, after all. I am sure our mathemagician will arrive soon."

"You are wrong, Grandmaster. I'm already here." The man suddenly leaning on Bedivere-which looked fairly comical, given he was two heads taller-was tanned, wearing black boots and dark green fatigues, with Brazil's flag over his heart. The mage had a Brazilian, which represented a third of his triple pun of a name.

Brazillion: the Brazilian with a Brazilian, who could multiply or divide anything, from matter, objects and people, to concepts and the potency of abilities. And something told me his arrival had been an exercise of his magic, going by the aetheric ripples, which would have been imperceivable to me without Mimir's sight.

"Actually!" Brazillion said, holding up a finger a few centimetres from my eye, causing me to look up in surprise. The mage smiled toothily down at me, brown eyes crinkling. "I just slid iiiiinnnn...you dig? I'm just as fast as either of them,"He pointed over his shoulder, at Dust Devil and Randy, with a thumb. "When I'm not boosting myself. Speaking about that..."

"Why isn't Clara here, anyway?" Brazillion asked, pouting, head tilted to one side as he leaned towards Dust Devil. The older-looking man snorted, putting a hand on the mage's aquilinine face and pushing him away. "We could do with some powers that ramp up  passively! Mine's thought-based. If some big ugly offs me, it'll be because I was too slow too react, and then y'all will be in big trouble."

"Oh, yeaaaaah~" Randy grinned, putting an arm around his colleague's shoulders. "We won't know what to break out first!"

Any of the three could rip Earth's mantle off like a flimsy tablecloth, so I'd like to think my worry at their standoff was understandable.

And then, Brazillion's pursed lips began trembling, while Randy shook, as if shivering. Dust Devil lowered his hat with a grin, pushing his hat down while biting harder on his toothpick.

As they began laughing in unison, I realised it had all been posturing.

"Clyde!" Brazillion put his broad hands on the Dust Devil's shoulder after unsubtly shoving Randy away. "I haven't seen you since Collechio!" The mage looked him up and down, then wrinkled his hooked nose, sniffing. "You've got old."

"I look half my age." Dust Devil replied. "And, unlike some people who need to multiply their lifespan, I'm honest-to-God immortal."

"Too bad you can't multiply your qualities..."

"I'd need some first, wouldn't I?"

***
After the meet-and-greet was done, Brazillion, Dharma-the little old man from Karma Delivered- and the FREAKSHOW agents wanted to kick back and swap stories of their time in the World Wars, but Bedivere reminded them that they were here for a job, then summoned them and us to his office.

"I'd be helping our mages open the way into Faerie." The Grandmaster said as we alternated between ascendding and descing a spiral staircase, with the walls pressing in so close even the Fivefold's shoulders brushed against them. The bigger ones had to walk sideways or shapeshift, if possible. "But after I came in and tried kicking down the door-metaphorically-they more or less told me to go sit in a corner and take my meds. I don't even take any..." The Knight sighed.

"Heeeeey, Braz~?" Randy cooed. "How come you were so laaaate? You used to always be the first in and out..."

"Yes, well, women scare me." The Brazilian said, hands in his pockets. "I would have come faster, but I ran into Bushi in the aether."

"Bushido from the Rising Suns?" Szabo asked, having thinned himself to the point we actually looked like we could be brothers, an interested glint in his black eyes.

"Mhm. He's never been a good fit for a defence organisation, but Kenji keeps old war friends around, especially when they don't want to leave." Brazillion chuckled. "He's the reason I was thinking about escalating powers, actually. You know how it is, you get shot and start dreaming bullets...I think you'd all enjoy meeting him, if you haven't."

The guy who thought not being Japanese was a disease only curable through cavity searches and decapitation, not necessarily in that order? I fucking doubted that. At least most paranoid bigots can't cut Eurasia in half  before jumping in power by orders of magnitude when pressed.

But then, that's the Bushido spirit for you. When such an idea empowered a maniac like Hunger and Beasts did Sam, some extremism was expected.

"Did he fight you?" Vykt asked excitedly, crawling along the underside of the staircase.

"He tried, yeah." Brazillion winced. "Claimed there was no way to know I wasn't some eldritch monster in disguise, so I best bend over and spread 'em, in the name of glorious Nippon." The mage wiggled a hand at the looks he received. "I'm paraphrasing. And...censoring. Anyway...no, we didn't fight. I managed to convince him there were enemies  far worthier to be slain in honourable combat than I was, out there in the multiverse and beyond. In truth, I was hoping he'd run into Breakout and they'd tie each other up, like they usually do when they meet."

"Thaaaat didn't happen, pal." Randy snickered, his glasses' rainbow, heart-shaped lenses taking on the appearance of a mirror's surface...or a telescope, maybe. "Clara busted some gribbly heads, then ran into this guy who just keeps getting stronger and angrier...uh, so does she, but she's naturally pissed."

"Stronger and angrier...what, the green one again?" Dharma asked, brow furrowing as I half-turned to look at them in disbelief.

"Nah, naaaaaah~... another one...apparently a dragon, though looks human. Damn if I know  why they're fighting, though...they're both nimrods with bleeding hearts, who can't stand to watch the lil' guy get hurt...honestly, they should be fuckin', not fightin', but dragon boy doesn't have the equiiiiiiipment!" Randy threw his head back and laughed, receiving a clout behind the ear from Dust Devil that shook the entire staircase, creating ankle-deep cracks that, thankfully, quickly repaired themselves.

Given the fact that, due to the Roundhouse's space-bending interior, the enchanted marble staircase was hundreds of thousands of kilometres long, enough to wrap around the Earth several times, that was pretty impressive.

"Owiieeeeeee~" Randy whined, rubbing a small bruise that healed as I watched. "Could've just told me to stop, Clyyyyyde..."

"Could've not talked. Y'know Breakout hates that shit."

"Yeah, yeah, married to the country..."

"I meant that she hates when people talk about 'er private life, you glittery bozo."

"Well, screw both of ya! It was a joke-"

"Forget that!" Szabo thundered, grinning. "Is this 'green one' who I'm thinking of?"

Don't steal my thunder just because you're curious too!

***
Bedivere's office was on a lake.

No, this was not one of those newfangled 'open to interpretation' movie titles the youths spoke about to scare innocent old men like me. It was the truth.

The mirrorlike surface of the lake extended beyond either horizon, far further than I could see with my mundane sight, and, even though the water was clear as crystal, I couldn't see the bottom. It was almost impossible to distinguish from the cloudless, sunless yet somehow blue sky.

"And here we are...for all our sins." Bedivere said, tilting his helmet slightly at the sky, then began to sit down on nothing. Halfway through, water rose up and shaped itself into an armchair, which left both his armour and his cape dry. The Grandmaster took off his helmet for the first time since I'd seen him, revealing deep green eyes shining in a lined, pale, hollow-cheeked face. His white tonsured hair and bushy beard made him look more like a monk than a Knight, though, in truth, he had been both, at various points of his life.

"Vyrt is conferencing with the other Masters." Bedivere said, not looking at any of us. "He's not going to... 'Mum and Dad are fighting again'?" The Grandmaster closed his eyes, sighing. " Please do not call them that, Lady Theo...however accurate it is. And stop distracting me." The old man glared down at the lake, tapping his foot on the surface. "You two! Stop 'fighting'-and this better not be an euphenism, or so help me God-and come here! We've already lost any semblance of professionallism, let's at least try to fake dignity!"

I was about to ask if Merlin wasn't really imprisoned, when the mage himself appeared put of thin air, warping the lake as he arrived. Water became loam covered in dark grass, from which rose twisted trees, with leaves so green they looked almost black, covered in patches of throbbing, shifting moss.

Merlin wore a pair of dark blue pants and a shirt that mimicked a human torso, with a grisly, gaping wound reaching from the navel to the left shoulder, half of the guts gone and the rest in the process of spilling. In the upper right corner, the Black Knight stood, armless, claiming it was just a flesh wound. Bedivere's face fell at the shirt, going through an interesting range of colours, but the Grandmaster said nothing.

Over it came a coat that looked like the void of space, stars and nebulae slowly drifting across it.
The mage's skin was leathery, pale after fifteen centuries away from from the sun, and crystal chains were wrapped around his ankles, wrists and neck.

An inverted pentagram, I realised. That was the shape the chains made, two rising from the ground, two passing through trees and bushes, and one stretched into infinity above Merlin's head. The symbol that bound his half-kin, evoked by the magic he had created and his student had perfected.

Merlin's eyes were blank and blazing white-his uncle's eyes, on some days. He took us all in before his burning gaze settled on me, and his mouth began twitching in his long white beard. His hair, just as long and white, and actually intertwining with the beard, swayed when he shook his head.

"Ahh..." Merlin grinned, rubbing his forehead with two finger, head bowed and eyes closed as he grinned. "If it isn't my future other headache. Say nothing, David. Please."

I wasn't about to oblige his request, but the next arrival, who parted the waters as she rose, quickly drew all attention away, including the mage's.

Depending who you ask, you'll hear Nimue described as a fairy, the goddess of some lost, pre-Flood civilisation, or an alien. The Lady of the Lake said people got farther from the truth with every theory-so please, keep them coming.

The Lady was taller than me, though a head shorter than her former teacher, and just as pale as him, with deep blue eyes, no pupil or iris and long, wavy black hair. She wore a dress made of the lake's clear water, but which revealed nothing. I heard Randy blow a disappointed raspberry at the sight, and saw Merlin shoot him a glare that probably  would have killed most people, sealed power or not. It slid off the American like water off a duck's back.

"The path is almost open, Grandmaster." Nimue said. "My students are doing as much as can be asked. Unsurprising, of course-they had a good teacher."

"Too bad she's delusional." Merlin stage-whispered, cupping a hand around his mouth. "Not even I could teach her to be good."

"So, the Sword is not needed?" Bedivere asked, ignoring the cambion mage.

Nimue's smile was more relieved than smug when she answered. "I have not given it back, and hope I will never have to. On that note..." The Lady looked at Randy, then changed her mind and settled on Dust Devil. "Tell your colleague to never, ever suggest mass replication of Excalibur again. The consequences for causing such an imbalance of power would be...literally unbearable-for everyone."

Dust Devil chewed thoughtfully on his toothpick, which was half-gone by now, for several moments. "I suppose hoping we could just win every conflict with the swords' victory power would be too much?"

"Arthur won at Camlann, and died shortly after. So, yes, it  would be too much, even disregarding the butterfly effect." Nimue said, folding her hands in her lap after sitting down in the chair that formed for her.

"I  did tell him the scabbard was worth ten swords." Merlin said, sitting down, chains shortening, but not slackening. "But he never listened to my advice when it mattered. Then again...neither did I." He glanced at Nimue, who smiled enigmatically back. "Anyway...the sword is too powerful to be tampered with or replicated. Forging it was the only worthwhile thing the watery tart over there ever did."

"You admit you are worthless?" The Lady asked, raising an amused eyebrow.

Merlin bared his fangs. "I will find whoever made 'doing' an euphenism for fornication, and-"

"Are you sure you couldn't free him?" Sam cut in, looking at Nimue while pointing a talon at Merlin. "We could use more power. And freeing him in the first place would-"

"While I did build Ambrosius' prison," At the sound of that other name, the cambion rolled his eyes so hard they actually came out of their sockets, flying in a blazing arch through the air before taking their former places. "It has grown beyond my power and knowledge. Much like the Sword of Promised Victory."

"Everything you handle becomes too much for you after you let go." Merlin said with a condescending smile.

"You being the exception, of course."

"Damned-"

"Enough of this circus!" Bedivere snapped. "This is taking me back to the bad old days. Now, to business."

Fairie, just like zmeu country, was a magical realm(did we dare we enter it?) of infinite size, whose environment, flow of time and laws were subject to the inhabitants' whims. And, while we might have had some information on the Seelie Court's strongholds, the Unseelie, being consumnate anarchists, moved across the endless landscape constantly, building nothing.

And, with both Courts working together, everything in Fairie would be working against us. The fact they seemingly hadn't tried to stop us as we battered down their gate had everyone convinced we were walking into a trap, but there was no other alternative. The eldritch monsters would keep coming until we purged their lairs, but the Fae were a finite enemy, and closer to us in thought: they could be threatened, bribed, negotiated with-the order of what we would try, actually.

Although...

"Excuse me." I said, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, not liking the weird, jelly-like feel of my water chair. "But why isn't the Fixer living up to his namesake and ending this mess? He's a Miskatonic agent-dealing with breaks in reality is his specialty..."

I trailed off, as my audience's expressions varied between blank incomprehension, confusion, and attempts to see if I was joking and/or crazy(yes, and yes, but the question was legitimate).

"What?" I asked, irritated. "And before you ask, yes, I read his file, or tried to. There was only 'I fix what should have never been broken' on every page. Mimir's sight showed the same thing."

"You think information about Fixer is...recorded?" Szabo asked, sounding like he found the idea hilarious.

"Would you blow up the sun to get rid of a termite infestation, Silva?" Sam asked, his face human and set in a serious expression. The 'let me see what you think so I know what to say' type. "Because that level of overkill is infinitely less than what you are proposing. Look at the multiverse."

I did, but..."I don't see anything unusual. Should I?"

"Ah, so there  is a multiverse to look at. That means Fixer is doing his job." Shiftskin leaned back into his chair. "A job that actually requires his attention. The voidspawn he thinks into nothing would erase every reality and the aether by approaching them, Silva. These puny extrauniversal pests? We've been handling them so far, while the Black Hunger and his merry band of misfits hunt them in their homes, aided by a joint force of armies, human and divine alike."

The Fivefold smiled reassuringly at me before I could attempt to wrap my head around that. I knew Fixer defended the multiverse and could warp reality, but...

"We are safe, David." She said. "And, if things became bad enough to need Fixer's attention, none of us would be around to know it. So, don't worry."

Well,  that was fucking reassuring...

***
"So, Monty Python?" I asked Merlin as we walked through Broceliande. The others had drifted into discussing possible scenarios if the Fae slaughtered or sealed us away from our universe, and Sam had at one point told me to go talk with the mage and keep my eyes peeled.

I didn't know if this was advice wrapped up in a bad joke, but I couldn't see all the eye comments in a good light.

"Indeed! It portrays Arthur as kind of an idiot, and that's always important. You have already seen my favourite character..." He indicated the Black Knight on his shirt, and I nodded. "Well, I'm not sure which of my first Knights he's supposed to be based on, but he's dumber than them put together-and that's a tremendous feat, let me tell you!"

"Thank you, hypocrite." Bedivere said sharply, voice sounding like it was coming from half a world away.

"Don't feel called out! As always, Gawain and Lancelot contributed the most to it..."

At one point, while Merlin explained that Broceliande was not a place, but a concept, which meant he could go anywhere in the multiverse, but his prison would tag along, still stunting his powers, I tried to look into the future, and see how this would end.

My sight distorted and shifted from Broceliande to Fairie, Earth, then nothing...then, I was looking at Merlin, grinning darkly at me from between two gnarled trees, chains shattered.

"Eyes on the present, Keeper." Merlin said, then flicked my eyes, causing them to burst.

[Strigoi Grey]

Interlude: War Stories

Atlantis, 66666 BCE

The cambion is amusing himself, as he always is. And why shouldn't he be? After all, the Empire Endless(it's getting so hard to say that with a straight face, nowadays...) is a place where labour is performed either by constructs or by lesser clay monkeys, when it's performed at all.

The Atlanteans may be overgrown fish apes, but they know what's good in life. He can't wait for the moment they choke on their pride and joy.

The cambion has not chosen a name for himself, yet. Not a permanent one. Today, he is Kemuel. Mocking his grand bastard just by introducing himself is always good for a laugh-he knows the old hypocrite won't intervene unless he does something utterly outrageous, and he is not aiming to exert himself today...or ever.

The cambion is pale and tall, covered in lean muscle. Ivory goatlike horns rise from a mane of hair in every colour of the rainbow, while his eyes blaze like the star they will one day name his uncle after.

Honestly, he is  bored. There is only so much eating and drinking and maiming and killing and fucking you can stomach before you satisfy your inner animal's petty urges, and he is reaching the limit. Coincidentally, he has learned that he prefers women. Or, at least, castrating men who attempt to be on top, then feeding them their own manhoods. Several times.

He is able to rewind excrement into what it began as. Truly, he could easily go down to be worshipped by the dust-eaters, make himself feel like a god. He will, one day.

But, at the moment? He is looking for more cerebral pleasures, not that the things who built this floating land can be attributed anything approaching intelligence. They just clumsily ape it, like ants. Like the monkeys they are.

He has beaten every Atlantean game master, including some inventors of their own games. He has talked hundreds into humiliated suicide with a smile, and killed dozens himself, before erasing all evidence of their games. And if other players had to go for them to be truly forgotten? Well...Atlantis believed in might makes right. If you were weak or stupid enough to suffer, you deserved it.

Kemuel sits back and smiles. The whore in whose lap he's sitting-kin below, but she's a whale on legs; he supposes she's shapely and beautiful by the standards of the morons who'd fuck a mound of shit if it had a hole, but she's too large for him, and he's not shifting size for such a dull experience-smiles back.

The one who will be Merlin cringes. He's seen apes baring their blocky teeth, and they're always uglier than usual, but this? The needle teeth look like someone smashed the fat bitch's face in a sewing kit.

Disgusting. What's he even doing?

Kemuel pushes her away with a finger, caving in her chest. She-why is he assigning her a gender? Tools aren't gendered-hurts, oh she hurts. But the wound heals in seconds, and her heaving breasts are back.

Atlantean women are naturally flat, but this one went to a fleshsmith after Kemuel vaguely implied he wouldn't want to fuck a board. The change hurt her even more than the wound he just dealt her, and was more expensive than this session, too.

Kemuel isn't paying the prostitute, of course. His expression at the suggestion had her paying him to take her, and hopefully not kill her.

Such stupid fears. As if fearing something you can't control or affect helps.

"Forgive me. How did I offend His Lordship-" She begins, gingerly cradling her healed chest, before he stomps her head into the floor, shattering her jaw. That will heal, too.

"Your petty worries and wants are battering at the walls of my mind. Shut  up, woman." He says tiredly. He knows far more about her than he'll care to remember in the following minutes. How she wants to be a mother, but is considered unreliable and untrustworthy due to her profession. Some rougher patrons have even tried to break her body, permanently.

It's dulling even the so-called skills she should have employed to entertain him.

"You want to give birth? I'll give you all the spawn you could have." Kemuel promises, and warps her flesh with a thought. Withing moments, she's both bloating and thinning, her body consuming itself as it is wracked by sudden, monstrous pregnancy.

She still lives long enough to feel the unnatural spawn eat their way out of her, before breaking out of the room to do the same to the brothel's other employees and patrons. Her dreams of motherhood were devouring her focus. It's only fitting to make it literal.

As Kemuel walks out, whistling, he telekinetically whisks a gaggle of landwalking slaves, cowering around behind their Atlantean master, as if the narrow-minded worm could protect them if he wanted to.

"I saved you," The cambion begins, and fuses their mouths shut at their stupid smiles and insufferable mewling. "To show you how stupid your beliefs are. Do not misunderstand-I don't actually give a damn what you think. You're just good props to amuse myself with."

The pimp is specieist, like all his kind, as if they aren't all hairless apes. The future Merlin can't help but laugh at such ideas. He is a numinous being, human only in the appearance he can change with a thought; those who have accused him of hypocrisy have been told these words, before being made to beg for Hell.

As such, Kemuel warps his body, twisting and spreading it, fusing it with the six women's bodies. They all have different skin colours, some of which will not survive the next few millennia. Their owner had a diversity theme, something about all landwalkers being equally inferior. Bringing so-called superior beings to the level of their lessers is one of Kemuel's pleasures.

He knows of a species of fish, with females much bigger than the males who stick to their bodies, being consumed until they become nothing but a pair of testicles on their mate's body. The Atlantean being much bigger than the landwalkers, this fusion is quite...different.

But at least the women all have male  and female organs now, or at least fractions of the former. They also have the man's scaled skin growing over and under theirs. Clearly, they are now part of the superior species!

"You should call yourself the Halfbreed Harlots." Kemuel flashes them a grin as they either go catatonic or fall to the ground, writhing in uncomprehending pain...oh. The spawn are going to reach them, too.

Well, at least they got to feel Atlantean purity for a few moments before being eaten, and were taught a valuable lesson by him: all apes are worthless in the eyes of the powerful. And yet, their screams do not sound like cries of joy.

Ungrateful bitches...

***
Above the waters, 6000 BCE

"You must stop, cousin." The one who will become Vyrt says.

"You are going to end up below at this rate, and not on a throne." The one who will become Vykt adds.

"The Halfbreed Halkfin, moralising? Why do you even believe that's true? Did the bitch who shat you out after being tricked by a demon  and an angel make sure you landed on your heads? Not you, Vykt-you look like the pile of putrid waste you are."

Vyrt sighs. "I am not going to try and force you to see things my way, cousin. We are equally powerful, and equally stubborn. But Vykt might succeed."

"Have you ever thought about the pain your playthings feel, spellslinger?" The amorphous, rotten green cambion asks.

"I have felt it, too. Don't tell me you're planning to 'redeem' me by sharing their pain with me, like that cosmic puppeteer did with the last fishlings. I know you're stupid enough to be that unoriginal, but stupid enough to believe it will work?"

"Why are you so damned proud!?" Vyrt demands, unable to rein in his temper, like they're not all hundres of millennia old. Honestly...

"It's the parent problems, brother." Vykt burbles. "Poor cousin doesn't know whether mommy died at birth or just abandoned him-and this hurts his pride, too, for he should be able to learn whatever he wants with his clairvoyance. As for daddy? Showing him and eeeeeeveryone that they were wrong did not help."

Merlin grits his teeth. His father is a member of Lucifer's court, one of his favourites. After taking his mother with disinterest, and leaving her, he was offended at the thought of a hybrid son even comparable to him. He tried to drag Merlin to Hell, and use him for breeding until his body and mind shriveled, and his freakish power was thinned out.

Merlin utterly humiliated him in front of his court and lord, and felt absolutely nothing at such an easy triumph. He could have easily done to his father what the demon had threatened to do to him, even reshaped him into a female and raped him himself, but...that would have implied it was worth the effort.

"Get to the point." Merlin growls at Vykt. "What are you going to try, slime?"

"Did you know that, in the end, so very few of your victims hated you?"

The other cambion's body opens, and the remains of long-dead things, once human or supernatural, crawl out of it, swarming over Merlin.

'Such power, used for evil? Why?'

'Oh, One God, I care not that you torment me. Through your power, I have enough to feed my family...'

'He could be a good man, I know. He just needs guidance.'

'I am sorry for whatever loss made you this way."

The voices are not stopping. They're growing louder. Beneath the waves, Merlin imagines he can see the hollow eyes of the dead, looking up at him with joy; he is beginning to understand hiw he is seen.

Merlin, tears-of rage, he tells himself-running down his face, looks at Vyrt's pitying expression and Vykt's vindicated one, and cannot face them. He flees.

***
Logres, Britain, 470 CE

"Why do you want to be king, lad?" Merlin asks softly.

Uther's boy looks at him so earnestly, his heart almost break. The youth does not know the mage before him helped with his birth, having foreseen the future he would-had to-shape.

"I am sorry for our land, because none of these great men," Arthur-not Pendragon, not yet-says, gesturing at the gathered lords, who are fuming after failing to pull the Sword from the Stone. "With all their skills in ruiling and warfare alike, seem to be worthy of the Sword's blessing. It is strange to me...and yet, if I happen to succeed, I hope I will have advisors to guide me through my callow youth. Men like them. Or you."

Merlin has already sworn an oath to him, before hus birth, even. Men like Arthur will become-men like Gilgamesh, like Theseus, like Romulus-have taught him inhuman power is, sonetimes, not even needed to bring mankind's worth out into the light.

Arthur is the Once and Future King. He  will succeed.

"Is that why you seek the crown? Pity?" Merlin asks with feigned harshness, as if he doesn't understand.

"No!" Arthur shakes his head, mop of blond hair swaying, blue eyes wide. "Our land is plagued by bandits, invaders and monsters! Whith this sword...with this Sword, I can..."The boy gulps, not meeting his eyes for a few moments. "You might call me mad, but the Lord God came to me in a dream, a fortnight ago, and told me I could save England, if I..."

Merlin sees it as a sign of growth that lying and being called 'God' do not bring him pleasure any more. Neither does mocking his grandfather, even unintenionally. What is the world coming to?

Perhaps, the cambion thinks as we watches Arthur pull out the Sword and lift it overhead, to overjoyed cheers and disbelieving curses alike, a brighter future.

***
"You are placing a great burden on him." Nimue mumbles into his chest sometime after. They are in one of her manses, and not needing to breathe is very helpful. For surviving underwater, too.

His friend is drawing shapes on his chest with one pale, slender finger, and Merlin groans inwardly. It's either going to be a mortifying question, or an outrageous request.

"I know." He says gruffly. "What do you want this time?"

The Lady smirks up at him. "You know, I have something of a son myself..."

Ohoho, it's one of the headaches. Luckily, he's prepared for this. "No. Sorry, Nim. I know you love him and, for some reason, think he's the greatest thing since me," Kin above, but even her eyerolls are ...focus. "But we don't need a lecherous simp-"

"Lancelot is not a simpleton!" Nimue argues heatedly, suddenly in his face. Normally, Merlin would be all for this, but right now, he just wants to smack her upside her pretty head until she listens.

"I'm using a future word." He explains. "Means he'll be liable to do what women want, even if...never mind! Look, in all the futures I've seen, he and Arthur tear the kingdom apart after your boy sleeps with the latter's wife. And every time I try to intervene, I die. Do you want me to die, fairy?"

His face is horrible for pleading, but she bites her lip, seeming to reconsider.

"The future isn't set in stone..."The Lady finally says, sounding unsure.

Of course, by the end of the night, she's convinced him what a wonderful idea it would be to introduce their surrogate sons to each other. They'll be like brothers! Like Cain and Abel, or Romulus and Remus, or...

Sadly, none of these examples come to mind until it is too late. This is the first great folly Merlin agrees to for Nimue. It will not be the last.

***
"I am sorry, teacher." She actually sounds like she is, too, which just makes things even worse. Not as bad as the fact she's saying 'teacher' the way that makes him feel like an old man, but still.

Merlin smiles drily from within his prison. Nimue had clearly been planning this for some time. How long, though? "Can I at least ask why?"

"Power." She shrugs, a dress made of blinding white mana rippling with the movement. "Knowledge. I wanted more, and had nothing to lose by going to the easiest source. But understand, Mer: this is for your good, too. Everyone's, in fact."

"Oh?" The cambion asks dangerously, and she steps back. Even now, even  now, it hurts to see her scared of him.

"You have always been led astray by your lust." The Lady says curtly, then her sapphire eyes soften. "For example? You were so eager to distrust your instincts for me. What do you think someone evil could do after your instruction?"

"Imprison an old, gullible fool?" Merlin sighs. "Please...civil war is coming, if it hasn't already. We failed, everywhere. The marriage and the brotherhood are broken. The incest child is rampaging, green eyes on the throne. Try...try to preserve as much as possible. I couldn't stop it from coming to be, but..."

She closes the distance, and they kiss. "I promise." Nimue says softly, one hand on the chain around his neck. The position is familiar, though the context is not. "I do not know if I will ever feel safe enough to free your, or whether I will even be able to. But know that this is an act of love. I do not want to hurt you, Mer. I never have and never will hate you."

"I love you, too." He says, perhaps not even lying.

***
Oregon, 1888

Darren Clyde is riding. For the first time in his life, he is not riding into danger, but away from it.

Darren didn't have one of those twisted childhoods that left people all monstrous-like inside. He was a good, happy kid. His parents were fur trappers, and he was never cursed with siblings, so he always had their attention, right up until they passed away. Daddy's wounds from the War Between States(just one of the many names being flung about these days) finally dragged him down, and after he got on a train to jump state, mommy stopped responding to his letters. He didn't know if she was dead or didn't give a damn because he'd refused to continue the family tradition in order to enforce the law, but God will put things in order. Darren knows.

Darren actually used to have a firm view of the world. He knew what was wrong and right, possible or not, and though his moral compass ain't broken yet, he's fairly sure his brain is.

The thing that's chased him halfway across America had seemed like some unhinged fuck at first: someone stealing negro kids and usin' em for...well. Even before the War, there had been some limits.

The thing, looking like a bald, red-eyed gray man, casually tugs at his horse with one hand, dragging the poor beast down and crushing Darren's legs. He doesn't cry out. Instead, he aims his pistols and fires, hitting it square between its piggy scarlet eyes and doing nothing.

"Do you want to go to Heeeeeell~!?" It coos. Up close, it looks less like a man, and more like some gray, fanged fetus. Its limbs ard tiny, misshapen things, and its bulbuous head sways on a neck that looks like it should break.

"Ohoho~you do, don't you? You are just too shy to ask!" It nods to itself, breaks his crippled horse's neck with a twitch. The horse falls limp, then, impossibly, stiffens, rising to its hooves and dragging Darren along, suspended by his tangled, broken legs. The thing cuts him free of his leather bindings, then makes the wight-for that is what all things killed by vampires, unless bitten on the neck, become-trample his legs, then his arms, breaking them too. It makes the wight do other things, too: to Darren, to it. At one point, it turns into an identical horse, so Darren doesn't even know which one is tormenting him any more, except when they both are.

"You are still alive? Still sane!?" It says through an elongated human mouth growing vertically across its horse head. "Let me teach you something, you illiterate toy: Hell is other people. One of its great lords once said it. And you? You are already in Hell." Its smile softens, a disgusting sight on such an unnatural visage. "Thank you for rekindling my faith in mankind. I honestly thought you would break from this..."

"Why do this!?" Darren wheezes. "Who...what the fuck are you?"

The vampire lowers itself to whisper into his ear. "I am the true face of God's love~"

It draws back to see his reaction, and receives a wad of bloody spit in its grinning mouth, which quickly turns into a frown.

"What? Not gonna drink it, vampire?" Darren grins mockingly.

The vampire leaves soon after, taking the wight with it. Perhaps it is afraid of the Lord's wrath, or perhaps there are people out there who hunt things like it.

Darren is found by a group of hunters soon after, who take him to their lodge, giving him food and excitedly listening to his story.

Until he begins insisting it happened. Then, it becomes an endless succession of insane asylums, where he sees the human mind at its lowest, limbs healed but numbed by medicine and experiments. When the electric shocks come in, he's just happy for the change of pace, honestly.

Eventually, he begins lying, even to himself, saying he imagined it, and everyone else is right, and so kind for suffering his ramblings...

When the Great War comes, he goes to fight, no longer with fisticuffs, knives or pistols, but from afar. The sniper can't stand people touching him any more. By World War 2, his kill count is in the hundreds, and his circle of friends nonexistent. He's either mad or cold, depending who you ask.

When the Shattering comes, turning him into the living archetype of the gunslinger, Dust Devil welcomes it. His bullets can hit target in any location or moment in time, or change their power and makeup at his whim. He becomes a boogeyman, helping found FREAKSHOW while gunning down anyone oppossing the status quo-both the mundane and supernatural ones, which are slowly but surely melding.

By the end of the Long Watch, Clyde can say he has more American blood on his hands than any single Red; he often jokes about being redder than them.

***
??? Residential School, Canada, 1900

Mizige defines his life by what he knows, and what he does not.

For example: he knows his name means 'eagle' in the language of the parents he has never known, who lived 'somewhere around the Great Lakes'. This answer used to be spoken with derision before he wised up enough to stop asking.

Mizige has heard some people define their lives by what is good or bad, lawful or unlawful, practical or useless. Good for them. He is honestly happy other people have enough freedom to think in such ways, and hopes they will never share his fate.

Mizige has never stayed in a home, or even a single place, for a long time. He and some of the other problem children(they are all problems, he knows, those children who refuse to or can't kill the Indian inside them) have been moved across Canada, between different schools, for as long as they can remember. Not because the teachers, sisters or caretakers particularly care about them, as Mizige doubts anyone would make a fuss if they were killed and thrown into a lake, but because the schools want to compare methodologies.

Mizige has heard and seen the other children being beaten with sticks for speaking their native language. Those were the lucky ones, in his opinion. There are some who were given medicine until they fell asleep and never got up, or started smiling and never stopped.

Mizige does not want to ever become that tired, or happy.

The woman they are with now is called Nana-that is, she insists they call her that. She is not anyone's grandma, or at least Mizige hopes so, or he'd be very cross with his friends, and very sorry for himself.

Nana is here to help them forget.

"Like the medicine?" One of the girls, Angela(she's already accepted her proper name, and is getting fewer beatings) asks.

"Exactly!" Nana smiles toothlessly. She is a corpulent woman, with a severe grey bun, who wears thick brown dresses covered in beige flowers. Mizige thinks she looks like a fat, hairy pig, but he keeps his mouth shut.

Nana is pretty bad, but nobody gets too tired or happy. Some go on walks and never come back, though.

Nana helps them forget their languages and names by filling their heads with new things. Horror stories, mostly. Like what the Indians did to the poor settlers. Mizige does not want to believe his ancestors were such cruel, perverse, murderous slavers, but he does not have evidence against it.

"You must let go of that ugly name, yes dear? Eagles are not nice birds. They kill all the pretty, singing ones, and people name bad things after them. For example-have you ever heard of blood eagles?

Mizige has not, nor does he understand the meaning of the story after Nana finishes reading it. Those people were punished because they were evil, lying thieves, like the Indians, the woman says, smacking him with the book.

When the boy wakes up later, bleeding head wrapped up, a nice old lady is by his bedside, asking him if he knows what 'Mizige' is.

"Is that...a word?" The boy asks sluggishly, as if he is chewing mud.

The woman-his nana-shakes her head. "Oh, it's just some nonsense I read in the paper...confused little old me. I thought a clever boy like you might now, but it seems we're both stumped." Nana slaps her knees with a self-deprecating smile. "Until you feel better, do you want to learn more about your name?"

"Yes, please!" Leon Gilles says.

He never remembers his parents, or his heritage. When the Empire goes to war, twice, he fights alongside the men who will become Dust Devil and Randy, Dharma and Fixer.

But, for the time being, they are just Darren, Raj and Ned. Randy stays the same, but that is not a surprise.

There is one night that stands out, though...

Leon is limping around in front of his tent, his squad smoking and playing dice and cards. They're all natives, like he apparently used to be. He has the skin tone, yes, but...

He remembers the time they tricked the jerries by throwing rocks at into the trenches, then switching back to grenades. Left them in stitches, it did.

"Sarge? D'you see that in the sky?" Ond of the men, called Dam because he swears like a sailor and looks like a beaver, asks, pointing at the night sky. Leon is pretty shit at remembering the constellations, but...hold on.

"Ain't a plane...its wings are beating."

"Bird that big? Here, this close to the ground?"

"I heard the gases call to them...like, they make this sound we can't hear..."

"Shaddup 'bout that." Leon barks, craning his neck to get a better look. Just then, one of the camp nurses-Becky, with her red hair and eyes so blue they're almost black; she's sweet on many of them- comes to see what the racket is about. It's a slow day, given they're gawking at...birds...

"Holy  shite..." Leon gasps, seeing the lion-like body attached to the eagle head and wings, before quickly learning why you should keep your mouth shut while looking up.

Moments later, he's sputtering and cussing, Rebecca is laughing her sweet arse off, and every moron in the squad is joking about what a pottymouth he has.

Leon cusses them out, too, but the creature never leaves his memory. One day, he goes searching for it, drawn by some irresistible impulse, and is mauled to near-death. Becky does not expect him to return home as a weregryph, but he's always been good at surprising his wife. Whether this will be good or bad will depend on whether she lets him in bed or sends him to the couch.

Well, Leon thinks to himself, in full gryphon form, as he perches in one of the maples on their ranch. This is awkward.

Of course, once Becky is turned by a werefox, and they can go at it like animals anywhere, anytime, any awkwardness disappears.

***
Osaka, Japan, 1910

The problem with living in Osaka, Kenji mutters as he stomps his way through the streets, is that everyone was a greedy arsehole, which means he barely ever gets anything, and nobody is put off by his attitude, which had helped scare off some kids, at least, in the towns he and Ren had previously lived in. Even bigger ones!

Ren is his big brother. Not by blood, but he is an older family friend, so, to the preteen, he might as well be.

Ren is like some kinda samurai stepped right outta the stories. He's strong and smart and isn't afraid of anything. He took Kenji in and has been raising him for as long as the boy can remember. As to his parents, his father might have been anything from a yakuza, to a would-be smuggler who had attempted to play both sides in the war with the russkies, to an octopus-fucker.

The last, Kenji does not believe. He can't fit in buckets or under doors, and he's tried. There's no way his mom was an octopus. Besides, Ren told Kenji she slit her belly after learning who his dad was, she must've been human. Octopi might have been able to hold blades, but they didn't have bellies.

And, according to his big bro, they had both been good people.

Ren looks fondly at him as he storms into their house, grumbling about jackasses everywhere. His bro favours every moment together, because he knows, in his blood, that it won't last much longer.

Ren used to be an orphanage killed, and, according to himself, used to lead a pretty shitty life, which Kenji finds unfair. The gov shouldn't just be able to put you where they want just 'cause you don't have parents!

Ren laughs such comments off, and tells his little brother not to get into too much trouble.

Then, a few years later, Ren goes to war, and returns a changed man, to find Kenji a delinquent. They drift apart as Ren praises discipline and patriotism, declaring they saved his life, while the younger man scoffs, claiming his bro has turned lame and is stiffling his spirit. No brawls, no booze, no girls-what?

At one point, Kenji gives Ren a black eye, and the former soldier doesn't hit back. Kenji is shocked, because he never expected such spinelessness, and screams for whatever yokai is wearing Ren's skin to give his brother back.

When Ren tells Kenji to get a job or move out, the teen rages at the perceived betrayal of their formerly-shared carefree ideals. He waits for his big bro to return home from his police patrol, and demands he stop acting like a dog, or they'll stop being friends. Ren laughs at the perceived joke, so that he misses the brick aimed at his head.

He wakes up a simpleton, good for manual labour but little else, remembering only that Kenji is his little brother, and they've always been together.

The brothers are separated, for a time: one goes to prison, the other to a madhouse where he almost dies. When Kenji returns to take Ren back home, he tearfully prostrates himself at his confused brother's feet, and swears to take his place.

Then World War 2 comes. Kenji goes to war, venting his anger on the incompetents under him, the schemers around him and the gaijin in front of him. He doesn't take pride in what his men do, doesn't give a damn how many babies they use to drill with bayonets, or how many Chinese and Koreans they take as comfort women. He just wants to kill people without having to think about the aftermath, and the universe indulges Lieutenant Yamada, for a time.

In the end, they lose. The Germans Shatter the face of the world, and every story comes true. Hirohito is burned alive by Amaterasu herself, and his entire line is disowned by the goddess, for their cruelty and incompetence. Japan is in turmoil as Generals and Admirals become warlords, exploiting the chaos to carve out firfdoms, fighting against yokai or alongside them.

Kenji just wants a country to return to, really. A nice one, where he and his brother can live in peace. But for that, he needs to rebuild Japan, and cure Ren.

He forms a mercenary group, with himself as the only human. The yokai, he names himself. Because they're always laughing at or looking down on him, he gives them simple names. Rai, the oni, is a house-sized wall of muscle, with grey skin, an electric yellow mane, and tusks that wouldn't shame an elephant. As Kenji sees in several pocket and parallel realities, he can turn continents to clouds of steaming dust with a strike or summoned storm, or burn them to ash with lightning.

Kage, the tengu, has a manlike body, but the feathers, wings and head of a raven. Always wearing green trousers and red sandals, the tengu can slip through shadows to emerge through other ones, as well as throw things through them. He can even become and create shadow, and his blades ignore mundane matter. Or, at least, no moon, planet or star has stopped them yet.

Yuki, half of her species' name, is physically and metaphysically cold, and speaks little. That is good. The pale, blue-haired woman is not here to talk their targets' ears off, but to freeze them and however much of their country is necessary to win.

The kitsune's story is longer, not unexpectedly. Its kind grow a new tail, jumping immensely in power, every century. By the time they have grown nine, they must ascend to Heaven. Such have things been, since time immemorial.

The Heaven-Spurning Elder, who has more tails than some countries have citizens, remembers when Earth looked like Venus, and vice-versa. She liked the material realm, and messing with her lesser, conformist kin, too much to leave. By the time the gods felt the need to press the matter. She was already a match for ant of them-amy ninetails could destroy stars or move across the galaxy in seconds, never mind her. And their kind could also copy the powers and appearance of any other being, which, coupled with the omniscience that came with their ninth tail, made them exceedingly dangerous.

The Elder broke every record, of course. Who knew kitsune could eventually copy mutiple beings at once? Amaterasu conceded to give the whimsical Elder her freedom, on the condition of sending any ninetails to Heaven herself, if they wouldn't leave. The old kitsune happily agreed.

Yua, as Kenji named her in a moment of sappy mockery, was, as some Americans said, stacked while in human form. The tiny woman, with her turtlenecks and round shades, was all but unnoticeable, except for her golden hair, and the fox ears rising from it.

(Did she have human ears too, while looking like this? A mystery, Rai said one night, to Kage's sagely nods).

There were, of course, the eighty-eight million tails unfurling from her metaphysical self, but those were not for everyone to see.

When Kenji returns to Japan as leader of the Nippon Five, he subjugates the country. With a fox who can crush the universe like a snowglobe and cross it like a street without using her most dangerous power at his side, no one can deny him. For long, anyway. He builds his company to sell weapons to foreigners, then to provide security forces to them-mercenaries, trained by him and his inner circle.

All the while, he searches for a cure for Ren, something that can not only heal his friend, but raise him beyond what he had ever dreamed. For Kenji is a greater man now.

And so, one night, on the wall of Plato's cave, he finds the spirit of Bushido itself. Many of the bodies he creates and controlls, by means of magic, tech or chemistry, are sacrificed to drag it into the material realm, but he succeeds, and Ren gets back his wits, his love for his country, and power to match any god's. Bushido is born, and joins the Nippon Five, who become the Six.

Amaterasu recognises Kenji's dedication, his humility in fighting for foreigners and his desire to protect his family, then recognises him as her heir and steward in front of the country.

Now established, if not content, Kenji guides his country into a better future. And, to prevent him from becoming a smug, boring old man, Yua begins hanging around him longer and more often. The Yamada CEO barely has time to realise their wedding isn't a dream, nor a nightmare. And, decades later, they have a delightful, if dense grandson, named Ritsu, who joins ARC's Goetia division after binding the Sake-Drinking Lad's spirit to himself.

The less said of their children, the better.

***
???, ???, ????!!!???#??/-

Fixer is a cheery fellow, really. When you're a composite of yourself, you can't help but feel the vibe.

He couldn't, in the youth of his human self, the Ned he remebers as 'himself'. That Ned grew up to be a helpful man, always fixing things 'round the neighbourhood, or trying to. Dunwich in the early nineteen-hundreds wasn't exactly used to negros helping without demands, ulterior motives, or attempts at stealing.

He did better in the Royal Army. Sure, he had to swallow the jokes about his ears being big enough to read braille through echolocation. Or that time one of the blokes saw some monkeys when they were fighting the Nazis in Africa, and the Sarge congratulated him for finding Ned's family. They even brought one of them to him that night, in a dress and makeup. To keep it in the family.

Where was he going...? Ah, yes, the Wars. That time in the trenches with John was memorable, if only because Somme was too damned long and bloody to forget, and the bloke was always talking about what he'd write. To think they both made Lieutenant...

Fixer was happy when John stayed home for the second War. They had been orcs enough in the first, he had said.

Fixer had been there when they'd stormed Berlin, and the Yanks quickly changed their mind on where they'd drop the Bomb. Once to burn the monsters, once more to cleanse the ruins. Ned helped capture the Thule Society, and decades later, Emil and his...hmm...Hex and Nacht helped make him who he was.

From the earliest hominid craftsmen to the most eldritch alien technicians, they were all facets of the 'helpful' archetype in the Outer Void. They were all him.

Because Ned has to be helpful. His parents hadn't been, and look at them-always hanging out, in the wind, dead to requests.

Sometimes, he feels like he is in that bunker again, during the Blitz. The only one who knows what to do and sees what is happening. But now, all of reality is his bunker, and mother, they are dropping stars, not bombs.

Sometimes, Ned regrets he cannot not do more to help without tilting the balance too much, allowing the Crawling Chaos and its ilk to retaliate. Then, he remembers what had happened after gaining his powers and deciding to indulge himself.

***
Ned stares at nothing as he broods on his throne.

The multiverse he is in is an exact copy of the original: infinite realities surrounded and separated by the aether.

He has made his every dream reality. Parents alive, happy childhood? Check.

Squadmates obliterates and recreated endlessly, the pain getting worse every loop? Check. Meshed well with the reality were the whites were the opressed race. See how you like monkeys now...

Britain victorious alone, heart of an Empire spanning infinite realities? Check.

And more. Equilibrium, in a world where opium doesn't exist and her descendants don't go to war, where a misfit Sergeant doesnn't have to rescue her from the Japanese.

A multiverse where every being iss united in shared love and understanding, one where they all adore him as their god-king, every action and thought a prayer, another where they do that, but also live in constant heart-stopping fear and teeth-grinding pain, just because...

So much power. No challenge. Why...

"Why do I feel so empty?" He whispers, tears streaming down his face.

"Hey." A voice comes from his right. He doesn't look, but he knows: it's the old man from the nrighbourhood. The one...from every neighbourhood his selves had lived in. "Why don't you help that girl?"

Fixer slides back into mundane reality, to see the Twofold shily shifting her weight from foot to foot. The recruit is adorable, really; the fact she isn't insane or possessed, instead merely struggling to tap into the demon's power, is incredible. She is untrained, after all.

"Agent Faith?" He says gently, putting a steady hand on her shoulder. Christine's eyes water as she looks up at him, bit she purses her lips. "Do you want to learn how to handle multiple trains of thought at once? I'm afraid some of your Goetia colleagues have lost touch with their, ah, single-minded selves."

She punches his arm at the joke, then realises her mistake, stepping back with wide eyes, and it takes all of Ned's willpower not to hug her and tell her it's alright, he's not mad. That would be condescending, and probably misogynistic too.

By the end of it, she's leaning against the training room's wall with a roaring headache, a wolfish grin, and Xelkhe's illusions at her command. She tries to wrap up Fixer's eldritch form in a hug, and kisses what she thinks is his cheek-he awkwardly constructs a face made of something resembling matter-and he hugs her back.

"Thanks, sir." She says, thinking that he didn't have to do this, and she doesn't have much to give as thanks. But he can feel the love-it's platonic at this point, and will flare up into more before simmering down again-and gratitude, and that? Brings a smile to his face.

***

Ah, right. Fixer grins, remembering that honest smile, and the joy at regaining self-control in Christine's eyes. That's what I'm fighting for.

And then, he looks at the shapes circling that small, precious warm bundle of reality, feels their jagged thoughts and confusion at one like them opposing its kind while thinking like a dimensioned being. Why? Why is he stopping them? Why does he not join them? Why does he care? Why does he not stand aside?

"Sorry, gribblies." Fixer's grin widens as he spins an appendage like a certain burly sailor. "But my heart bleeds, so that theirs never will."

Hey, Fifi? Are you watching me? I'd hope you succeed in your own mission, but...I already know you will.

And, David? Everything that hurts you is reshaping you into what you need to become. I am not sorry for nudging you along, but would be if you broke. And I wouldn't be the only one. Hold your head high, my boy.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Chapter 11

***
My eyes weren't permanently gone. Merlin, for all his sheer power, was farther from divinity than even I was. As such, though I staggered and almost fell, it was from shock rather than pain.

"Why did you do that?" I hissed, hands around the present Merlin's chained throat. I couldn't hurt him, of course. Leaving aside the fact that he was far too durable for me to scratch, the nature of his imprisonment made it so he couldn't be damaged or altered by forces from outside or inside Broceliande. "And how?"

"You are asking the wrong questions, David." The cambion smiled blandly, limp in my grip. "That is, the simple ones. Don't you loathe people who ask questions with obvious answers? You want to berate or beat them bloody, and your more honest side has such interesting ide-"

My backhand turned his head, wiping the smile off his face. Hurt your pride, did I? Surprised you have any after your girlfriend turned your last BDSM session into permanent cockblocking.

"Just because you can hear my thoughts, it does not mean you should comment on them." I said, my smile almost as full of forced calm as my voice. "Answer me."

Merlin let out a suffering sigh. Exasperated at my, what, thick-headedness? "Think, David! Think! I cannot do anything except scry the future and teleport myself in this state, and doing the second drags my prison along. I cannot harm people. My future self," He spat the words in a way that made them sound absurd, like 'flying pigs' or 'nice surprises'. "If you want to use such hobbling terms, apparently won't be, going by that telekinetic pulse he used on your eyes. That is how he was able to affect you."

"But that wasn't really your future self, was he?" My hands lowered from his neck to his shirt collar. I knew everyone in the meeting could hear us, and if they weren't eavesdropping, or were listening but not intervening, they clearly saw no problem with my treatment of the mage. "You-people like you and Vyrt, and your inhuman parents-don't perceive time linearly, nor do you live like us, do you? Was that you from the future truly different from the you I'm holding?"

"Considering I haven't blasted you off me," Merlin said drily. "Maybe a smidge."

I stared into his lidless, flaming orbs for a few moments, eyes narrowed, then let go of his collar, shoving him away with a scoff. I caught his smirk as he stumbled, and put out a boot to trip him.

Petty? Yes. You could say I'm the eye for an eye type.

"Why did you call me 'Keeper'?" I asked after he got back to his feet. "What am I keeping, or going to? Does it have anything to do with Mimir's sight?"

"You would rather ask about my friend's sight than use it to gain the answers you desire?" Merlin retorted, hands in his coat's pockets.

I didn't really give a damn about the fact he and Mimir had apparently been friends-with the dead god's possible motives before the Headhunt, and Merlin's stunt, I could see several things they had in common, though. Things like 'useless arsehole who knows too much and does too little'. "You  just popped my eyes like fucking balloons for  trying, jackass." I reminded him, my strigoi side stirring in the back of my mind with an anticipative chuckle. "Are you going senile, or have you always been this stupid?"

"Do not cast mountains in glass houses, agent Silva." Merlin said, all familiarity gone from his voice, replaced by coldness rather than the offended anger I had expended. "I told you to use Mimir's sight-who mentioned the future? Besides you, so you could talk yourself into finding a reason to insult me?"

"You mean, another one?" I asked sarcastically, pointing at the blood around my healed eyes, a dark so red it was almost black. "Are you saying I am 'keeping' something in the present? Or that I did it in the past?"

"No, Silva." The cambion sounded weary. "I am saying that, if you look close enough at the now, you will see what you will Keep. But you must not look at the future. Not because of that, but because you cannot afford precognition past the current crisis...at the moment." Merlin shook his head, frustrated at the way he was stumbling over words. "My future self used the title he is-will be-accustomed to calling you by, in an attempt to both get your attention and taunt you with future knowledge. But he did not want you to look into the future, just like I do not."

"Well, you've both done a bang-up job." I applauded quietly a few times. "Poor communication kills, you know?"

Our staring contest-I didn't know what more to tell the mage at the moment, and beating on him would have solved nothing; nor did he seem inclined to talk any more-was interrupted by Bedivere calling for us, and saying it was time to go to Fairie.

***
Neither Merlin nor the others spoke of our altercation, though I caught Shiftskin pursing his lips contemplatively when I or the cambion looked at him.

Mages are both the most common-two billions worldwide, a tenth of Earth' population before the evacuation- and some of the weakest supernaturals. Sure, iele, common Fae and ghouls who ate little were only a few million times stronger than baseline humans, and certain small species were actually weaker than them, but they were the exception, not the rule. Most mages could control matter in all its states, boost their bodies and minds, read those of others or move objects telekinetically; some could control spacetime too, like Mihai(one of the strongest civilian mages of our generation), or erase things from existence. But, compared to species who started at turning mountains to clouds of dust or steam, and only escalated from there(strigoi, vamps, weres, zmei, dragons...)  and who were mostly immune to esoteric effects, regardless of power, barring certain weaknesses, being able to see the future, blast tanks to shrapnel, throw around buildings and bend nature to your will starts looking pretty lame.

Not to mention that, while mana never ran out-mages were limited by how much they had, an amount that could increase through improvements of the body, mind or soul which, through synchrobisation, gave birth to mana-their physical and mental stamina was limited, which often proved a problem for those not adept at restoring themselves.

Even so, no one could deny mages were also, overall, the most  versatile supernaturals. Besides the magic all of them had access to, there were many rarer, or even unique types, like Liam Lloyd's ability to kill almost anything, from organisms to metaphors(I say almost, because Lloyd's power, not being holy, would do jack and shit to me or to a vampire; or, for that matter, a were, or an on-guard zmeu; again, blanket resistance).

Teleportation and portal creation were some of the more common 'subtypes' of magic. Traveling was easy, as long as you had a vague idea of a location: its appearance, its name. Even if the appearance had changed since a mage got a description, they could still teleport there, or make a portal, if they wanted. Magic automatically adjusted to prevent telefragging, but mages preferred to be careful.

Travelling between realities wasn't any more challenging, because distance, whether finite or infinite, was not an obstacle to magic, which didn't travel. Even going to or 'through' the aether, that realm that spanned the multiverse, separating its realities from each other and best equated to a wormhole made of mana and filled with dead agnostics, was possible.

Why, then, was multiversal travel uncommon? Why didn't we set off on a glorious crusade in the name of Mother Cosmos, and smite the savages of other universes, or grind them beneath our heels? Well, three reasons.

One, we had almost anything we want on our Earth, or in the wider universe, if we're feeling adventures. The appearance of magic, and supernaturals in general, hds solved a lot of problems mundane society, analysts claimed, would have still been struggling with. Pollution, global warming, natural disasters and overpopulation stopped being scary the moment Ion Gheorghescu down the street could develop magic and the ability to reshape the world, create pocket realities, or erase unwanted stuff from existence.

And, when you have two or so billion mages working together, or at least not against each other...well. People are lazy. If they're feeling content and safe, they'll most likely stay home. The rest, the daredevils(Not you, Murdock, you're cool; Christian bros, even though yer a filthy Cat'lick), either set off by themselves to seek thrills, or ended up in prison.

Two, most realities besides ours were either literally empty or really,  really inhospitable. Places where the monsters Vyrt had killed were about as imoressive as earthworms were here. Colonising the empty ones, or taming the eldritch ones, ran back into the problem of laziness. Even that dustup on Mars had left a lot of people yawning and shelving colonisation of the Red Planet for the future. Admiteddly, the godly cold war predating the Headhunt, and its aftermath, hadn't helped.

Third, and this had to do with our current endeavour, some realities, whether inhabited or not, were sealed off from the rest of the multiverse by more than just the aether. Wards, placed by gods, the most advanced species(there was was often overlap) or both, against invaders eldritch and mundane alike, stood around them like the Iron Curtain had towered over the tallest mountains in the USSR and its allies.

We didn't have the stomach to approach such heavily-defended universes. Maybe we would, in the future, extending a friendly hand. But, for the moment, we had our own problems.

While Fairie was indeed shielded and full of booby traps, not to mention defence mechanisms, the most challenging aspect of its defences was the glamour that spanned the realm. Which would have been useless against any member of our raiding party, between our natural or artificial resistances, but that hadn't been why we'd taken so long.

The Fae, probably the Seelie Court, as building things up went against the Unseelie's nature, had beefed up their realm's wards against extra-universal intrusions by a lot. Not enough to slow down New Camelot's mages by more than half a day, but that said more about them than the Fae, especially with Vyrt's wife Miranda having destruction magic backed up by a horrible temper, which was only encouraged by the Lady of the Lake, who had also helped with the breaching.

However, the fact we had started, never mind finished tearing down their walls had everyone walking up walls. Even the Seelie on their nicest day took an extremely dim view of unannounced visitors. Now, with both Courts mad, allied and seemingly in the throes of a Hunt?

Honestly, the fact we'd gotten this far without resistance was almost as baffling as the fact Ireland's emergency government had let us in the country, and even then only because we actually had an explanation for the Irish' stance.

After the Shattering, gods briefly descended to Earth to look into the countries of their past or current worshipper, resulting in things like Amaterasu incinerating the Japanese Royal Family and Anu proposing Gilgamesh as a ruler of a reunited Mesopotamia(negotiations that went nowhere for decades, and were on hold until the current crisis was resolved, as the First Hero was leading a strike force consisting of his people's descendants to put down would-be invaders before they could cross the aether into our reality).

The Tuatha de Danaan took one look at Ireland, then at Britain, and more or less went 'Welp. You two need separation and long, long-distance reconciliation'. The Brits went home, because they couldn't do anything else at the time, and the reconciliation has resulted in a chilly acknowledgement of each other's existence, but no wars. That was something.

Nevertheless, the Irish weren't keen on Brits traipsing through their country for any reason. Other foreigners were sometimes fine, sometimes not; the reason we had gotten through was because the Druid Matriarch had been encouraged by the Dagda, Morrigan and Lugh to speed our passage, and had in turn leaned on the Irish Minister of Defence, who had agreed not to have the Emerald Isle's runic walls or drone defence network blast us to nothing from afar.

Vyrt and Vykt had remained at the Roundhouse, along with Theo and a couple hundred Knights, because there was no way something nasty would miss their absence, let alone do nothing. Bedivere had been chosen to lead the mission after a short argument between him, Sam, Dust Devil and Brazillion, who had deferred to the Grandmaster's experience, preferring to use their greater power to crush what he couldn't out-think.

"We will wait here until you return, Grandmaster." Vyrt's wife, Miranda, was half a head shorter than me, but more muscled, with dark skin and short, curly raven hair. I only saw this for a few seconds, then her helmet flowed back into place, hiding the skintight mana forcefield from view. She was a bonfire amongsts the candles of her subordinate mages, and each of them felt like a walking nuke just based on mana, not taking their armour into account.

"Hold the gate open, and prepare another expedition should you fail." Whether to rescue or avenge us remained to be seen. That was probably the second, unspoken reason Vyrt had stayed at the Roundhouse. Four fifths of the London Chapter-eight hundred Knights-had followed the Grandmaster, as had a hundred fifty thousand Knights gathered from the other Chapter across Britain. Less than half of the organisation's strength, but Bedivere hated putting all his eggs into one basket, and leaving the country defencrless was inconceivable. We would make do with the power at our disposal.

The only thing I could think of as we walked through the portal on top of Newgrange's grass-covered roof, though, was that I really hoped nothing would happen to damage the ancient burial site. It was older than the pyramids, and proof people built things to last back in the day.

Probably not enough to bear our combined weight, though, which is why we didn't risk it, and instead entered in groups, with Sam and the FREAKSHOW agents taking point, followed by countless ten-Knight squads, Bedivere, with Brazillion, Szabo and the Fivefold acting as extra bodyguards in the middle, followed by more Knights, and Dharma and I bringing up the rear. So I could make the most of my sight, I suppose, though I wasn't sure what the old Indian specialised in. Not because his powers were shrouded in mystery, but because they were extremely versatile.

Dharma could gain new abilities depending who he helped, or who trued to harm him. Helping someone keep warm decades ago had given him pyrokynesis. An attempt at poisoning had resulted in the wannabe assassin rotting into sludge. And so on. In Bedivere's place, I'd have put him in the front or middle, but it wasn't my place.

I was still a probationary agent. After the first three years in ARC, I  should have been made a full agent, given access to the organisation's forums, full archives(well, the parts open to the grunts) and threat-assessment scale, but the Headhunt had resulted in extended probation, because people now wanted to get a feel of my new powers and see if my personality had changed.

Fairie was infinite in size, but seemed fairly limited in topography. Plains and lakes leading to forest leading to mountains repeated every sixty kilometres(a distance any of us could cover in a fraction of a second, while taking it slow), but there seemed to be no deserts, no tundras, no volcanoes or jungles.

Even after Szabo took away at lighspeed and returned after an hour, claiming this had to be the biggest, blandest national park he'd ever been to: over a billion kilometres of nothing but wilderness.

"Right, that tears it." Sam rumbled in a voice like a lion's roar, so he could be heard by everyone, adjusting his cloak's left side. "Silva, look for the nearest Fae settlement or outpost. Fivefold, find its weakpoint."

We both nodded, though I snuck a curious glance at the American agents. I doubt Sam just wanted her opinion on Fae defences. More likely, we were about to witness one of her demons' power in action.

I closed my eyes, forced a deep breath into my unmoving lungs-entirely unecessary, but a good way to focus-and opened them again.

My sight swept across the landscape far faster than light, and realised it was getting nowhere after a few microseconds. Everything was the same, like a house of mirrors, or a network of trenches. Perhaps the Fae's way to discourage us from scouting while they hid and prepared themselves.

My sight then lowered, before moving through the ground, perception getting faster and faster as trillions of kilometres of loamy soil were analysed in seconds, only to reveal nothing.

"Stop looking lower." A soft, deep voice said to my left year, which meant Dharma was standing on his tiptoes, or floating. "I feel you are wasting your time."

I didn't say anything, not wanting to risk breaking my focus, but my inquisitive grunt was enough for him to understand what I meant.

"One of my powers." The little man said. "Reveals when something is a good idea."

I grunted again. Suggestions?

"Stop where you are." Dharma replied. "Move forward for, hmm...a dozen billion klicks."

I did as told, but saw nothing except for earthworms, moles, and bronze statues of Fae in triumphant poses, in both armour and robes, which must have been old, but looked pristine, despite how long they must have have been buried.

"There! Stop there!" Dharma gripped my right shoulder excitedly, pulverising my upper torso. I healed so fast my cross was still hanging in midair, around the cloud of cold blood that had been and quickly turned back into my neck, giving the Indian a sidelong deadpan look.

He grinned back, revealing teeth whiter than his chest-length beard. "I only did that because I knew you could take it. Come now, David. Let an old man have his joys."

"You ruined my shirt." I complained without any real heat, looking at the bloody shreds on the ground. The yamadium weave was just as durable as my body, which said a lot about Dharma in his excitable moments.

"That," Dharma held up a finger. "Is also necessary for the mission. Now, listen. Stop looking where you are. Have you...? Good. Now, turn left and keep going."

"Why don't you lead us there yourself?" I muttered, but nevertheless followed his advice.

After a few minutes, I saw a honeycombed structure made of cold iron, built into the ground, as Fae didn't need air, covered in runes that had never been used by mankind. The slits in the hexagon's walls were big enough to accomodate a few ordinary Fae, or one of the bigger ones, like a Nuckelavee.

This must have been a frontier prison. There were only a dozen billion slits in the walls surrounding some sort of courtyard, and even the Seelie Court numbered nearly five thousand times that, let alone the much more numerous Unseelie or unaligned Fae. The Fright Before Christmas had seen the appearance of a few billion Unseelie on Earth, and such small forces, by their standards, were a sign of buzarre restraint from the chaotic Fae.

And where were the guards? Each cell was full, but unbarred and unguarded.

"Good find, Silva." Sam said after I described the apparent prison. "We'll use it to get their attention. Threaten to kill the prisoners. If this turns out to be a small prison in bumfuck nowhere, we'll carry on after we're done, find another place, and repeat until we bring them to the table.

"What if they call our bluff, sir?" I asked, unsure how to feel about his plan. If these guys were wretched enough, by Fae standards, to be imprisoned underground, they  probably deserved death, but...

Twelve billion. By hand?

"Bluff...? Oh, right. Like we called their 'bluff' to raze every settlement on Earth. Well, we'll kill them, obviously."

The wendigo nodded to the Knights, who covered their weapons with a layer of iron. Those wielding guns adjusted them on their shoulders, or where they were wardbound to their armoured thighs, and I saw Dust Devil unholster his revolvers and spin their barrels once, twice, with an empty-eyed grin on his face.

Before we could tear the ground open and descend into the prison, though, it tore open by itself.

The tallest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons, at twenty-five kilometres. Next to the mountains that ripped themselves free of Fairie's ground, reshaping themselves into bulky humanoid shapes, like Sofia's golem on steroids, it would have looked like a hill, not even coming up their ankles. The walking mountains were over four hundred kilometres tall, as tall as Surtr.

Next to the giants of white rock covered in forests, shapes covered in false muscles formed from the soil itself rose. These golems were covered in city-sized patches of moss, and veins of ore ran through their bodies, giving the impression of a flayed human made of dirt.

And they moved almost as fast as me. But that was a given. Around two hundred-fifty thousand times as tall as a human, they also needed to move as many times as fast to look like they were running at 'normal' speed.

Which meant that, when I flew to clash fists with twenty-six trillion tons of rock, I did so at thirty-six hundred times the speed of sound.

And was unceremoniously splattered.

See, that much weight moving that fast is enough to give the Earth a pretty brutal makeover, and while I was more durable than most things on the planet, I wasn't durable enough to take a punch that would have razed its surface or wrecked the moon.

I healed while my cross, preserved by the power pops had woven into it, was flailing wildly from the speed of my flying remains. The golem had punched me the equivalent of a few Earths away, which meant it was beyond my sight, but I could still sense the furnace-like source of mana animating it, even without Mimir's perception.

It took me nearly a minute to fly back, time I used to tap into Fairie's atmosphere, bending it to my will. Countless lightning bolts arched down from cloudless skies, stopped in midair by my mental command, before wrapping around me like armour. They say lightning never strikes twice, and that's true: no strigoi would be content with so little.

The golem that had punched me away had gotten into a fight with what looked like some wereinsect Knight, given the oval, armoured wings rising from their back and the extra arms sprouting from their abdomen.

The Knight was spinning six broadswords, their modified feet allowing for more gripping appendages, and avoiding the golem's punches at such speeds, they disappeared from my sight with every moment, visible only in the fractions of a microsecond they hovered in place to swing at the golem, splitting hundreds of kilometres of rock with every strike, sending bulky arms and bisected torsos flying, but the giant healed almost as fast as it was slashed apart.

I could only imagine how the fight looked from its perspective, if it even had one. The golem was not only fast, it also had extremely keen senses, or the equivalent of tracking systems, given how it had hit me with far more precision than I'd have been able to punch a microbe flying as fast as I moved.

The insect knight caugh my gesture to move aside, blurring out of sight and leaving my lightning-wreathed form alone with the golem. Let's see if it could heal after being refuced to st-

A stream of stone, thousands of kilometres long and dozens wide, like an onrushing ocean of granite, flew at me from the golem's outstreched fists, filling my sight. Grinning under a mask of lightning, I flew on, and the jet of rock became vapour at the contact with my lightning construct.

I covered the distance to the golem in seconds, burning through the rock, then smashing a glowing, smoking crater through its chest and out of its back. The giant didn't stumble, or slow down when it turned to crush me, but it didn't heal, either.

Laughing in my head, as I was moving a few thousand times too fast for the real thing, I took the lightning armour off me like it was a cloak, reshaping it into a crackling, supercharged white bolt, then hurled it at the golem.

What do you get when about twenty-five trillion tons of rock are rapidly vapourised by a lightning bolt? You get a blast that would have ruined a lot of days back on Earth. The closest comparison would be have been the Permian Extinction Event, given the immense plume of superheated smoke that filled the landscape to the horizon and far beyond, but even the Siberian Traps' eruption paled in terms of sheer power.

The insect knight suddenly appeared next to me, giving me a thankful, appreciative nod.

"Huh. I guess I can see what the buzz is all about." She said, a voice that would have been smooth underlined by a crackling sound, like static.

"That pun was pretty fly." I grinned at the groan. "By any chance, would you happen to bee a-"

"I'm a dragonfly." She said, spinning her swords again as she looked for another target. "And no, that doesn't mean I spit flaming mucus."

She was gone, then reappeared on an earth golem, before I could tell her I hadn't even thought about that.

As I gathered bolts from clear skies around me once more, I took a look at how the others were doing.

The Knights, having realised there was no point in dicing or shattering the golems, had drawn back, moving just as fast as me, and raised guns with glowing barrels. Bedivere stood in the middle of one such squad, holding but not lifting an unadorned, simple-looking spear.

But then, Rongomyniad didn't need frills.

Hundreds, then thousands of coruscating beams flew from the guns, but not at the golems, instead meeting in midair and forming pulsing, city-sized spheres. They then opened up like blooming flowers, thick energy beams flying at the golems faster than I could see and blasting dozens to steam.

There were stil hundreds left, but, shit-the Knights had Power Rangers team attacks? What the hell was I training for!?

Szabo flitted around a rock golem faster than it could react, a silent laugh on his lips, blurring hundreds of kilometres away whenever it was a hair's breadth from touching him. After every missed hit, the strigoi then hovered in place long enough to meet an Earth-razing punch, and kick the offending arm to pieces.

Eventually, he got bored. But, rather than rip off my lightning trick, Szabo opened his fanged mouth wide, draining the golem's animating energy into him, and causing the inert construct to tumble to the ground with an earth-shattering fall.

The Fivefold wasn't as fast as him, but she didn't need to be, either. Her movements as she tracked her golem were just as fast as mine, but, rather than dodge, she simply disappeared from the path of its stomping feet and crushing fists, reappearing beyond its reach. To Mimir's sight, it looked like she was dropping in and out of reality, pushed away and pulled back in by a shrouded, cloaked demon.

After getting its measure, the Fivefold nodded to herself, and the golem's mana its body, before gathering in a shimmering, colourless sphere in front of the hellbound, who snuffed it out with a touch.

Dharma stopped forward, bending one leg and extending one arm, palm out. A wave of not-force rushed out, leaving a milky-white emptiness as it erased everything in its path, finishing with the golem, before looping back to the caster, sealing the hole in reality along the way.

I saw Dust Devil shake his head at the tensing Brazillion and the deceptively relaxed-looking Randy. The Brazilian mage mouthed an annoyed curse about gloryhounds, while Randy grinned, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking on his heels. Then, the gunslinger's body seemed not to move.

The next instant, a hundred fifty golems became black silhouettes, like giant nuclear shadows, before fading. Dust Devil spun his guns to disperse the smoke, before holstering them once more.

Bedivere glanced at us, then the remaining hundred-plus golems, raised his dead king's spear, and threw it.

Rongomyniad flew faster than I could see, passing through the golems without damaging them, or tampering with their mana. Even so, the constructs settled back on or in the ground, assuming their natural shapes once more. Mana still flowed through them, trying to reshape them into the prison's guardians, but failing.

"Now." The Grandmaster said, turning to Shiftskin and catching the spear that flew at him from behind, so fast its passage distorted light, without looking. "Your idea, Samuel."

***
It turned out we didn't need to perform a mass execution whose bodycount would have outstripped any war on Earth's. Our descent into the prison triggered some sort of aetheric silent alarm, and before long, a beleaguered, but seemingly sane Oberon was leading us to his palace, flanked by a host of trillions of Fae and other, less identifiable supernaturals.

" 'Count' Coldhold is a sham, unloved and disrespected." The Seelie King explained, the colours of his crystal armour changing as often as his appearance. "The people he led to your world during this so-called Fright Before...Yule? What  are you calling it nowadays?"

"Don't change the subject." Sam warned from his left, something making his cloak bulge and shift. "Why should we believe you didn't authorise this attack, or know about it?"

Oberon sighed. "This is  not about plausible deniability, Two-Mantled Lamb. Please, do not attribute to evil what is born of ignorance. Do you see these?" Oberon gestured at the crucified bodies lining the paths leading to the Seelie capital.

They were not human, or any supernatural or alien I recognised. Not reptilians, or Grey One's people. They weren't the compact, beetle-like citizens of the Honoured Kratocracy, either, nor the ever-shifting forms of the Unity Stellar.

"What of them?" Bedivere asked, using Rongomyniad like a walking stick.

"You would not believe how rotten some civilisations can become, young knight...or, perhaps not. I always thought your kind should have thinned the herd around that Industrial Revolution of yours. No matter." Oberon shook his head, shifting eyes becoming black and steely. "My darker kind long to bring down any organised nation. Titania and I thought it was time to bury the hatchet, even help them channel their impulses into something good, and they agreed! This purge of the wicked-you will notice the multiverse is a much cleaner place, should you care to check- was their way of sealing our deal. Alas...while we were doing that, the force left to guard the hearths-misfits and weaklings, led by a joke of a Count we shouldn't have relied on, even for this-slipped their leash, and fell upon Earth."

I could see absolutely no heitation or agitation from the Seelie, nor any metaphysical indicators that he was lying-but that only meant Oberon thought he was saying the truth, not that he was. That, or he just was better at spinning lies than I was at seeing through them.

"That's awfully convenient, Yer Majesty." Dust Devil grunted around his toothpick, a few paces between them. "Did ya happen to find these acceptable targets by yerselves?"

"Oh, no!" Oberon was so pleased with his exploits that he showed no irritation at the American's tone, unlike his subjects. "A god showed them to us! He-"

"One of the Tuatha de Danaan?" Bedivere asked, eyes narrowed.

"No. And do not interrupt me, knight, or I may have to get cross with you." The Fae warned coldly. "A god from a colder, bleaker realm. He found his way here after the Headhunt, scared and scarred, and pointed out those deserving destruction, before retreating into a slumber. Apparently, he was being chased at the time, so he channeled his considerable power into hiding himself."

"Very altruistic, this runaway." Sam remarked as Oberon's palace crested the horizon.

"Indeed! We were as shocked as we were pleased by Chernobog's generosity!" Oberon smiled brightly.

[Strigoi Grey]

Empty Tomb, Epilogue

***
Dharma's gnarled hand was on my shoulder before I could even twitch in shock, let alone speak.

"Measure your response, Silva." The Karma agent didn't speak. Instead, his words travelled through the aether-not into my mind, as telepathy didn't work on strigoi, but the realm of raw mana itself, and my aetheric hearing was keen enough to pick them out.

"We are in the presence of royalty." The Indian continued in an ironic tone. "By which I mean, we do not want to start a war with the Fae right now."

"Didn't you hear what he said!?" I thought back.

"Yes, that's why I told you to watch yourself." Dharma didn't move his head, so as not to draw attention to our silent discussion, instead just glancing minutely at me. Judging from everyone else's lack of reaction, he was somehow masking our thoughts, too. "I am aware many agents died engaging Chernobog's cultists and supporters. But it is not the time for...Silva?"

I was shaking again, and that was always a horrible sign when it came to me. Not because I was some unflappable prick, but because, as a walking corpse, I didn't breathe, blink, twitch, shift my weight, or do any of the little things humans do without realising. I need to do them myself, which sometimes necessitates shapeshifting.

Shaking, then, was a sign that I was either so scared I wanted everyone else to see it, which I never did, or that I was so disturbed I was unconsciously using my powers.

Going by how my flesh rippled and twisted, trembling on my bones, this was a case of the latter.

I was out of Dharma's grip and in Samuel's without seeing either of them move. The wendigo was holding me like I was a cracked vase, his leather cloak moving to hide me from view, and he was adressing Oberon.

"The strigoi is unwell. We would halt until he recovered, or hurry to your palace, and..."

"I understand." The Fae King replied in a voice so faint, it was like he was whispering from a thousand kilometres away.

Because I wasn't focusing on them. I was back in that chambervof worship, taunted by a god hiding behind another's face...no.

I was in Hel, with the blood of gods on my hands and in my throat, after my friend had sacrificed himself for nothing, nothing at all.

I-

Was-

Speaking the-

TRUE NAMES-

OF THE FAE WHO HAD BROUGHT THE NIGHTMARE BACK AND NURSED HIM AT THEIR BOSOM-

THE BASTARDS WOULD DIE AND ACCOMPLISH NOTHING. JUST LIKE MARCUS HAD.

***
Diego was spinning through the blackness, while his body drifted through the void of space.

In his four decades of life, and four centuries of unlife, the vampire had often heard people talk about the palace of their mind, the mindset they retreated into when they desired to think, meditate, or even relax.

Diego often said he had a hovel of the mind, but that was a lie...ah, no, a  joke. Yes. He remembered jokes. His mother had once told him to make as many as possible.

He would have prayed for the woman's soul, had he remembered her name. Or, at least, her face.

Diego's mind was not a hovel. It was a charnel house.

Vampires, like their lifeforce-drinking cousins, inevitably began talking to themselves as their power grew-that was, their instincts became louder and louder, achieving a sort of pseudo-sentience.

Some vampires' instincts took majestic, awe-inspiring forms. Diego knew Ilsa, a top agent in Austria's Slaughtering Shield, spent her days in the company of a blood-drenched she-fiend, who spoke to her in her own voice.

Ragnar, from Norway's Hearthwatch, saw his thirst as a gaunt berserker, who exhirted him to find the fiercest enemies, and drain them of life after glorious combat.

Diego often wondered what it would be like for his thirst to be...anything else.

In his mindscape, the vampire was a limbless torso, tarlike blood congealing on the edges of his stumps. Worse than his current bisected status, but not as bad as it could have been.

Diego lay on a carpet of gaunt, pale corpses-everyone he had ever killed, and turned into wights. There were humans, of course, thousands and thousands, and mages in their hundreds. Weres and undead if all stripes, including his own kind, wounds left by blessed silver still smoking.

They had all been justified deaths. So Diego had convinced himself. Because, if they hadn't been...if they hadn't...

A soft sound, like knives cutting old paper, drew Diego's attention. His thirst was approaching, its bladed legs tearing through the mental representation of his victims.

Its lower half was a leech's segmented, bloated tail, the angry purple of a bruise. Blood and other, far less wholesome fluids dripped from it as it was dragged along, covering the wights in layers of foulness.

Its upper half had six legs, pointed and edged like broadswords. From the waist up, purple became a pale red, almost pink. A mosquito-like body, covered in hair like razor wire; multicouloured wings, like the feathers of Diego's hat, sprouting from its back. Its multifaceted eyes were white as milk, unseeing as a mole's-for his thirst was blind, and did not distinguish between friend or foe, which was why he had never fed it, and, God willing, never would.

A proboscis, so long and thick it resembled a small elephant's trunk, tapered to a circular, razor-toothed leech's mouth.

"You are dying, liar." His thirst said. Its mouth could not form words, instead opening and closing, twitching at nothing. It spoke through thought alone. "Will you choose to be sincere, in your final moments?"

Sincere? So very few people ever asked him to be that, and even fewer lived long enough to regret it. But...he doubted his thirst would survive long enough for that. It would die with him, after all.

"Your lower half reminds me of my wife's." Diego said, not needing to fake the huskiness in his voice. The pain did that for him. "And that arouses me."

His thirst's face could not express emotion. Even so, Diego could practically feel its exasperated frown.

In truth, he had never compared his thirst's appearance with Clio's, because the lamia deserved to be described in much grander terms. But looming death made men think strange things, though there were far, far worse things to think of as he died than Clio.

If he somehow survived this, he knew he'd have all the time in the world for that. He doubted ARC would send him on a mission anytime soon...or ever again.

"You cannot trick me with that empty smile. Have you forgotten I am your true face, vampire?"

"Now, there is no need to be cruel." Diego tried to coo, but it came out as a wheeze. "Everyone tells me I look like Banderas, not the Human Fly..."

His thirst shook its head in frustration, half-skittering, half-crawling across his mindscape. "Do you not regret never drinking anyone? Seeing life leave their eyes under your fangs?"

"Blood is blood." Diego said simply, raising his bare arms-he was naked in his mindscape, for visiting it was like being in one of those embarrassing dreams, except lucid-and looking at the wrists he had bitten open to drink from so many times. His pale skin was unmarked, for nothing a vampire could do to themselves under their own power would leave scars.

Unmarked, except for the ragged band of flesh across his throat.

Diego had seen, in some early, pre-Shattering movies, vampires with two tiny points on their necks, as if their sires had pricked them with pencils. It was not impossible for one's turning mark to look like that, as long as their sire was a good shapeshifter who took care to lengthen some fangs, and only use them, but...

Diego's sire hadn't been careful about anything except her thirst. For his blood, for  him. Her fangs had torn his throat open just like her claws had ripped apart his manhood-in her excitement, she had forgotten how frail fledglings were. Luckily, he had healed in seconds, beyond pain, except that born of divinity, after his soul spilled out alongside his blood.

"Blood...is blood." Diego repeated, darkness filling the corners of his vision, obscuring his thirst as it paced. Among vampires, 'bite your tongue' meant much, much more than just 'don't speak'. They quenched their thirst and grew their strength through blood, but it did not have to come from anyone else. They could bite down on their tongues or limbs, feeding on themselves, though most vampires saw this as a sign of being too poor to afford artificial or donated blood, while criminals saw it as proof of weakness and cowardice.

Diego was not ashamed to die a coward, if that was true.

Long, long picoseconds passed, stretching like taffy, while the darkness obscured everything. Eveb his thirst's muttered curses faded away, and then...silence.

Diego stirred. This was not how he'd expected Hell to be.

In his hand, the thing that wielded him, the thing that looked like a sword, trembled and growled, a not-sound that filled the void where his soul had once been and made his hackles rise. The vampire opened blood-crusted eyes.

It is approaching, the Throat of Thirst spoke. The mirror-sibling-rival. Its host.

Samuel Shiftskin took a fraction of a heartbeat to leap from Earth to the ruined sun. The wendigo walked on plasma, looking down at the bisected vampire with a mix of pity and curiosity.

Are you going to live? Do you want to? And if yes, why?

"You did a good job, Cortez." Sam said, express "Szabo tells me they'd have all died if you hadn't drawn the 'shadow-thing' away. Judging by your wounds...I'm inclined to believe them. Was that thing holy?"

"I am not healing, sir." Diego replied. "Maybe its hits were just so persuasive, my body decided to stay like this."

"Allow me to offer a counterargument, then." The Salem Head crouched over him, cloak filling his vision, like he was a priest taking Diego's confession. "This is just the beginning-I can feel it, in my bones and water. The beasts flee from the high places, seeking refuge beneath the ground. It will not save them."

"I can still fight, dammit." Diego gurgled, blood beginning to fill his throat and mouth, drip down his face.

Sam nodded. "Do you want to? We could still make use of you. If you don't...I will let you die." The wendigo smiled. "Should I eat your corpse, or take it to the lamia?"

The Throat of Thirst roared, breaking reality like cheap glass and erasing the aether beneath, behind and above it across the solar system.

Like many of Earth's strongest supernaturals, Diego was bound to a concept. He was not fused with it like Armament or Dust Devil...or, for that matter, Shiftskin, who had somehow bound two to his will. But Thirst-for blood, for pleasure, for wealth and power and more-was his, just like he was its.

In many ways, Thirst and Hunger were extremely similar. They both allowed their wielder-tools to drain and consume almost anything, and exacerbated their already monstrous natural-so to speak-appetites.

The difference was that, while Hunger had been able to manifest freely since time immemorial, Thirst had once made a mistake, and been bound in a nameless temple in a withered jungle, crumbling despondently under a cold sun that ate light.

That was where Diego had found it. In brighter, more ignorant days-not innocent, for Man had not been innocent for millennia-, he had travelled to America as captain of his own ship. In the country that was now known as Mexico, his men had been picked apart by a tiny, but nevertheless unstoppable monster-chupacabra, the locals had whispered.

Enraged by their captain's failure to protect them, or even predict the atracks, and driven beyond the breaking point by his insistence to remain, his men had risen up, beating him bloody and abandoning him on the island where his sire had found him.

Diego had easily found his way back to the mainland after that, foaming at the mouth for revenge. He had torn apart his rebellious crew without a second thought, then wailed as he stood amidst their wights when his wits returned. Angry at them and himself alike, he had sought the trail of the monster, and a means to defeat it-for, even after he drank enough of his own blood to turn planets to dust and rip apart stars, he knew, just as he knew sunlight would seal his esoteric powers and anything holy could kill him, that Primus could not be defeated through mere strength, even if Diego were stronger than him.

And his great-grandsire had drunk far, far more blood than he had.

Even after he ripped the Thirst from its stone prison, unheeding of the atavistic horror it radiated, he had been unable to wound Primus. Cleaving the sun in half was far, far easier than scratching the First Vampire, and the scratches never stuck.

Sam opened his mouth wide, drawing the Throat's roar into his gaping mouth, and devouring the holes in reality it had created.

"Reversing destruction, sibling." Sam mocked the Throat in Hunger's parchment-dry tones. "Can you do that?"

Hissing at the taunting challenge, the sword ripped itself free of Diego's hand, then cut throught his flesh, placing itself alongside his spine, forcibly holding his halves together.

Unhurt, for the sword was an embodied concept, rather than a holy weapon, Diego rose to his feet in surprise. The pain was gone. What...?

"So, you have chosen...life." Sam said, his light tone failing to fully mask his wistfulness. "It cannot reverse the damage-at least, not without altering creation itself on a fundamental level. But it can keep you alive."

"I am ready to return, sir." Diego said, one hand tracing his waist. The shadow had cut him in half impossibly neatly, but it hadn't actually left any marks.

"Are you?" Shiftskin asked, head tilted at the ravaged sun. Pursing his lips, Diego pushed his mind against the sword, feeling the Thirst's desire to prove its sibling wrong, then break and consume it. Drawing upon a fraction of its power, Diego sought another main sequence yellow star, one with no inhabited worlds to be harmed by alterations. Then, like he was drinking blood from his own veins, the vampire moved the plasma across light years, far faster than light, adding it to the sun and moulding it until the star was back to its original shape.

"I believe I am now." Diego clasped his hands behind his back. "What now, sir?"

Sam grunted. "There will be consequences, of course. We will strike back at the Fae. You could be useful in this endeavor...though, I would rather they believed they killed you, so we could surprise them."

"Understood. I'll get my trenchcoat and shades." He already had the goatee. He could hide. "May I ask why it was you, specifically, who came to check on me, sir?"

Sam shifted awkwardly. "Aya...the mummy respects you, but she was busy. She chose a trusted friend to go find another, and save him if possible. We'll go to Giza first, then get to brass tacks and plan the incursion into Fairie."

"Your dedication is appreciated, as is Head Reem's affection." Diego gushed, just to watch the wendigo grumble. "If I may say, though...it is rude to be married and not show it in any way, sir."

"Aya is not my wife, you old goat."

"Of course not, sir." Diego said soothingly. "The shadow hit me upside the head several times."

Youths these days... these two, especially, were in denial far more often than when they went swimming. He firmly believed it was work getting in the way. Retirement would do both of them some good, even though Shiftskin had always been an old man at heart.

***
I came to the sensation of being waterboarded with acid.

I hadn't fainted, not really, but I  had lost the ability to think straight. The mention of Chernobog had triggered my...it had...

I was a liability. If I could lose control over something so minor, what good could I do in ARC? They'd be better putting me out of everyone's misery, so I couldn't have a fit in public and kill people who actually deserved to live...

Hah.

But we never get what we want, do we?

The Fivefold pressed me facedown into the holy water, holding my thrashing body still with strength equal to mine-another demon. Not the trickster or the finder of weak points. Her grip never slackened, even when I realised what I had done and stopped moving.

The Fivefold slowly, cautiously pulled me out of the puddle of holy water she had summoned, even though I wasn't resisting. That demon of hers had searched for my weakness and brought it here.

Standing around me, the agents stared at me with stony expressions. Even Szabo wasn't smiling, for once, instead giving me a considering look, lips pursed. I couldn't see the Knights' faces, only their hands on their weapons, but Bedivere looked like he had awoken from a nightmare, only to see reality was worse.

But was that not the story of Camelot's failed defenders?

And around them, impaled on iron spikes, were the twitching, still steaming bodies of Oberon's host.

The Seelie King himself stood stock-still, hands clenching and unclenching, face quite literally changing colour as his rage drove his shapeshifting into a frenzy.

Before I could ask what had happened, Oberon dashed at me, gauntleted fists raised, crystal armour a red so dark it was almost black.

With Mimir's perception still lingering at the edges of my mind, I could perceive things far faster than usual, as well as with greater accuracy.

Oberon, by himself, was as powerful as Thor or Heracles: a destroyer of worlds, a ravager of stars, hundreds and hundreds of times faster than light. Boosted by the mana he drew from the aether as he dashed at me, his power grew exponentially, jumping by orders of magnitude every fraction of a nanosecond...no, of a picosecond-

If two galaxies colliding had a sound, it was unlikely to be too different from the one made by Shiftskin as he tackled the Fae King off-course, then tried to wrestle him to the ground.

"Let go of me, you fucktoy of a mongrel!" Oberon shrieked into Sam's rhino face, crystal tears streaming down his cheeks. "I will break that revenant until he forgets how to beg for death! Bastards! Attacking under parley! Slaughterin m-my-"

But I wasn't listening to Oberon's sobbing rant. His words had drawn another memory to the forefront-a beautiful one, for all that little David had not appreciated it, instead almost fooling himself into believing it had been a hallucination.

Ungrateful. I had made him face most of his fears, and for what? Nothing. He could not even fall asleep to be tormented by his nightmares, instead needing my attention to experience them...tsk, tsk, tsk.

But then, when indoctrinated into the religion of hypocrisy, what could I expect?

I rose from his body like a mortal from a bed, letting the strigoi slump into the demon whore's grasp. Honestly, the wretches deserved each other. A shame that she had chosen that jumped-up monkey, rather than his much, much better mirror...

David's eyes widened in disbelieving hatred as he stared up at my floating form, mouth opening and closing, but no words coming out.

Aw, unsure how to swear? Let me help you.

"Hello, old toy. Did you miss me, like Nacht thought it didn't?" I morphed my face into a smile at his hateful grimace, crushing him inside a field of invisible force before he could do anything.

Now...onto business.

"Oberon! You can thank me for thinning the herd. I can assure you, mankind and its lapdogs would have been far, far less thorough."

A construct of solid darkness pushed the Fae onto his knees, holding him in place.

Another ungrateful worm. I should have killed them all, but that was more than Merlin had asked of me, and I didn't want to help the bastard for free.

The menagerie of freaks tensed, ready to jump at me, or unleash their powers, to no avail.

They would not succeed here. My side was making its move, bringing us closer to the endgame.

As such, when tentacles of chaos crawled out of the Void and into reality, they were unable to escape or destroy them. They were opposing a power far greater than their combined, and its equal and opposite was far away, pursuing his own duty.

"Do not wonder how I slipped past your guard." I said conversationally, ripping the Throat of Thirst out of Diego Cortez' flesh and letting the vampire fall apart-should have never stopped under Shiftskin's cloak, little leech. To show I wasn't killing more than the deal had asked for, I pushed my godly will into his body, fusing his halves together. "I will explain once I finish what I swore to do. You can all thank me...in a few moments."

I dragged the thrashing, swearing David into my free hand, twirling the Throat with the other as I sped across Fairie, waiting for my partner to meet me halfway through.

Merlin's arrival interposed his prison over the vibrant wilderness of the Fae realm, drowning it in gloom, but the cambion's smile was as bright as the eyes it reached.

A burst of my power left David trembling in pain, as close to unconsciousness as his kind could get. There was no need for him to learn of these proceedings...yet.

"You have the Thirst." Merlin said by way of greeting, nodding towards the apparent blade.

"It won't be able to consume your prison." I replied. "But it will erode it, weaken it enough that you will be able to exit..."

"As long as someone else takes my place." The mage finished, seeming almost regretful as he looked at the future prisoner.

Stupid. Had he not asked for this, in service of what he claimed was a good cause? Humans...even their halfbreeds were sentimental.

"Indeed." I said, then placed the Throat of Thirst on the chain around his neck, pressing onto it with all my strength and will, until the blade cracked with a despondent wail. Its incarnation obliterated, its greater self in the realm of ideas was not crippled.

It would have only taken a few more years, perhaps decades, for it to goad Diego Cortez into a feeding frenzy. Somehow, I knew ARC would be just as ungrateful as David.

The chains looked as strong as before, but they were brittle, loose. So, as Merlin slipped out of them, hovering on the threshold of freedom, it was the easiest thing to throw the strigoi into his bindings, which tightened around his grey limbs like spiteful snakes.

"I thank you for keeping your word, Black God." Merlin said in a neutral tone, not looking at his cousin when the nephilim warped into existence between us.

"You are welcome." I said, then turned to Vyrt. "And you did a good impression of me, back then. Scratching a mark into his neck was a little too obvious, though."

"He convinced himself it wasn't real. Why pay it attention?" Vyrt shrugged, then his eyes narrowed. "You will not win, Chernobog. Nor will your master."

I bristled. "I have no mas-"

"This is merely another stepping stone on David's path upward." The mongrel went on, as oblivious to his pompousness as any self-assured 'hero'. "An opportunity to grow. What does not kill him makes him stronger."

"Then I'll just have to avoid that, won't I?" I bared my teeth in a grin. "But let us not speak of the far future, now. Cambion?"

"With the Fae's army out of play, they will be stuck rebuilding their forces, not to mention the trust between them, for a long, long time." Merlin chuckled. "And let us not forget their reputation! No Unseelie will follow Oberon after trillions died under his nose, nor will anyone treat him as a capable, watchful leader any time soon."

"As for Earth...well." Vyrt smiled thinly. "Many were calling for genocide against the Fae after they tried to do it to us. I think this will silence those voices for a while, allowing cooler heads to focus on strengthening the world's defences. The eldritch incursions so far will increase...as I am sure you can promise, Black God."

"As sure as I am that mankind will appreciate the kidnapping anarchists being taken down a peg." I said lightly. "You can thank me for the slivers of my power I passed onto their Everdark. Without them, the death toll would have been lower." As would have the hatred, resulting in a smaller expedition, and...well. We would not have been here.

"You mean the things that mutilated the Unscarred and the Bronze Boyar? That is too pompous a name for attack dogs." Merlin scoffed.

"I was more impressed by that shadow yo sent to Omu base. If it hadn't crippled Cortez..." Vyrt trailed off.

If that shard of me hadn't, the Throat of Thirst wouldn't have been focusing on keeping its wielder-tool alive, and it would have been much harder to remove it, and thus pave the way to Merlin's freedom.

"Do you think your Knights will take this in stride?" I asked, crossing my arms as the two glanced at each other.

"I pray they will." Vyrt said finally, brow furrowed, clearly hoping free will would stop existing, thus making things simpler.

"If not...it will be quite a chore to alter so many minds." Merlin added.

I nodded. "Give the Lady of the Lake my regards, cambion."

You deserve each other, you petty schemers.

***
Breaking news!

-Merlin free? World's greatest mage helps with cleanup and returning billions to their homes. Read more at...

-Fae genocide begins? Multi-organisation joint effort, spearheaded by ARC. Are the civillians next?

-King Oberon and Queen Titania call for recompense and aid from the Global Gathering...

-Are Fae people? ARC agent David Silva, killer of five trillion Fae-Seelie, Unseelie and unaligned-allegedly claims them to be 'monsters'. Possible religious angle to hypocritical accusations? Constantin Silva denies teaching his adoptive son to see Fae as servants of the Devil. More details at...

-Chernobog returns. Cults in dozens of countries reveal themselves, and publicly pray for the arrival of their 'alien kindred in darkness'...

[Strigoi Grey]

Sidestory: Wrong Stars

***
(Or, what Mia did during Empty Tomb)

***

Mia didn't know where the States' Drake base was, exactly: halfway through her flight, she had received order to fly through an opaque portal, after which she had been informed she was 'on an island in the Pacific', where she and a few fellow agents would liaison with 'certain allies eager to improve the public's perception of them', then head to another unspecified location in the Atlantic.

As Mia waited for said allies to arrive, sharing food with a few dozen dragons who had left the old world, she thought about her recent faux pas.

Lucas hadn't encouraged her to smoke, not after the initial blunt, which had been a stopgap measure to prevent her from dwelling too much on hers parents' death. He hadn't told her to stop, either, because he'd believed she was mature enough to know what she could and couldn't handle, that she'd knew what not to do.

And in the end, she'd proven both him and David wrong. Oh, her boyfriend wasn't upset with her, and Lucas probably wouldn't be for long, but she knew he'd be as dissapointed as David had quietly been.

A small, stupid part of her had hoped David's strigoi side would be enticed enough by seeing her vulnerable like that to hesitate to kill her once he saw her with another partner.

Mia buried her face into her hands, sighing, causing the dragon who had extended a pipe to her to draw his hand back.

"Hey, now." The grey-scaled, white-maned lightning dragon frowned, lighting it with a spark and taking a long drag. "Could've just said no, rookie."

"Wha...?" Mia stopped rubbing at her eyes, and gulped involuntarily at the sight. "Oh. I was actually just rembering a shitty moment involving...something similar. So, thanks, but no."

"Suit yourself." The rai-ryu shrugged as much as his gold-streaked, serpentine body allowed. After chewing on the pipe for a few moments, mangling some of the jade decorations, the dragon took it out of his mouth, gesturing as he held it in one hand. "Personally, I believe no pleasure is bad, as long as no one is hurt."

"Ha..." Mia leaned against the base's wall with her arms crossed. "Tell me about it."

"That's what I'm doing, yes." The dragon's long, ivory whiskers twitched as his nostrils flared with amusement. "Don't worry. Back in my day, getting stoned off your ass meant something far more painful than it does nowadays."

The zmeu let out a snort, which became a brief, weak laugh. "I bet it did."

The dragon nodded, extending his free hand for her to shake. Up close, it looked nowhere near as puny or absurd as when seen from a distance. It mught have seemed too small for the dragon's bus-sized body, but it was pure muscle, like a kangaroo's or t-rex's. Not that dragons actually needed bodies to use their strength.

"You can call me Hiro." The dragon said.

"Ah." Fake name, then. "After a friend of yours?"

"No, after this movie character I like. It'll still feel weird to use it until I find a fluffy robot, but we do what we must."

Mia nodded absentmindedly, smile not reaching her eyes. "Do you know where we're going?"

"Away from here, probably." The dragon did not even glance at her expression. "The Head will tell you more when she arrives. Maybe."

"She...? Isn't Ying Lung leading?"

"Ying and one of Tathagata's avatars are...taking care of something. Too dumb to be affected through esoteric means and very...well. At a certain point, 'big' becomes an understatement. They grew to full size, jumped down its throat and are now moving inside its body, slowly tearing apart the equivalents of its veins and arteries."

"Full size." Mia repeated in a deadpan tone. " Inside its body? They're both trillions of light years tall at their biggest." Not to mention Tathagata could hold universes in his palm like marbles, and crush them to nothing with a twitch.

"Yes, and...? There's always a bigger fish. Anyway..." Hiro's tail looped under his belly to scratch at his chin. "Talking about Ying, have I told you he was my mentor for a while? I've picked up some of his mannerisms."

"We've barely met." Mia reminded him, eyes on the horizon, looking for anything that might herald a Head's arrival.

"That's not an excuse to be strangers! Let us share things about ourselves. I'll start: I have been senior Drake agent for the Philippines for seventy years."

"You could have told me that before I said something I shouldn't, sir. We don't exactly have rank signifiers" Mia said, turning to him with a tired look.

"Don't worry, you haven't offended me so far. Also," Hiro leaned forward, whispering. "The lack of signifiers is meant to confuse snipers and the like." Then, drawing back and speaking louder, he put the pipe in his mouth once more. "By the way, I only smoke this when stressed. Having over three hundred million people to look after makes sure I'm a living chimney, though."

"I'm lucky." Mia said, looking back at the horizon. "I only have a boyfriend so far."

"Ah." Hiro glanced at his pipe, then her, before putting a hand into an unseen pocket of the black scarf, rummaging under the flaming shield symbol of ARC's Drake division. "I think you might need a smoke more than me, then. And a drink."

"Thanks, but...I'm not really in the mood for either."

***
Amara al-Hazred did not travel, as most people understood the term. She did not cross the distance between two locations, nor spend time moving across it. She destroyed anything between her and her objective, from spacetime to obstacles, with a thought, giving the appearance of something not quite like teleportation. Everything erased was recreated in the wakd of her 'passage'.

The Miskatonic Head was, for once, not alone. Or, rather, she had a companion other than the voices in her head and the monsters in her void of a soul.

The raven-haired, olive-skinned woman was not human in anything besides appearance. Not fully. Her mother might have come from some namless Arabian village, but her father had been of the Void, passing more of his nature to her than to any of his other spawn. That had intermingled with the legacy of the Mad Arab she bore in her blood, giving rise to her family's greatest creation.

Amara had been one of the lucky unwilling participants, really. She had been born after mith of her half-siblings, the ones that had been pushed to breed with each other in order to distill and preserved the knowledge their parents had been convinced Abdul al-Hazred had left sleeping under their subconscious.

It hadn't worked, of course. The desired results had never been reached. The line of the Mad Arab cared nothing for genetics, which meant that, while the resulting children had been deformed, it hadn't been because of incest. They hadn't been weak or ill, either. In fact, they had all been healthy, bodies and minds alike constantly assuming shapes mankind should have never dreamed of.

Amara had merely been subjected to repeated impregnation from various aliens and voidspawn, testing the limits of humanity's capacity for interbreeding. She had been strong enough to live after her spawn had eaten their way out of her, amd their caretakers had even stopped their attempts to mate with their mother. Incest clearly wasn't going anywhere.

Amara didn't regret her slaughter of her family, on the occassions she thought of it.

Her companion was a pale, redheaded New Englander-the Whately seed had spread far, after that fateful night in Dunwich. Wanda Whately was about as human as her ancestor, or Amanda, for that matter. Just like her, she only wore a human shape out of combat, to prevent teality from drawing back in shrieking horror.

If one were inclined to classify the Outer Gods as siblings, Amara might have then been a distant aunt of Wanda's. Nevertheless, they shared blood, however little, and knew its power and significance.

Luckily, they had realised their relation only a few years after their first meeting, after Wanda had confessed her ancestry and while they had still been at the making out stage. Otherwise, it might have been more awkward, and not just because of human taboos.

"He is still asleep, you know." Wanda said, hands clasped behind her as they arrived on the island, blood-red curls hiding her milky, heart-shaped face and watery grey eyes from view. "Our intrusion might awaken him, instead."

"I know all about tempting fate and self-fulfilling prophecies, my dear." Amara put a reassuring hand on the taller woman's shoulder. "This feels different."

"If you say so." The younger Miskatonic agent allowed, though her heart wasn't in it.

Amara didn't frown at her niece's hesitation-she thought it far more useful than the recklessness they had shared a few decades ago-but she didn't like it, either. The Sleeper Under the Stars stirring at this momentswas pure bad luck, or, in other words, like calling to like as the Crawling Chaos laughed.

They had to make sure he remained slumbering.

Amara took in the gathered Drake agents, acknowledging the flying bow of Ying's protege with a curt nod. The little zmeu, the one who had beought Silva back from the dead, giving ARC a new asset and several problems, was standing to the side, not mingling with the dragons. Behavior entirely at odds with how her file said she acted around her lover, friends or...anything not entirely disgusting.

Amara preferred not to read other's minds unless necessary-it both brough back and let her see too many bad memories-but she picked up Mia's unease without even meaning to, and it had nothing to do with the mission.

Anxiousness, about Silva's reaction when her instincts came calling. Guilt, because of some recent mistake she felt had disappointed him.

Amara didn't want feelings compromising the mission. She also hated seeing young girls let something she had never felt slip away.

With a discreet pulse of her will, Amara erased the cloud of self-doubt and the shadow of intoxication lingering at the edges of the zmeu's mind. Mia didn't even realise it had happened, and, not willing herself to be immune to esoterics, was susceptible to such effects.

Some would have said it had been an invasion of privacy, a violation of free will in the name of efficiency or a heavy-handed attempt to help.

Amara would have agreed, then done it again.

Besides...if even half of what Ned said was true, Silva would need everything that could ground and tie him to humanity once he came into the fullness of his power, and this zmeu always came up whenever he talked about it.

When Mia stood at attention upon the Miskatonic Head's arrival, her eyes were a little brighter, her mind a little lighter.

Amara allowed herself a small smile. Humans always wanted what they couldn't have, and she was still human enough that she wished for happiness-if not for herself, at least for others.

"I see the Goetia quartet isn't here." Amara said, clasping her hnds in front of her as Wanda flitted across reality to reapper among the Drake agents. "Let us hope they will arrive at the same time as the aliens and Japan's sledgehammer, so we won't have to wait more."

***
The Reptilian Collective had never gone to war in its current incarnation. Certain skirmishes might have left the overworlders believe they knew their full capabilities, but they did not. The reptlians sent to Mars before the Cold Madness had been the equivalent of a few drunk construction workers, the Unscarred an excavator(the Shaper had read reports of an incident involving a vengeful human going on a rampage in a bulldozer, and the comparison fit). Even its return during the Headhunt had been a favour to the Global Gathering, not the beggining of a mobilisation.That would have been unwise, and escalated things needlessly.

The quantum reptilian could not be easily equated to anything, but that was only to be expected.

In the youth of their species, back when they still reproduced naturally, the reptilian had stripped their homeworld bare, in wars with the nascent Unity Stellar and the tribes that would eventually form the Honoured Kratocracy. That had been billions of years ago and trillions of light years away, beyond the universe mankind saw.

The reptilian who formed the core of the Shaper had led her people to victory-a victory so final and disastrous no species involved had been willing to continue. Seeing red, the reptlian had returned to her palace and beaten her harem to death with her bare hands, hissing in anger at the civilisation falling apart under her nose.

When her wits returned, she led the survivors into space, to search for a new homeworld. The reptilians found Earth before life appeared on it, and deliberated upon a course for their species until the first single-celled organisms formed.

At that point, the reptilians swore off their warmongering past, vowing to become scientists and observers. Reproduction became a matter of genecraft, sexual characteristics a things of the past as more efficient methods of creating new reptilians were sought and found.

When the cultovorous aberrants-the ones the overworlders called 'gods'-took an interest in Earth, they made a deal with the reptilians, to keep the world stable. The Collective agreed, and, for millenia, hunted and put down any danger to the Syncretic Treaty, assassinating the worshippers of alien gods before they could start cults or infiltrate those of Earthbound deities, using their devices to remove deviations from reality before they could etch themselves into mankind's collective unconscious.

And yet, even with the conflicts between gods, even with the Shattering bringing the supernatural fully into reality, the Collective had never gone to war.

But it looked like it might have to, soon enough, if the strange Unseelie's attack was any indication.

The Collective'a realm might have been built with Earth's core as a foundation, but phase-shifting meant it existed detached from the rest of reality, with an untouched core visible to everyone not inside the artificial phase, which contained a separate core, covered in arcologies connected by wormholes and tunnels that spanned thousands of kilometres of molten metal.

It couldn't have been any other way, really. With how many octillion stars the Collective had stolen from across creation, their realm surpassed their native universe in size, while spatial folding simultaneously kept it smaller than Earth.

The reach of science. If only the aberrants could stop trampling over physics for one moment, they could even teach mankind how to do this. Alas, they all seemed more interested in ways to violate leverage and conservation of mass than learning how reality truly worked in order to achieve nigh-identical results.

The Shaper shook the Unscarred's head as it watched its armies form up. It had grown attached to its creation in the last three greater cycles, bot literally and metaphorically. Humans. Truly, it had contemplated simply destroying them the moment their ape ancestors had started walking and using tools, but they had grown on it. Like moss.

At the start of 2030, the Collective had consisted of eight hundred-eighty octillion reptilians, only a fraction of which were ever seen in the universe, for there was no need.

The average, unmodified reptilian could move over half a dozen times faster than sound, and strike with enough force to level small towns or shatter hills. Extensive genetic modification had removed the capacity for pain, fear or exhaustion, though that could easily be adjusted, if needed for certain experiments. And, like their animalistic, Earthborn cousins, they could see heat, stick to any surface or regenerate, as long as even the smallest chunk remained, though being ground into dust necessitated outside help for recovery to be achieved.

That would not be enough for the upcoming extrauniversal aberrant invasion, let alone-every analyst agreed, much to the Shaper's unease-the much worse incursions that would follow it. It would not be enough against the Unity Stellar's inborn control over the universe's fundamental forces, or the Honoured Kratocracy's hyper-reactive metabolism, which could push them from 'mere' planet-breakers hundreds of times faster than light to far greater monsters, without, it seemed, any upper limit beyond a conflict's duration.

It would not be enough against the Multitude of Minds the alien humans called Grey One had been once part of, before its telepathic link to the whole had been severed by an aethernautical experiment.

The Shaper watched through its yoctomachines and the Unscarred's unblinking pink eyes as the Collective's soldiers were fitted with power armour by the drones that outnumbered them trillions to one, and which would follow them to war.

The armour's yamadium yoctotubes increased the wearer's strength and durability to the level of the Unscarred, or a baseline Kratocrat. Their reflexes hovered just below lightspeed, for the Collective still couldn't go faster than light without wormholes.

Generators usually used for the generation of the Collective's method of interstellar travel were fitted on and into the armour, right next to siphons that greedily drained the energy drawn from the Collective's trapped stars and through the micro-wormholes in the armour. Enough power and heat to blast Earth to ash was absorbed and stored every second, for there were certain aberrants immune to either heat or blunt force out there. The drones charged up the same way, if in far greater numbers, scanning their surroundings for signs of more Fae.

None came.

"Today, we go out into a world that has been slipping into madness for as long as we have known it-longer, in fact. We must not, cannot and will not let the tides of insanity and ignorance snuff out the flame of reason. The beings we share our world with have remained our friends, even after the event that shattered both their and our image of ourselves. We shall repay them."

The Shaper wasn't usually one for long speeches, or any, for that matter. It supposed it was letting the enthusiasm of its first mind's youth return. "There are things coming to this world that would destroy all life with their mere presence, or in their unthinking thirst for mayhem. We will not let them win."

There was no applause, lukewarm or otherwise, nor any snickering at the unprepared speech. The reptilians merely parted their fanged maws in acknowledgement of their greatest scientists, put their helmets on, and marched into the myriad wormholes opening into other, hostile realities. At the same time, they activated the rationalisers in their armours: for as far as the wearer could perceive(perception that spanned world's, between reptilian senses and armour sensors), active application of aberrant powers or equivalents-'magic'-could not be used.

There had been some suggestions to name rationalisers 'antimagic field projectors', but the Shaper had refused, declaring it would have been gauche. Its irritation at the rationalisers' failure to supress passive aberrant powers-regeneration, senses, physical prowess and the like-might have played a role in that.

More soldiers than there were stars in each passed through every wormhole, accompanied by enough drones to drown galaxies. Satisfied that the first wave had succesfully departed, the Shaper made the Unscarred teleport outside the phase-space and on the island whose coordinates Abnormal Combat and Research had sent it. Behind it followed ten thousand soldiers, each accompanied by a hundred drones.

Liaising with ARC, especially given the ominous hints in the message, was always useful.

***
Ritsu Yamada wore an ear-splitting grin as he slowly lunged across the Pacific, black slippers barely touching water.

'Slowly' in the sense he crossed hundreds of kilometres every second, as opposed to hundreds of thousands, as his human form could when he was actually exerting himself. But there was no need for that yet.

The Yamada heir wore a black sleeveless shirt, with the Goetia's division symbol, an inverted pentagram surrounding a shield, in white over his heart. His hakama pants were also black, as was the headband pulling back his shoulder-length hair, which was currently an electric blue with yellow highlights.

One thing Ritsu really appreciated about ARC was that, as long as you wore something black with the organisation's symbol, you were more or less tacitly allowed to customise your uniform. It was like being being in the Marines from One Piece! Except they weren't fascist assholes serving a bunch of inbred fucks puppeteered by a secret king.

Um. He hoped.

"Why do the pricks always get the cool outfits!?" Ritsu lamented to himself, arms raised to the skies. At the speed he was going, it was only his control over how he interacted with the world that dllowed him to heal himself.

Shaddup, Shuten-doji growled inside his soul. Ritsu could practically feel the oni shifting his fat ass as he turned onto the side.

Nevertheless, he shut up.

 Drink, the oni added, seeing his partner was being tractable today.

Shrugging, Ritsu raised the sake gourd he wore on a leather thong around his neck to his lips, taking a small gulp. The gourd couldn't be broken, and it constantly refilled itself, which made it perfect for his...their fighting style.

Dammit. Why couldn't he snag something cute, like his colleague, as opposed to an overgrown, old oni frat...boy? Man? Geezer?

Ritsu himself was forty-four, but he had a feeling Shuten-doji had been an old man since birth.

"Trouble in paradise?" Miguel Fernandez asked as he ran alongside him, small grin widening as his coworker flipped him off.

The probability mage wore a three piece suit, black except for the white coattails and gloves. His dark-skinned, bearded face was made for smiling, as he told everyone who asked him why he did it so often(especially when he was quietly laughing at the person asking him), and his curly raven hair somehow swayed in the wind, despite the fact it should have been blown backwards by the sheer speed.

"Fuck off! We don't all have the luck of being married to our partner, alright!? Besides..." Ritsu gestured at the flaming heart tattoos on his biceps, containing the words 'Laugh. Love. Leave'. "I ain't made for that kinda life!"

"Not with  that attitude..." Miguel's demon purred as she half-slipped into reality to float alongside her husband, who smiled at her, squeezing one of her clawed hands.

***

Sklaresia had been born in Hell, after Lucifer's rebellion. The purple-skinned, six-armed demon had displayed an aptitude for healing only a few centuries after birth, which, coupled with her tolerant temperament, had seen her assigned to a shelter for the rebels' traumatised, wounded veterans.

Of course, even her powers had been unable to heal the emptiness at the core of their being, resulting in countless millennia of being at the mercy of demons with appetites rarely as mundane or harmless as lust or sadism.

Now, the demon was on a dingy side-alley on Earth, trying to reconstitute her corpus after a narrow escape that had nearly destroyed her-which, at least, beat the assured destruction that would have resulted from remaining in Hell.

Klare wasn't sure in which country she was-she hadn't aimed for one. Going by the aetheric currents, probably somewhere in Chirstendom...did they still call it that?

The human who approached her, dressed in a shabby pair of jeans and a ratty denim jacket, was flipping a coin-a rather blunt statement about the nature of the magic dripping off him.

He probably considered himself slick, too, Klare thought woth an amused smile.

"Oh? Hello there, darling. Why is a pretty lady like you crying on the ground?" Miguel asked, tilting his head, brown eyes crinkling with concern.

Sklaresia laughed weakly. "Because I'm too hurt to stand. But I'm sure you could help me, stranger. Perhaps by giving me your name as a start, so I know who to thank."

"I'd rather give you some mana, so that you could finish healing yourself." The mage said carefully, catching the coin between his right hand's thumb and index finger. "And then, maybe you could tell me what happened to you."

"You're not going to try and banish me?"

Miguel shrugged. "You haven't started destroying everything, despite choosing not to hide yourself. That's strange enough to warrant some...well."

"Perhaps I am merely biding my time."

"Perhaps. But I'll take that chance."

Miguel was a pettier man, in those days. It was not long before he challenged her to a contest that would result in the winner owning the loser, half coveting her power, half terrified at the thought of her being hurt again to the extent she had been during their first meeting.

Sklaresia had been touched enough by his concern for her wellbeing that she had let him keep his free will. And, over the decades, their contract of ownership over mind, body and soul-'I see you care for both me and this world. As long as you are mine, I shall fight for it.'-had become something like a marriage vow.

Then, Tamar Thousandhands had found them, and offered them a place in his division. He was interested in an apparently healthy relationship between human and hellspawn(and, perhaps, just a little dismayed at the unhealthy ones between humans), wanting to see if it could be replicated.

***
"Oh, get a room, you two." Ritsu rolled his eyes. "I don't even swing that away, and Shuten-dumbass wouldn't be my type if I did!"

Then, without another word, he accelerated, covering the last few thousand kilometres of the journey in a fraction of a second, leaving the couple behind.

Miguel frowned at the tide Ritsu had left him as a present, then reduced the chance of it existing to zero, causing the water to fade into nothing. With a pulse of will, he oncreased the chance of him being spontaneously teleported to the rendezvous point to a hundred percent, causing an aetheric current to sweep him away and to the island in an instant.

Sklaresia looked at her husband's magical trail, shaking her head and sighing fondly. "Boys..."

Beating her batlike wings, the demon sped after him, the light briefly catching her long orange hair and black ram horns before she slipped into the aether.

***
"We are not going to Atlantis, are we?"

To Mia's surprise, she hadn't been the one to ask. Instead, Rockfall(she had noticed dragons mostly named themselves after elements of nature, much like zmei used their features. David hadn't blushed upon learning her zmeu name, but only because he couldn't. The memory always made her smile) had been the one curious.

The brown-scaled, emerald-eyed dragon was dozens of kilometres tall even on all fours, his mouth alone dwarfing the mountains he often devoured, only to replace them with new ones. People didn't know whether he spat new rock in place of the eaten one, or if he recycled it, and most didn't want to find out. Or dwell on the matter.

Amara did not look at him when she replied. "Of course not. Besides the Watcher's allergy to outsiders, nothing we can do would be helpful if they faced anything they couldn't handle."

Rockfall nodded, relaxing slightly, as did everyone else. The relief only lasted until they realised where exactly in the Pacific they were going.

"That's Point Nemo." Miguel said as they approached the sunken city, toying with a silver coin.

Amara nodded. "Close to it. Both interpretations are almost correct, by which I mean, completely wrong. The city is indeed the furthest from any landmass-that is, it is the furthest from 'the human world', what we perceive as the order of reality."

Wanda, on her aunt's right, swept her gaze across the ARC agents. "The Fixer's efforts mean we can talk about eldritch abominations and invoke their names without fear of madness, mutation, or other repercussions-but that only applies outside their domains. Most of us are immune to such effects, whether passively or by willing ourselves to be. Nevertheless, I would advise everyone present to avoid namedropping."

"Bushido will meet us above...beneath the city. Or, perhaps, parallel to it." Hiro, on the Miskatonic Head's left, clicked his tongue, bushy white eyebrows scrunching together. He was a creature of the natural order, which meant such places fell outside his comfort zone, and not only literally. "As will the reptilians. They are both the ace up our sleeve and our getaway."

Soon enough, all signs of life, whether marine or airborne, disappeared, as did the clouds in the sky. What had been an overcast day became a moonless, cloudless night, the sky lit by sickly-green stars, each seeming larger and brighter than the sun. Yet, somehow, they still filled the sky in their thousands, casting no reflection in the utterly-still ocean beneath.

The water, flat as a mirror, was also a sickly-green, though it became darker and darker as one looked deeper.

The shapes standing above the water had no place here. This did not deter them.

The Unscarred, its right arm and torso replaced by a mass of yoctomachines that mimicked the lost flesh's appearance, stood at the forefront of ten thousand armoured reptillians and a million drones, armours and machines alike changing colour to blend in with the environment, to the point they would have been invisible to a baseline human's naked eye.

The Unscarred bared its fangs in an approximation of a smile at the agents' arrival. The Shaper still found it strange that humans were reassured by what most species saw as a threatening gesture, but only a fool would have considered them gullible rather than strange.

"Greetings, aberrants! We have good news and better news!" The Shaper said, raising the Unscarred's arms, claws splayed, in a pose that suggested madness rather than joy. "The good news is that the rationaliser project is complete!"

Mia saw Hiro and Amara nod at this, and wondered if that was some experiment meant to make the Shaper make sense.

"The better news is, everyone you see here," It gestured at the reptilians behind it with one hand. "Have volunteered themselves to test it in a hostile aberrant environment! We do not know whether the collapse of this non-euclidean location will destroy them, or if they will merely emerge unharmed into rational reality, but it matters not, either way. We can always make more."

The reptilians whispered to each other in agreement, praising the value of new data as far more useful than their lives. Mia hoped those buckets on their heads didn't let them see her blanch.

"Silence, callous alien!" Bushido roared, jabbing an accusing finger at the Unscarred, his other hand clenched into a fist before him. "Neither of those should be considered good news to you! While Nippon benefits from the self-destruction of your foul kind-the fate of all our enemies!-you should not express your joy at such cold sacrifice! Your loathsome nature will only make mankind exterminate you once you reveal it!"

Bushido paced across the water as he criticised the Shaper, the naginata and rifle slung across the back of his white samurai armour clanging against each other. His snarl matched the grimacing ivory mask he wore, and he slammed a fist into the red sun on his chest as he finished.

"You!" He then turned to the ARC agents. "Do not think you flagless degenerates are in anyway superior to these lizards! Especially you, Ritsu-you shame your grandfather, family and country every instant you wear that 'uniform'! I should execute you right now-"

"Bushiiiiii," Ritsu groaned, tiliting his head back and rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm, eyes closed. "We've had this discussion before."

"And we clearly must speak again! The instant I am done sending this squamous bastard back to sleep, I will rip your throat out with my teeth!" Bushido promised, before cutting a portal into R'lyeh with his naginata, and leaping in.

The Unscarred's eyes became red after a few moments of staring. "We were not sure he could do that." Then, it turned to its allies. "My people will remain here while we purge the city and execute our plan. Then, once it is safe, they will enter, activate their rationalisers and...after that, we shall see."

"If there are no more distractions..." Amara began. Faintly, the sound of steel folded a thousand times tearing through eldritch false matter could be heard from both above and below. "The Drake agents are here for their raw power, as is Yamada. Hiro, Fernandez, you two will bring the stars down when the time comes. Mia, you will aid them."

"But I don't know what that means." The zmeu protested. "What am I supposed to d-"

Amara was suddenly in front of her, looking straigh through the material of her cloak's hood to meet the zmeu's eyes. "You will know when the time comes. Speaking of what you must do will make its success unlikely, but do not worry. I know of your expertise in making constructs. And, after all, is breaking not easier than making?"

Mia bristled at the Miskatonic Head's smile, resisting the instinct to try and kill her, or at least show her fangs. "Yes, ma'am."

***
The slimy, green buildings rose from streets that led nowhere, into the empty sky or the abyss beneath everything. Windowless, they sometimes grew sideways from or into bigger buildings, pulsing and throbbing in response to a slow arrythmic heartbeat.

Rectangular beams of green light shone on random spots on their facades, giving the impression of windows. But this city's inhabitants had never needed eyes to see, and never would.

And above, dizzyingly far above but simultaneously far, far too close, to the point their heat was stifling, the stars shone, somehow bigger and brighter than in the mundane universe, slowly moving, aligning to awaken the Sleeper.

The starspawn-Cthulhi, some had called them-stumbled drunkenly to their clawed feet and hooves and tentacles, lurched forward on appendages that had no name in any human language, and no shape any human eye could discern.

Mia saw this all. The false limbs, twisting through three dimensions like slugs caught in glass, trying to break free; the un-matter of their bodies, colourless yet showing all colours. Bodies bigger than any mountain and smaller than any newborn stumbled on streets that twisted and looped into themselves.

There were more starspawn in their father's city than there were particles in the universe mankind recognised as theirs. They did not tire. They did not hurt. Their merest touch could unmake mountains and turn islands into the impossible landmarks of their home.

And they all dearly, dearly wanted the stars to be right, so they could throw open the gates and sing madness, until everything came apart.

Mia raised both arms to stop a punch that would have flattened the Everest, rocking back into the air. As long as she willed herself to resist, the starspawn's touch could gain no purchase on her. It still turned her uniform into a cloud of babbling quantum foam, leaving her naked.

The beardlike tentacles on the starspawn's face parted to reveal a triangular beak twisted into an idiot grin. Its thoughts battered at her mind, the clash between them and her resistance blasting buildings the size of islands to pieces, or turning them from blocks of stone to thick, viscous liquid, to choking gas to plasma.

It wanted her, the starspawn said. That was, it wanted what she represented: a world not truly touched by their kind, to be reshaped as they saw fit. They viewed Earth as some kind of breeding sow, Mia realised, or maybe an unfertilised egg. Images of what the starspawn would turn her into, once it broke her will to resist, and fill with its children appeared the air bewteen them.

"Sorry, squid." Mia said, splattering a mountain-sized hand with an elbow and flying above a trio of grasping tendrils. "But I'm seeing someone right now."

The Cthulhi's laugh erased the conjured images, the air across the street, and the space around them, leaving them floating in a colourless void.

Time disappeared, but Mia's wings beat where a human would have been unable to exist, let alone act. A firebreath melted trillions of tons of slippery flesh like candle wax, but the starspawn just chuckled wetly, remaking itself around her. Its suckers grasped her body as it flowed over her face, up her nose slits and down her throat, whispering discordantly as it caressed her mind. Once they mated and her mind broke, there would be no need to fight back anymore. It would plant its seed inside her right now, it declared.

Yeah? Mia thought back with a snarl as her body heated up. Go fuck yourself first.

The starspawn became steam, and, before it could recreate its body, Mia tapped into her connection to zmeu country, dragging it out of the void and into her domain. With a pulse of will, she created a constant burst of mana around it, ensuring that, no matter what it tried to turn into, it would never escape.

Mia grinned as she flew out of the void and tried not to think what had nearly happened. Around her, the dragons had managed to craft a herd the starspawn into mana cages, while Hiro spun to stop the continent-sized amalgams trying to crush him. Every touch of his claws burst masses of flesh that outmassed Asia, while his lightning breath turned them to steam, webs of brilliant sparks growing from his mouth to place the Cthulhi in a loop of constant destruction.

Miguel focused his magic to try and reduce the chances of the stars aligning to zero, and sweat ran down his temples as a force far older than his magic inexorably pushed him back. Sklaresia dashed in and out of being arpund her husband, burning every starspawn approaching him to nothing with black hellfire or devouring their bodies faster than Mia could see and exhaling thick green smoke.

Back to back with him, Wanda Whately let her human mask slip, and billions of Cthulhi shrieked in disbelieving horror at the sight of a monster far greater than they had ever been. At the sight of her shapeless true self, minds infinitely more resilient than a human's broke, and the starspawn tried to escape, to hide themselves. Some stomped and thrashed, making dozens of kilometres of rock ripple, but they were transfixed by her will. And then, the heiress of the Dunwich Horror opened the layers of her form like a flower, and billions of screams died, as did the screamers, bodies becoming inert beyond the scope of their regeneration. A sound, between a slurp and a dry gasp, filled the city, then the corpses were gone.

And, while Amara held back the bulk of the starspawn, unmaking swathes of them with every succesful thrust of her will through the shield of their combined alien minds, Ritsu, Bushido and the Unscarred faced the city's master.

***
The Sleeper walked through a dream of madness.

In every universe it had seen bloom into being before shriveling to nothing across the vigintillions of years of its existence, there was a always someone or something mad-insane, angry or both- enough to oppose the inevitable.

Entropy won. Civilisations fell, worlds collapsed, stars burned out, galaxies came apart. It could not be stopped. Just as minds broke when faced with the freedom fools called madness, the lie that was reality could not stand before it.

The Sleeper knew the constraints many of this universe's inhabitants chafed under: the doubt that plagued their minds, the desire for things, the worry about perils, the need to reason and find out why and how.

The Sleeper pitied them. Soon, it would break the chains they did not know they wore. Bathed in madness, they would never think about anything again, and their bodies would become malleable, changing with every passing impulse. Freedom, and bliss. It just needed to wake up...first...

The lethargy that gripped it was fading, moment by moment, and so were the shackles of its power. A body whose head would have parted the waves while its taloned feet touched the seafloor strode across its city. The house in which it lay dead but dreaming contained the Sleeper, however its body changed.

Even as it grew large enough to hold the Earth in one hand, the city never got smaller...

The Sleeper's eyes darted about under its twitching eyelids, but it was, still, only half-awake. No matter. The three that stood across it could not stop what was coming.

"Halt, you gibbering idiot!" One of them, wearing the archetype it slavishly worshipped like a mantle of chains, screamed. The weapon it hefted might have appeared mundane and primitive, but the Sleeper knew it could hurt its manifestation.

The thing in white dashed forward, as fast as light, its blade cutting a twenty thousand kilometre wide across the Sleeper's chest. A twitch of a finger destroyed it, its matter removed from the cosmos, but it willed itself back into existence, its power exploding dramatically as it returned the sleeper's favour.

A body larger than some gas giants, and far harder to destroy, became chunks of gore as the thing's blade struck, only for the pieces to fuse into the whole instantly.

The next hit-for the Sleeper's mastery of reality and unreality was useless against these three-broke the white screamer in half, sending the pieces flying, but it healed as it ran back, power flaring to match and surpass the strength of the limbs that flailed at it. Hits that would have obliterated the thing an instant ago landed harmlessly as the thing's archetype recognised a challenged and reacted accordingly.

No matter. The Sleeper was a priest of the All-in-One, and it could increase its own power on a whim: a reflection of the cause it served, of freedom from logic and the dictates of creation.

And yet...the white screamer's power did not have a limit, beyond the fact it returned its vessel to the baseline once a conflict ended. They could rip each other apart until the end of time, and achieve nothing.

Another one, this one bound to a being made from the substance between realities, leapt at the Sleeper. It dashed about its body, punching and kicking continent-sized holes into its skin, fast enough to circle this world several times every second. The Sleeper's eyes, which saw time from all sides, and so much more, noted the bonds of affection that tied this two-faced thing to the white screamer.

Absurd. What were the chances of these irritating mayflies being affectionate?

The runner's second face slipped over the first, body more than doubling in size, short, wiry fur bursting from its skin as its teeth lengthened into tusks. The thing grew hundreds of times faster, and every hit that landed on the Sleeper's growing body ripped open wounds that would have swallowed planets.

That was not the worst, however. The two-faced drunk from some sort of container as its ran about-childish; did it feed by suckling?-, and every gulp made it dozens of times faster and stronger. The more it ran, the more it drank, until its rate of growth was on par with the white screamer that constantly tore its torso apart.

"Why the fuck is it so hard to hurt!?" The two-faced one bellowed, slurring slightly. "A steamboat split its head open in the book! And why is it getting stronger?"

The third thing was also white, but shaped like a lizard and controlled by reckoning machines. It landed on the Sleeper's head, shattering holes the size of planets with every strike as it flitted about at lightspeed, teleporting when the Sleeper's tendrils dashed at it too far for its body to move. It was also trying to teleport the Sleeper away, perhaps drop it into deep space or the path between universes, but to no avail. Its form was proof to such tricks.

Why were they trying to stop it? Besides the fact that it was impossible, did they not see the joy it would bring? Its mere existence, when awake, could shatter billions of minds and warp the reality of whole planets. All their worries would be washed away when the Sleeper remade their world into a new home .

"I also know how it is like to desire a new home, after the first was lost." The lizard spoke as it tore at the Sleeper's head. How presumptious. What did this infant, with its mere five billion years of existence, know? "That said...get off our planet, aberrant."

***
The Shaper, tapping into its connection to the Collective's machines, opened trillions of wormholes around the Sleeper, each leading to the core of a star, dousing it in heat, while two bigger ones, opening into singularities at the hearts of black holes, opened under its feet and above its head.

The Sleeper walked through the plasma as it wasn't there, ignored the gravity and unmade the wormholes with its passing, shattering them like glass. Bushido amd Ritsu still tore at it, the former roaring with bloodlust as his power pushed him further than it had in decades, while the latter downed litres of sake with every gulp, matching his grandfather's old friend in growth.

But it was pointless. Nothing they did could permanently hurt the Sleeper, and it would grow stronger, eventu-

A backhand hit the Unscarred like a concentrated supernova, sending it flying through millions of kilometres of rock. The hit itself caved its chest in, while the impact that carved a star-sized tunnel merely scraped off some scales. More yoctomachines entered through micro-wormholes to repair its body and form a spherical shield around it, thickening and thickening until the Sleeper's hits bounced off.

It was time to end this.

***
"Fernandez!" Mia called as she flew at the mage, trying not to look at the thing that walked through the city, unstoppable, never slowing, never speeding up. "I know what we must do!"

"I'll protect you." Sklaresia growled, jaws parted as lava-hot saliva dripped from her fangs. "Get on with it."

The zmeu nodded gratefully, then turned to the mage. "The stars have to be right-but they also have to be here. Otherwise, Ct-the Sleeper," She bit her tongue. "Will have nothing to awaken to!"

"Are you going to blow them up!?" Miguel asked, head swiveling between the three fighting the Sleeper and Amara as she finished off its children.

"No! I'm gonna make them go away, but I need your help! I need this to be a guaranteed succ-" Mia ducked as a severed tentacle tip, larger than Earth, was sent flying from the Sleeper's face by Bushido's swing.

"Right..." Miguel swallowed, then grasped Mia's hands as she began dragging the stars into zmeu country. The things flared up in indignation as their false minds smashed into Mia's, surfaces bubbling up as they sent beams of heat at the zmeu, only for Sklaresia to blast them to nothing with hellfire.

Halfway across the street, Wanda cursed as she saw the stars using thevway they were being moved to align. "Amara!" She called to her aunt. "Leave the horde and call in the reptilians, or we'll lose!"

"Are you mad!?" The Head replied, holding back a lance of psychic power that would have cut the Milky Way in half. "Who'll stop the-"

"I will! Call in the reptilians, NOW!" Wanda shouted, skittering across broken buildings and leaping through loops formed by floating streets.

"You'll die, you stupid girl! You'll be left here, alone with the...the..."Amara glanced at the Sleeper, and Wanda saw tears gleaming at the edge of her aunt's eyes.

"I know." She said softly. "I love you."

Amara sniffed. "I love you too, you idiot."

Amara left a silhouette of darkness behind as her niece leapt into the middle of the remaining Cthulhi, breaking their minds and bodies by the billion even as a few survivors tore wounds into her form with blasts of psychic and slittered inside them, trying to fill her body body with their spawn, though contact with her being alone was enough to painfully unmake them.

Amara did not look back to see Wanda die-her niece would not have wanted that. Instead, as she destroyed the stars that Mia dragged into zmeu country, her power bolstered by Fernandez' magic-there was no knowing what letting them linger in such a mana-rich environment could lead to-she thanked whoever was listening that her Wanda would die like a heroine, not a trapped rat.

And then, when the last was gone, she swept up everyone into her arms, letting a little of her true nature show in order to grab them all, and tore open a hole out of R'lyeh just as the Sleeper began slowing down, then toppling.

The reptilians flew past them as they escaped on plasma thrusters, not even waiting for the Shaper's command, followed by the drones. The portal Amara had opened collapsed omwhen they activated their rationalisers...as did the city, breaking apart and falling out of reality, dragging its sleeping master-for its was bound to R'lyeh as long as it slumbered-along with it.

***
When Mia got back home, tired and twitching at everything slimy or even vaguely-tendril like, she did not necessarily expect David to welcome her. Missions could last longer than anticipated without everything going tits up-which, according to Constantin, her boyfriend's had.

"I did not understand everything." The priest said softly as he rubbed circles on her back. "They jumped me when I was coming from church, asked me why I'd taught David to be a specieist murderer...I didn't know what they were talking about, at the time."

Mia didn't say anything, fangs grinding as she followed Constantin into David's house. "My son is not guilty of this-I refuse to believe that." The priest said heatedly. "I don't know the whole story, but God willing, I will. I...I just wanted to warn you, Mia. People might come to ask you questions...if they learn you and David are together. I'm begging you, do not get angry at them-"

"For they know not what they speak?" Mia grinned sardonically as she sat down on the couch she and David usually used. "Yeah...I got it, Costi."

The priest nodded. "We must be prepared for anything. The Lord showed me a future where David is feared by Christians as a Devil-worshipper with the eyes of a pagan god...it didn't make much sense. I know my son is...has been touched by powers other than God's. It matters not, as long as his heart is true." Constantin said, sitting down next to her and taking her larger, scaled hands into his calloused ones. "And...I am going to ask something of you, my dear. Call it a father's selfish concern." The priest laughed weakly to himself. "I think it would help David's heart to stay true if you were at his side. He is..."He lowered his head, eyes dark. "I cannot say, exactly. But he is trapped, both literally and in his mind. He believes everything that happened is his fault-even if he didn't do it, he could have prevented it."

"David, blaming himself for things he can't control? Say it ain't so!"

Constantin cracked a small smile at her look of forced incredulity, patting her hands. "And...if you happen to desire someone else during this ordeal...please let him know. Let him down gently, just...don't try to hide it from him. If you did, he'd blame himself even more, and we can't have David hog all the guilt!"

Mia smiled despite herself, hugging the old man. "Is this the part where you tell me not to hurt your son, or else?"

"You are the last person I would need to tell that." Constantin said, hugging her back. "Andrei probably would, but...you know how he is."

Mia nodded, kissing him on the cheek. "And where is David now? Can I see him?"

***
"...Hey, Mia. You're probably wondering how I got into such a bind."

Mia smiled at me from across the warded, reinforced window. "I'm just happy you can still joke, love. You're just as strong as I expected."

Strong...me?

"Why don't you tell me what happened? We have time."

Don't...don't start crying in front of her, too...

"David...?"

I'm  sorry...Mia, pops, Oberon...everyone. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I'm not fearless like you, Szabo. I still have nightmares, for all that I don't sleep.

I...I'm sorry I didn't die with you, mom...

"David!"

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Prologue

***
"You are here for everyone's good, Silva." 'Even your own' went unsaid, but Gaol John's expression said everything.

Today, the Head of Internal Affairs looked like a wiry old man, his scraggly white beard reaching down to his chest, skin leathery and cracked, back bent under the weight of his deeds and chains-which were far, far more numerous than the ones wrapped around his limbs. He wore colourless rags that might have once been a prison uniform, and his feet were bare. The only sign of his allegiance was the hollow white shield symbol of Internal Affairs tattooed on his neck.

"I know." I said, trying not to sound whiny. After all, I agreed, even if being quarantined-that is, detained-like this rankled, and not just because of  why I'd been dragged to the IA headquarters in Uluru.

The Mobius cell we were in was pure white, with no boundaries or distinguishing features at all, save for the patch of Broceliande my presence created. I couldn't see, hear or smell anything besides John, who had ordered me not to use Mimir's sight while they analysed both me and the nature of my prison.

"Then stop pouting." John demanded with a scowl far deeper than mine, which seemed to be his usual expression. "I told Reem letting the Black God wear you the first time was a mistake," He crossed his arms, chains tinkling. "Hoping the pantheons would kill him for us was stupid. Why'd they do that when they could just point him at rivals?"

"Forget that." I said, not liking this talk of the Headhunt. "How'd he do it this time?"

"The Fixer's opposite number was waist-deep in this." The ghost gestalt replied, beginning to pace. "He didn't warn us, because it would have opened a path for our enemies to receive similar info. Damn balancing game..."

John didn't seem inclined to speak anymore, which meant it fell to me to carry the conversation-I know. I'm blanching here, myself.

"How long have I been here?" I asked softly, lifting a hand to get a feel of my face. My body was covered in burns and smoked when I moved. According to the Fivefold, who'd briefly visited me to apologise for failing to foresee this disaster, she'd pushed me facedown into holy water, after which Chernobog had snatched me away. Presumably, the Black God had burned me to amuse himself, before throwing me into Merlin's prison.

But he hadn't known the presence of another prisoner would free Merlin. Power unchained after fifteen centuries, the cambion mage had called upon his nephilim cousin for help, and together, he and Vyrt had driven Chernobog away.

We had to take their word for it, as the same darkness that had blinded us during our journey into Fairie also prevented our postcognitives from checking the past directly.

But it still felt wrong. Sure, I could believe Chernobog would want to use me as a tool for murder-though that was an understatement, this time-again, then leave me alive but unable to act, so I would suffer more. He was sadistic enough.

But it still didn't fit. Something, maybe my intuition, maybe a sliver of Mimir's perception, if they were even still separate at this point, told me I wasn't seeing the whole picture.

And that would have driven me up the walls, if this cell had any.

"Not long." John grunted, shrugging. "Still haven't done a proper check." His long white hair parted like curtains, allowing me to see the voids swirling where a human would have had eyes. Countless years of of bondage and suffering floated inside the colourless slits into reality, but the images felt like oil over water, like they concealed something deeper. "A few days. You've been trapped inside your own mind for decades, Silva. What's a few days compared to that?"

His flesh sloughed away as he spoke, revealing a skeletal grin full of broken teeth. In his eyes, I saw the years leading up to my suicide, the feeling of being ignored or mocked by those who read my books.

So petty, so stupid. I hadn't even really thought about my friends and father, about how they would feel. How...how they would react if I came back as a monster.

"I see all that people are bound to and by." John said in a cold, rasping voice. "You have many chains upon you, Silva, binding you to what you love and hate and believe in, to what you are and what you are going to become." He leaned forward. "But you are not bound to the Black God anymore, for all that your hatred points to him. And if I am wrong, let whoever is listening strike me down."

***

"It is physical damage-your mind and soul are undamaged, David. I mean that in the bluntest sense. I know you must be devastated." The demon said with an apologetic smile.

Sklaresia was purple-skinned and orange-haired, with backwards-jointed knees, cloven hooves, a pair of black ramlike horns and a muscular tail that tapered to a point. Her face changed with her mood, but, at the moment, her full-lipped mouth was almost humanlike, if one ignored the ivory fangs. 'Klare', as she insisted I call her('we're coworkers, aren't we?') had seven eyes, six of them horizontal black slits and a vertical closed one that went from her button nose and across her forehead, half-covered by her locks.

According to her husband, who was also present, using his magic to ensure his wife would be successful in her ckeckup of me, she had been a healer during her time in Hell.

"You are clean." Klare crossed her middle arms. "Do you feel well enough to answer some questions, David? Just a few, before we try to free you."

"I'm not sure." I admitted. "But...can't we just throw in a zombie or construct in my place and be done?"

"Sorry." Fernandez said, flipping a silver coin with his thumb without looking at it. "But whatever allowed Chernobog to throw you in chains and freed Merlin doesn't seem to work anymore. Broceliande isn't... sentient, but it adapts." He sighed. "I'll tell them not to press you if you're unwell." The dark-skinned probability mage looked about as frustrated as I felt, though for different reasons.

"I honestly don't know." I replied, sitting down onto the grass. "I...I know, in the abstract that I've killed more people than there have ever been on Earth, but...it's just so much." Stalin's quote about tragedies and statistics came to mind. "I know this'll sound stupid, but all I can think of is how pissed off I am at Chernobog bodyjacking me again, and Mia almost being..."

I gritted my fangs, trailing off. My girlfriend and her team had done a great thing in removing R'lyeh from the world, but damn if I could focus on that. Only being told about the true nature of missions shortly before or during them was not uncommon in ARC, especially when memetic threats were involved, but that was cold comfort after learning my zmeu had almost been raped.

She'd told me she'd put the starspawned bastard in a loop of destruction in zmeu country, and I could barely wait to break out of Broceliande and have some time alone with it. It's so great, being immortal...even when you don't benefit from being able to recover from almost anything, people like me do.

"Sorry." Miguel said softly. "I should've kept an eye on the rookie, instead of trying to stop the stars by myself. She came up with the solution in the end, anyway!" Miguel laughed self-deprecatingly.

"It's alright." I said, maybe a little too fast. Was I trying to calm myself down, or him? Trying to convince myself the fact it had almost happened didn't matter now that the danger was gone?

Yeah...as if it couldn't happen again.

Miguel seemed to read my thoughts, and gave me a sympathetic smile. "I know how it feels. I wasn't there when my Klare was..." His fist tightened around his coin as soon as he caught it again. "But I'd rather kill myself than let it happen again."

The demon didn't say anything, instead just walking behind her husband and hugging him.

"Don't know what I'd do if someone hurt you like that again..." The mage whispered, before smiling at me again. "We're just a little high-strung, David. All of us. So...should I call them in?"

***
Neither Gerald Reyes nor the Argument Engine were able to talk Broceliande into releasing me. As such, ARC switched from scalpels to sledgehammers.

"Chewing at the chains just makes them tougher." Shiftskin growled, bear fangs clenched in annoyance. On his right, Ying Lung, today looking like a white-suited Chinese man, with white slicked-back hair, a thin moustache and ivory eyes with black slits, blew a black smoke ring, as dismal as his mood, out of his pipe.

The celestial dragon's attempt to bruteforce the chains had only resulted in me getting repeatedly obliterated as he tugged, bit, clawed and blasted chi at them-his control over reality slipped right off them-with enough force to destroy the universe several times over.

"Hmm..."Nightraiser tilted their head at me, hands clasped behind their back as they closed their eyes. For a few moments, I knew and felt nothing more, then blinked as my healing dragged me back into existence, remaking me from nothing. The chains and forest appeared at the same time. "Stubborn." The androgynous agent said mildly, running a hand through their raven hair as they opened their eyes once more, brow furrowing.

I was more concerned by the fact I could be affected by their existence erasure, but not permanently. That meant their power wasn't divine, but it still didn't make sense, unless I was misunderstanding something. Which, admittedly, wouldn't have been hard, with my limited knowledge.

"We could try that zmeu friend of yours. Burnished Death works similarly to my power, but perhaps it will work where I failed."

I wasn't sure whether Lucian's mace would work or not, but I didn't want him to see me like this. Stupid, I know. But I didn't want to worry my friends.

"How about Breakout?" I suggested, looking at the Heads and older agent. "Her power gives her the abilities to perform any task, right? We dress it up as a joint training exercise, and-"

"And FREAKSHOW learns our god-eyed seer is trapped and all but unable to act." Shiftskin shook his head. "No dice, Silva. They tried to bribe every agent of ours they couldn't brainwash or kill during the Long Watch. The fuck you think they'd do upon learning of this blindspot?"

"We might have offended them by killing every undercover agent of theirs we found outside the States." Ying took a gourd out of a pocket I'd have sworn had been empty until then, then downed a gulp of bitter-smelling, thick green tea. "But that was just business. We were preserving neutrality, they were trying to expand their sphere of influence where they had no place doing it."

"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked, not knowing whether they were bullshitting me or not. What was up with the history lesson? Were they trying to distract me?

"Just wanted you to know we're not all friends in this." Sam grinned drily. "We'll make do with what we have."

After they left, more agents came and went. Interrogators, counsellors, doctors, mages, precognitives and postocgnitives and necromancers. An Italian Goetia agent, bound to a demon that had been banished from Hell due to its obsession with keeping one's word, came and used his powers to detect lies to see whether Chernobog still had control over me. He'd found nothing unsettling, except, apparently, my tendency to criticise myself, though I quickly assured him that was all me.

"If you say so." The agent, who hadn't given me his name, allowed. With his demon manifested, he looked like a male version of Sklaresia, except faceless, twice my height and with a grey, vertical line going down the middle of his body, separating his black and white sides. His horns resembled a bull's more than a ram's, too. "Can I ask why you asked them to take away your cross?"

"I don't know if the chains would stop me from killing myself, like they stop me from using my powers or exercising my strength." Most of my powers, that was. I could still sense lifeforce and tap into Mimir's sight, but the chains had enough power of their own to nullify my weather manipulation and lock me in place when I tried to exert myself. "But I don't want to find out, either."

I said this with a forced smile. Didn't want to get a stupid impulse and...

The Goetia agent nodded, beginning to walk away. "We still have someone we want you to talk to. Don't go anywhere."

The hellbound had already turned his back to me, so he didn't see my glare. But I bet the faceless fuck felt it.

***

It felt almost underwhelming, Hex reflected, to leave the easiest task for last. He knew some people preferred to take care of their most challenging business first, and use what remained as almost a form of relaxation, but he didn't understand it.

Like so many aspects of mankind. He also knew people claimed to hate mob rule, but defined normality as what the majority accepted. Hence him being seen as abnormal.

It was only the lack of challenge this task presented that had him dwelling on these matters, but it was better than letting his mind wander and meld with his partner's. More than usual, that was.

Nacht was...distracting.

Hex knew people called them 'partners' in ironic tones, all but nudging and winking at each other, thinking he was unaware. He was, but saw no need to respond. They  were partners, both at and outside of work.

Nacht still seethed at the whispers behind his back. As for those who mocked him to his face...well.

Being bound to the embodiment of fear opened many ways to making people cease and desist, even if all Hex had to do was not yank its choke-chain.

Compared to the things-Hex still worked as a doctor in Berlin when ARC had no need for him; he had branched into veterinarian work, too, out of curiosity, but still struggled to classify their latest kills-he and Nacht had put down in the past standard Earth days, ending the folly of the Pure had been child's play.

The Pure were a parallel version of mankind, existing in and dominating a universe whose inhabitants had never developed supernatural abilities. After spreading their influence across the stars, the Pure had sought to better themselves by removing their negative emotions.

Nacht had compared the experiment to Jekyll's attempt at improving humanity, if upscaled by thirty orders of magnitudes. Hex had been inclined to agree, for the results had been similarly upscaled.

The aether had reacted violently to whatever the procedure had been-the Impure, as the embodiments of their flaws had been named, had destroyed many records, but Hex highly doubted the Pure hadn't attempted to erase their shame too.

Nevertheless, it hadn't been his place to judge. Only to help. Shiftskin didn't want the Impure bleeding over into their reality-more abstract emotion monsters than there were stars were the last thing their universe would have needed in a relatively peaceful period, nevermind the current one.

Nacht had reacted poorly to this removal of the emotions it embodied, and had eaten the Impure to calm down.

"They were like my children, you know." Nacht said matter of factly, leaning back in midair, arms crossed over the bloated belly it had created to illustrate it had recently fed.

The arms were props, too, as were the interlaced fingers.

"I suppose they could be seen that way." Hex replied. They were in one of the Pure Council's palace's many guest suites. Having removed his longcoat and slouch hat, Hex laid on his back on a bed far softer than he was accustomed to, and not just because he didn't need to sleep.

He had determined early on that luxury didn't appeal to him.

"One could compare you to a scorpion that has eaten its offspring." He continued, staring at the reflective ceiling. He couldn't see the mundane world, for his eyes were long gone, but Nacht helpfully described their surroundings through their bond.

"Aww~ You don't have to flirt with me if you want to learn my sign, Emil...all you have to do is ask." Nacht crooned, returning to its usual shape, a jagged, glowing white grin and pair of eyes appearing on its face.

It wasn't mocking him, he knew. Since their destruction at Chernobog's hands and subsequent recovery(in the end, the Norse gods had seemingly helped them to win. Hex would be damned before he admitted Himmler had been anything other than an maniacal moron, though), Nacht had grown more affectionate, for lack of a better term.

It had always acted to defend him from the few things that could bypass his aura of bad luck, but now, it actually felt almost worried when intercepting such attacks.

It was, as Ned would have put it, 'bloody unbelievable'. Unlike his friend, Hex wasn't given showing emotions, but he agreed with the sentiment.

Nacht had even told him couples became closer after being separated and reunited, but he preferred not to think about that.

"Then, I would ask you to control yourself. We are going to gave a guest." Hex said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

The Pure's Speaker to the People, their Council's spokeswoman, was tall and shapely, with pale skin, sky-blue eyes and blond hair styled in an elaborate braid.

According to Nacht, who apparently believed he cared how women, or men, looked. He would have believed his lack of reaction regarding its attempts at shapeshifting to suit his nonexistent interest during their time offduty would have both discouraged and convinced it of his inclinations, but it had done neither.

The Speaker smiled at him when she entered, doing her best to ignore his scowling partner as she reappeared next to him using her personal teleporter.

"We have already thanked you publicly." The speaker said, laying a hand on his, caressing his stitched fingers, for some reason. She hadn't removed the white bodysuit all Pure wore, but it still felt as if he was touching his skin. "But I think more is in order."

"Why?" Hex asked. "I do not care about your culture. I only saved you because I was ordered to."

She shook her head, still smiling, trying to ignore Nacht's growl. "That may be so. Nevertheless...you deserve my gratitude. You remind me of my late husband, you know..."

Ah. It was one of those situations, wasn't it? "I did not ask. Please leave."

"My people cannot feel lust anymore." She went on. "But...we can still feel love." She finished, whispering softly into his ear.

"I will make your children eat you alive." Nacht whispered into hers, just as softly.

The speaker's departure rivalled her teleportation, for her people had modified themselves in many ways. She was fast, even while too nervous to use her devices.

"Thank you." Hex said. "Were you planning to actually do that?"

"Mere matricidal cannibalism, for attempting to take what's mine?" Nacht scoffed. "You are far more eager to undersell than to praise, aren't you, Emil? Don't worry...I accept you, even like this." It grinned. "Aren't you glad you're here, to prevent me from indulging myself?"

"It is always heartwarming to see lovers show affection." A new, reedy voice said. "As well as...whatever it is you two are doing."

Hex turned to the newcomer. "Are you here to pass on my new instructions? Why did I not receive a message?"

Equilibrium smiled thinly, hands clasped in front of herself. "Actually, I am here to bring you some bad news, my boy. Bad, especially, for you."

"Why you, specifically?"

"Hmm? Oh, Sam knew you would react poorly. He wanted someone able and willing to clean up after you."

"Oh, do not try to appear mysterious, you hag. I am evil itself! Nothing you or the wendigo have to say could offend me..."

"Chernobog is back."

Nacht did not blink or gape. It was not focusing on aping human mannerisms at the moment. It did, however, remain still, briefly. Then, its form rippled, its cocky grin returning. "Come now, do not lie. You know better than to imply I would ever leave an enemy alive...unless I intended to. Let alone one who tried to break Emil before I could."

"The Black God is back." Equilibrium repeated. "And he is not alone, if he ever was." The old woman took a deep breath. "He took over Silva again, and murdered five trillion Fae using his power."

"That is impossible." Nacht said patiently. "I feel every negative thought in the multiverse, for I am them, just as I am every shadow. I could not have missed that amateur's petty sadism and grudge against the strigoi if I...tried..." Nacht trailed off, its features disappearing-its version of a stony expression. "...How...? It just came in..."

"Nacht?" Hex asked sharply. His partner was almost never hesitant, and on the rare occassions it was, everyone suffered something horrible.

"Of course...how to hide from darkness, except through darkness? Like magnets repelling each other...yes." Nachts features returned, ivory mouth twisted in a hideous scowl. "Fixer better do something worthwhile, now that it's his turn." It turned to Equilibrium. "I can feel the rage and horror in your home universe. Should we return now?"

"Probably not." She answered. "Not until we handle the cleanup, and discuss what to do next. Your presence could be...destabilising."

Nacht bobbed its head in an apptoximation of a nod. "Then leave us, hag. Emil and I were just about to begin what he has really bern yearning for."

"You are quite full of yourself." Hex remarked after Equilibrium left. Nacht grinned broadly, ripping his clothes off as it cut open his stitches, tendrils slipping inside.

"You are going to be full of me, too~"

***
Vyrt, son of a seraph and a mage, wept for his sins, and those of his allies.

It had been his grandfather's will, he knew, that he help his cousin escape, at the same time tempering David Silva. His father had even appeared to encourage him, for the first time in millenia, as had his mother's soul, bless her. He didn't know if Miranda had been in on the plot, or if Vyrt had suspected, but it wouldn't have surprised him.

It didn't make things better. Just following orders-suggestions, in this case-had never been an excuse.

And so, Vyrt walked the Red Planet, naked, body bearing the scars of mortification and covered in dust the colour of rust.

He had not scourged himself like this in centuries. The nephilim had been angry at himself many times across his life. Children, precious wives and husbands-for angels could reshape their bodies at will, and so could he-and more, had caused him grief on many occassions.

The world's colonisation and terraforming had been abandoned, so it was a safe place for him to vent. Each of his tears flattened kilometres of ground as it fell, and his sobs wracked Mars to its core, the planet shaking in the grip of the fiercest earthquake it had ever experienced. He would repair the damage before he left.

"Why must we sin?" He whispered, to himself and whoever else was listening. "Why do you You fill us with Your will, and remove the capacity to sin, or at least feel guilt for it?"

Another step. Another tear.

"Why are You so cruel to him, Lord?"

***

"Heads up, now." A chipper voice said, making me look up from my lap.

I didn't recognise the agent-ruddy-faced, with raven hair so glossy it almost shone-, and I was in such a shitty mood I couldn't even spot his division's symbol.

The newcomer looked at me, arms crossed, seemingly waiting for a reply.

"Why?" I asked. "Ever since the Headhunt, I've only gotten fooled and hurt and jerked around-"

"Imagine suffering when you can do what we can, eh?" He smirked crookedly. "How do people deal with it?"

I didn't like his attitude, nor the vibe I was getting from him. So, I opened Mimir's sight, and my face fell.

"...I don't even care if I'm going crazy or not anymore." I said. "I don't care how you got here. Are you here to gloat?" I stood up, chains making a bell-like sound. "Well!? Am I making you laugh? If you want to drag my secrets into the light, I'm sorry, Chernobog stole your thunder. Just make a cross and kill me already."

I stared at him as I ranted, but he never blinked once, nor did the smile plastered on his face waver.

"Fucking say something!" I snarled.

"I would advise against believing everything you see is real, David." He said after a while, smile thinning a bit. "To answer your questions, no, I am not here to gloat. Yes, you are making me laugh-and many others."

"Well, at least  some people are getting a kick out of this." I spread my arms with a sardonic grin. "You're all welcome, you bastards." I lowered my arms, snarling again. "Why the fuck are you here? Why-"

"Keep at it, and you're going to wither again, David." He said mildly, but the words almost made me stagger. "And then, what will the people you love do? Not help you through it again, certainly." He raised an eyebrow. "Unless you believe ARC would let them come to you, or let you go?"

"You-" I bit my tongue. Fine. Fine. Just...calm down. I had no right to let myself go and hurt them. I sighed tiredly. "And you wouldn't want the entertainment to end, would you?"

"Certainly not." His smile disappeared fully now, and I was suddenly on my back, a black-clawed, crimson hand buried in my throat, wrapping around my spine. "What would make your blood boil, I wonder? Perhaps I should take your zmeu with me when I leave." His grin was all needle teeth, black flames flickering through. "You have seen my niece. You know what happens to women like them down there?"

"Don't you fucking dare." I growled, smashing my fists against his arm and face, and achieving nothing, fucking dammit. The chains kept me from hurting anyone. "She has  nothing to do with this! She's already been...almost been..."

"I don't see the problem." He said. "Don't you know women who act like whores deserve to be violated? Why, they practically beg for it! Those with natural tastes, I mean. No one cares about deviants, nevermind animals that should have been killed at birth."

I cursed and screamed and hit him, to no effect, and hee nodded approvingly, black-slit yellow eyes, colder than Lucian's had ever been, gleaming. "See? You would be powerless against me even without these shackles, yet you try to stop me..."He laughed, and it was a sound of such honest joy, I almost balked. "All for love. This...is why we sent you back."

He tossed me away, and I managed to land on my feet, throat already healed.

"If you want me to make you laugh," I matched his sharklike grin with one just as hideous. "Why don't you break me out of this cage?"

"I would, if it was up to me." He stuck his hands in his pockets, shrugging. "But..."

"But you can't."

He shook his head, still smiling. "You cannot taunt me with lies, David. I am not you."

I swallowed an insult, knowing it would have served no purpose. "Why'd you come here? To give your clown a pep speech?" Or was there some other purpose to this presence here?

"Now, now. Since when do hallucinations have purposes?" He asked, wagging a finger. "Do be careful, please. If you pay me a surprise visit, I might have to make your stay permanent. And, David?" He tilted his head, one eye closed. "Next time I yank your chain, I expect you to be immune to such...transparent provocations."

"Wait!" It was a stupid question, but I wanted to ask it before he left, if only because I had nothing else to do at the moment. "Why did you dress in our uniform?"

He snorted. "Are you implying I don't work for the benefit of mankind, David?"

And then, I was alone once more.

But not for long. Aya Reem arrived after what felt like a few minutes, using the power of one of her gods or another to heal my body.

"It is a shame you can do nothing more than observe, agent Silva." The mummy said, running bandaged hands over my body, checking to see if there were any burns left.

"Yeah." I said. "Sorry I can't be the tool you want."

Aya sighed. "It is too late to apologise for how we used you during the Headhunt. I should have tried to remove Chernobog's taint from you, not..."She pursed her cracked lips. "I know you don't give a damn about this, but I am sorry."

At my scoff, she leaned closer to me, so I could stare into her empty sockets. "My gods abandoned me for staying neutral, David. If I chose to oppose them, they would have destroyed me. You are closer to your god than you realise. This is not an excuse," Aya held up a hand. "Just a clarification."

As I pondered her words, I remembered our discussion before my departure, and began laughing. It was stupid, but, at the moment, I'd have taken anything.

So what if tears were streaming down my face as I laughed. "Y-You know...with all the bullshit, I forgot to tell the Knights about your list. Guess they'll keep your stuff for a while longer, huh?"

Aya sighed, but not in exasperation. Then, to my surprise, she wrapped her hands around me. "It appears so. Do not worry about it, David. I should've just asked Sam to fetch them. He's practically my dog, anyway."

The mummy didn't let go, even though I didn't laugh. I was just crying now.

"I know it's overwhelming, David. Everyone's reactions-oh, yes, I've read the news. I'll have some reading material brought here-, the lies, hurt even more than the facts." Aya took a deep breath, and I felt a pang of sharp guilt when my eyes were drawn to her chest, coinciding with the lust of my strigoi side. The dumb, perverse bastard wanted to drag Aya down and take her right there, almost as much as he wanted her to dominate him.

I should have been thinking about Mia, not..."We'll get to the bottom of this. Oberon's incompetence and laxity haven't been talked about much yet, but they will. I'm sure the Dagda will be very interested in how the Fae sheltered a known renegade god."

I nodded, absentmindedly, not really listening to her anymore.

"Why don't you rest a little before Hex and Nacht arrive?"

I looked at Aya just as she pressed two fingers on my forehead, then I was suddenly drowsy, for the first time in eight years.

"Whuh..." I slurred, voice thick with sleep.

"Nothing sinister, David." The mummy smiled. Funny. I only just noticed she'd switched to my first name. "I am just using my blessings to help you rest. Gods know you'd just beat yourself up if you stayed awake, and it wouldn't help you to face Nacht while agitated."

I shook my head, which felt heavier than all mountains in the world put together, smiling drily. "Why do you care?"

"I care about all of my agents, David, and everyone in the other divisions too. And, you know what? The Crypt has always been full of the broken and the lonely, the abandoned and the misfits. I am here for you all."

I didn't know if she was tapping into her divine authority as she spoke, but I soon drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

***

"Wake up, agent Silva." Aya said softly. I opened my eyes, looking up at Aya's dusky features, Hex's chalk-white, stitched face and the swirling, ink-black cloud that was Nacht. The mummy smiled down at me, and I felt pathetically grateful for the warmth that filled me.

I told myself it was just her blessings, making me want to obey and please her, but, honestly, with how starved for approval I was...

"Don't worry." Nacht said, which was kind of like a serial killer telling you to stay calm while revving up the chainsaw. "This childish excitement you feel around Reem is shared by many of your fellow agents. It's mostly artificial, because you maudlin bastards are almost universally bereft of affection, which does the rest."

"So you don't have to worry about me stealing you from your girlfriend, Silva." Aya said in a joking tone, but squeezed one of my shoulders reassuringly as I sat up. "I know where your heart lies. Besides, Sam would kill us both if he felt you were muscling in on his turf."

And with that, Aya left, leaving me alone with an inhuman, unfeeling monster, and Nacht, too.

"Emil is not a monster." The dark being said with a sneer. "He is far too soft for his own good. Now...let us see the darkness inside you, David Silva."

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 1

***
Aya nodded goodbye to Hex and Nacht, then disappeared. She hadn't moved faster than I could see, which she easily could; the operators of this Mobius cell had just allowed her to leave.

She needed their permission, because, rumours went, even Fixer would have had a hard time breaking in or out of a cell like this, and not just because he got excited when he got to use his powers.

One day, maybe after I became somewhat trusted-as ARC didn't fully trust anyone, especially its members-I'd ask around and try to find out how Mobius cells were made, and who had invented them.

But first...

"The darkness inside me, huh?" I sat up, folding my arms. "Gonna cut me open, or...? I'm assuming we're talking about the parts light doesn't reach, though in that case, opening me up would be kinda impractical."

Hex said nothing as he mirrored my movements, longcoat pooling around him, hat covering everything above his chin in shadows.

Nacht's face split in a white grin so enormous it was almost semicircular. "You are so funny, David~ Both Hex and I forgot to laugh. He did it decades before you were born, mind..."

"Talking about darkness, have you ever wondered why places like this aren't pitch-black?" Ignoring the freak, I gestured at the white cell, which was as bright as a cloudless day at noon, despite no apparent source of illumination. "Where's the light coming from?"

"The numinous souls of cellmates like you." Hex said in the flattest voice I had ever heard. "We see you are your usual flippant self. That is not good, but is reassuring. According to Odin, Chernobog's wordplay was much more vicious than yours the first time he possessed your body."

My hands became fists. Odin had become able to see the Headhunt from the start after Chernobog's apparent death, and he had asked me several questions before letting ARC take me into custody-including if I wanted to liaise between my organisation and Asgard, which I'd declined, saying I needed more time to think and believing I'd never choose to.

So, why was I having second thoughts?

Maybe the coward in me wanted the protection gods other than mine seemed willing to offer while He...no. Down that path laid nothing but doubt and emptiness. The fact I hadn't been destroyed, despite what I was, despite having been touched and tainted by dark powers and other gods, was good enough. It would have been ungrateful to ask for more.

"Awww...he looks ready to cry, Hex! And the  best part?" Nacht giggled, moving around its partner to whisper in his ear. "He thinks he will be weak if he does. How dare he feel anything after being used and abused and killing more people than anyone who has ever lived?"

It looked at me as it said the last, forming eyes like burning white coals. I gulped, then forced myself to smile, knowing it looked as pathetic as I felt. "Damn straight. I only like being used by my girlfriend."

"Ohhhh~" Nacht swooned, tilting its head back and forming a hand, pressing it between its eyes. "Such dedication, from the one and future cuckold." Eyebrows like stormclouds appeared above its eyes as it turned to glare at Hex. "Why can't you look at me like he looks at her?"

"You're insane." Hex said. Due to the positioning of his hat, I couldn't tell whether he'd been looking at me or Nacht at he'd spoken. I wonderwed which of us was feeling more called out.

"So harsh...now, David. I already know your fears, and hatreds. You wear them on your sleeve, next to your heart." Nacht sneered, like it had found a slug in its salad. "You and Loric-you are both pathetic excuses for strigoi. Why do you care about people and gods, whether they will remember you or not? You should lose yourself in the carnage, become one with your true selves."

Well, we were clearly of one mind. I, too, thought Szabo wasn't evil enough.

"That was a rhethorical question. Now...tell me your wishes and vices, David-and do not try to cheat by speaking of your strigoi side, or letting it take over. I already know them, but..." It shrugged, grin still plastered to its face. "I want to see you squirm, and drink your shame."

"If you do not wish to speak, I will make Nacht tell me, and record its words." Hex lifted his head, so that I could stare at his stitched lids. "I will then compare them to the information in your personnel file, and cross-reference with your previous interrogators."

"Why?" I asked, bluntly.

"I do not care about your secrets, Silva-not unless keeping them will prevent me from learning and experiencing new things. If you feel it would take too long, I will leave, and drag the answers out of Nacht."

I looked from the mage's stony face to the monster's ecstatic expression, and sighed. Here goes nothing.

"So...vices first. This should be shorter." I fidgeted as I spoke, tapping a rhytm on my thighs with my fingers. A nervous tic I had gotten from pops, and which, it seemed, even death had been unable to wipe away.

"I like hurting people." I said, lowering my eyes. Already feeling like I was doing vonfession with the world's most unhinged priest, I didn't want to see Nacht getting its rocks off as I laid myself bare. "I'm not...I'm not just talking about..." Criminals? No. I was supposed to be honest. "Evil people, though I love breaking them. I like hurting other agents, too. When we spar, and I feel their flesh tear and their bones break...when I choke a mage or fill a regenerator with lightning...I feel almost alive."

Nacht snickered. "Many do. Go on."

"I like...being right, I suppose. I like correcting others and feeling like I get the last word-yes, I suppose that's why I snark so much. Sue me. And I like fighting. I like being hurt and torn open while not feeling anything, watching my enemies rage as I heal from wounds and fight them until they tire." I laughed drily. "I don't like  real wounds, obviously. I hate being hurt. It's really easy to act cool and aloof when I can't feel anything, while the people I mock have to grit their teeth."

Yeah, look how great I was. There was really no difference between me and those little morons who acted tough while playing videogames. I'd never grown up, or I wouldn't be moping and feeling guilty because of things I couldn't control.

"A question: why do you think these are vices, David?"

"What, you don't know that, too?" I bared my fangs. "How the fuck could they not be vices?"

"Indeed. How dare your humanity not remain in your grave after your undeath? You vile, vile bastard..."

I really wasn't in the mood to get patronised by this floating turd, so I continued. Better than letting it speak. "Should I list the ways I shame my religion? Besides the fact I exist."

"If you wish." Hex said.

"Well. I curse and I doubt God, but, apparently, not enough to be worth smiting. Guess I'm not even good at blasphemy. I...break some of the Commandments, through word and deed. I kill and..." I'm jealous of people whose partners are with them and only them, all the time. And then there are those who think that's not enough, or cheat, or...oh, the things I'd do to them...

"I covet what my neighbours have." I finished.

"And you lie." Nacht said softly, matter of factly.

I sighed again, even as my worse half paced in the back of my mind, growling. "Yes, I lie. Usually by omission, when I'm talking about my job to people outside it, but..."

I was rambling. What else was there? Old-fashioned arseholes thought not being master of your household went against the Bible, but I liked to think that was narrow-minded. "Um..." Did I look as mortified as I felt? I wasn't sure that was possible. "I personally think 'sodomy' isn't sinful, and I'm unsure if this even counts as it, but Mia often-"

"I will ask Nacht that." Hex held up a hand as his partner laughed, images appearing in its pitch-black 'body' like fireworks on the night sky: people, laughing until they couldn't speak anymore, until they fainted or choked.

"Yes, Emil, I can confirm that right now." Nacht chuckled, the images disappearing. "Let us move on to desires now, yes?"

Aw, shit. I was going to give this bastard stuff to laugh about forever... "It's not fair that the innocent suffer while the guilty slip through the cracks so often." So many ARC agents had horrible youths, you could make a whole army of guaranteed talent show winners. "If, I could, I'd kill them all, or at least make them hurt me." Let me suffer. I could barely feel anything, and was hardly innocent.

"Masochist!" Nacht gasped in faux shock. "I am almost surprised you did not list this among your vices, though perhaps I shouldn't be. You Christians see mortification of the flesh and soul as a virtue, after all."

And who the fuck asked for your opinion? "The rest are...petty, I suppose, as much as they are impossible."

Little things, really. My friends having what they wanted. Nonsense, like the past getting changed, so my mother survived giving birth to me and Andrei didn't run away from fatherhood. Pops' parents living and his angel surviving to be with him.

"Come now, David. Don't be shy! Speak of what you really want." Nacht blurred forward, surrounding me and filling my sight. "I can make your zmeu lust for you, and only you. Just say the word, and she won't even feel it. She won't notice the change."

"And what would you want? It's just that my soul is too worthless to sell, you understand."

Nacht licked its lips as it returned to Hex. "To eat your guilt, forever, after you accept~"

"Then I'll be very happy to cockblock you." I turned to the mage. "Anything else?"

"Not for now." He stood up. "Your thoughts are too human, in scale and nature, to be Chernobog's. That, or the Black God is fooling us again."

"You bore me to death, David." Nacht said, in a voice dripping with pity and disappointment in equal measure. "Oh, if only the world was kinder and no one suffered! Oh, why must my mate switch partners! Are you even really a strigoi?"

As the two walked away, doubtlessly communicating through means I couldn't perceive, I realised Nacht had only spoken of lust. Not love. Had it meant...did it know, through its power, that Mia only loved me?

'Lust for you, and only you.' , not 'Love and lust only for you.'

I won't say I didn't brood after their departure. But at least this time, I did so with a wistful smile.

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 1

***
Aya nodded goodbye to Hex and Nacht, then disappeared. She hadn't moved faster than I could see, which she easily could; the operators of this Mobius cell had just allowed her to leave.

She needed their permission, because, rumours went, even Fixer would have had a hard time breaking in or out of a cell like this, and not just because he got excited when he got to use his powers.

One day, maybe after I became somewhat trusted-as ARC didn't fully trust anyone, especially its members-I'd ask around and try to find out how Mobius cells were made, and who had invented them.

But first...

"The darkness inside me, huh?" I sat up, folding my arms. "Gonna cut me open, or...? I'm assuming we're talking about the parts light doesn't reach, though in that case, opening me up would be kinda impractical."

Hex said nothing as he mirrored my movements, longcoat pooling around him, hat covering everything above his chin in shadows.

Nacht's face split in a white grin so enormous it was almost semicircular. "You are so funny, David~ Both Hex and I forgot to laugh. He did it decades before you were born, mind..."

"Talking about darkness, have you ever wondered why places like this aren't pitch-black?" Ignoring the freak, I gestured at the white cell, which was as bright as a cloudless day at noon, despite no apparent source of illumination. "Where's the light coming from?"

"The numinous souls of cellmates like you." Hex said in the flattest voice I had ever heard. "We see you are your usual flippant self. That is not good, but is reassuring. According to Odin, Chernobog's wordplay was much more vicious than yours the first time he possessed your body."

My hands became fists. Odin had become able to see the Headhunt from the start after Chernobog's apparent death, and he had asked me several questions before letting ARC take me into custody-including if I wanted to liaise between my organisation and Asgard, which I'd declined, saying I needed more time to think and believing I'd never choose to.

So, why was I having second thoughts?

Maybe the coward in me wanted the protection gods other than mine seemed willing to offer while He...no. Down that path laid nothing but doubt and emptiness. The fact I hadn't been destroyed, despite what I was, despite having been touched and tainted by dark powers and other gods, was good enough. It would have been ungrateful to ask for more.

"Awww...he looks ready to cry, Hex! And the  best part?" Nacht giggled, moving around its partner to whisper in his ear. "He thinks he will be weak if he does. How dare he feel anything after being used and abused and killing more people than anyone who has ever lived?"

It looked at me as it said the last, forming eyes like burning white coals. I gulped, then forced myself to smile, knowing it looked as pathetic as I felt. "Damn straight. I only like being used by my girlfriend."

"Ohhhh~" Nacht swooned, tilting its head back and forming a hand, pressing it between its eyes. "Such dedication, from the one and future cuckold." Eyebrows like stormclouds appeared above its eyes as it turned to glare at Hex. "Why can't you look at me like he looks at her?"

"You're insane." Hex said. Due to the positioning of his hat, I couldn't tell whether he'd been looking at me or Nacht at he'd spoken. I wonderwed which of us was feeling more called out.

"So harsh...now, David. I already know your fears, and hatreds. You wear them on your sleeve, next to your heart." Nacht sneered, like it had found a slug in its salad. "You and Loric-you are both pathetic excuses for strigoi. Why do you care about people and gods, whether they will remember you or not? You should lose yourself in the carnage, become one with your true selves."

Well, we were clearly of one mind. I, too, thought Szabo wasn't evil enough.

"That was a rhethorical question. Now...tell me your wishes and vices, David-and do not try to cheat by speaking of your strigoi side, or letting it take over. I already know them, but..." It shrugged, grin still plastered to its face. "I want to see you squirm, and drink your shame."

"If you do not wish to speak, I will make Nacht tell me, and record its words." Hex lifted his head, so that I could stare at his stitched lids. "I will then compare them to the information in your personnel file, and cross-reference with your previous interrogators."

"Why?" I asked, bluntly.

"I do not care about your secrets, Silva-not unless keeping them will prevent me from learning and experiencing new things. If you feel it would take too long, I will leave, and drag the answers out of Nacht."

I looked from the mage's stony face to the monster's ecstatic expression, and sighed. Here goes nothing.

"So...vices first. This should be shorter." I fidgeted as I spoke, tapping a rhytm on my thighs with my fingers. A nervous tic I had gotten from pops, and which, it seemed, even death had been unable to wipe away.

"I like hurting people." I said, lowering my eyes. Already feeling like I was doing vonfession with the world's most unhinged priest, I didn't want to see Nacht getting its rocks off as I laid myself bare. "I'm not...I'm not just talking about..." Criminals? No. I was supposed to be honest. "Evil people, though I love breaking them. I like hurting other agents, too. When we spar, and I feel their flesh tear and their bones break...when I choke a mage or fill a regenerator with lightning...I feel almost alive."

Nacht snickered. "Many do. Go on."

"I like...being right, I suppose. I like correcting others and feeling like I get the last word-yes, I suppose that's why I snark so much. Sue me. And I like fighting. I like being hurt and torn open while not feeling anything, watching my enemies rage as I heal from wounds and fight them until they tire." I laughed drily. "I don't like  real wounds, obviously. I hate being hurt. It's really easy to act cool and aloof when I can't feel anything, while the people I mock have to grit their teeth."

Yeah, look how great I was. There was really no difference between me and those little morons who acted tough while playing videogames. I'd never grown up, or I wouldn't be moping and feeling guilty because of things I couldn't control.

"A question: why do you think these are vices, David?"

"What, you don't know that, too?" I bared my fangs. "How the fuck could they not be vices?"

"Indeed. How dare your humanity not remain in your grave after your undeath? You vile, vile bastard..."

I really wasn't in the mood to get patronised by this floating turd, so I continued. Better than letting it speak. "Should I list the ways I shame my religion? Besides the fact I exist."

"If you wish." Hex said.

"Well. I curse and I doubt God, but, apparently, not enough to be worth smiting. Guess I'm not even good at blasphemy. I...break some of the Commandments, through word and deed. I kill and..." I'm jealous of people whose partners are with them and only them, all the time. And then there are those who think that's not enough, or cheat, or...oh, the things I'd do to them...

"I covet what my neighbours have." I finished.

"And you lie." Nacht said softly, matter of factly.

I sighed again, even as my worse half paced in the back of my mind, growling. "Yes, I lie. Usually by omission, when I'm talking about my job to people outside it, but..."

I was rambling. What else was there? Old-fashioned arseholes thought not being master of your household went against the Bible, but I liked to think that was narrow-minded. "Um..." Did I look as mortified as I felt? I wasn't sure that was possible. "I personally think 'sodomy' isn't sinful, and I'm unsure if this even counts as it, but Mia often-"

"I will ask Nacht that." Hex held up a hand as his partner laughed, images appearing in its pitch-black 'body' like fireworks on the night sky: people, laughing until they couldn't speak anymore, until they fainted or choked.

"Yes, Emil, I can confirm that right now." Nacht chuckled, the images disappearing. "Let us move on to desires now, yes?"

Aw, shit. I was going to give this bastard stuff to laugh about forever... "It's not fair that the innocent suffer while the guilty slip through the cracks so often." So many ARC agents had horrible youths, you could make a whole army of guaranteed talent show winners. "If, I could, I'd kill them all, or at least make them hurt me." Let me suffer. I could barely feel anything, and was hardly innocent.

"Masochist!" Nacht gasped in faux shock. "I am almost surprised you did not list this among your vices, though perhaps I shouldn't be. You Christians see mortification of the flesh and soul as a virtue, after all."

And who the fuck asked for your opinion? "The rest are...petty, I suppose, as much as they are impossible."

Little things, really. My friends having what they wanted. Nonsense, like the past getting changed, so my mother survived giving birth to me and Andrei didn't run away from fatherhood. Pops' parents living and his angel surviving to be with him.

"Come now, David. Don't be shy! Speak of what you really want." Nacht blurred forward, surrounding me and filling my sight. "I can make your zmeu lust for you, and only you. Just say the word, and she won't even feel it. She won't notice the change."

"And what would you want? It's just that my soul is too worthless to sell, you understand."

Nacht licked its lips as it returned to Hex. "To eat your guilt, forever, after you accept~"

"Then I'll be very happy to cockblock you." I turned to the mage. "Anything else?"

"Not for now." He stood up. "Your thoughts are too human, in scale and nature, to be Chernobog's. That, or the Black God is fooling us again."

"You bore me to death, David." Nacht said, in a voice dripping with pity and disappointment in equal measure. "Oh, if only the world was kinder and no one suffered! Oh, why must my mate switch partners! Are you even really a strigoi?"

As the two walked away, doubtlessly communicating through means I couldn't perceive, I realised Nacht had only spoken of lust. Not love. Had it meant...did it know, through its power, that Mia only loved me?

'Lust for you, and only you.' , not 'Love and lust only for you.'

I won't say I didn't brood after their departure. But at least this time, I did so with a wistful smile.

[Strigoi Grey]

Interlude: Days In Their Lives

***
Alex

Alexandru Horia had been named, he liked to tell himself, after Alexander the Great, even if he was only great in terms of height, not even muscle, let alone achievements.

In truth, he had been even more painfully average than David-no offence to his friend, who had at least tried to write. They had met in kindergarten, before being separated until ninth grade, when they had also met Mihai. In all that time, there had been no awakenings of magic, no secret inheritance, no supernaturals willing to hurt them.

Well...there were always services for that. But Alex's parents told him changing yourself just because you wanted power for the sake of power actually made you weaker.

As such, he had taken it upon himself to always help others whenever possible, and, one day, maybe follow in his father's footsteps and go into forensics. Or take after his mother and build cameras and other means of surveillance.

Just had to...ignore the asthma. As long as possible. From birth to death, preferably of old age. Shouldn't be that hard, right?

Mundane science had failed to cure him, and the doctors' incredulousness at him not dying while in diapers had not helped with his already melancholy mood.

Alex hadn't wanted to be cured through supernatural means because, he argued, taking up the time of mages, priests and the like while there were so many others with worse problems would have been selfish.

His parents and his friends alike had told him to stop being stupid, but he'd waved them off, smiling and promising it wasn't that bad, really.

As the ghost's eyes move across the table, from one friend to another, he feels vaguely glad at no longer having lungs. The powers and ability to travel between the multiverse and other realities were nice, too.

Maybe he should look into travelling backwards in time. With how long it would take him to master it, it would probably be legal by the time it was over. He didn't exactly want to imitate the Doctor, just...see how he had died, with his own eyes. He knew death sometimes messed with memories, but he truly didn't remember feeling tired or lightheaded, which was pretty strange for-

"Alex?" Mihai elbows him, adding mana in order to be able to touch him, then turning his head to give the ghost a concerned look. "Why the longer than usual face?"

What happened to David? His mother is going crazy, and I don't even want to think what she'd do if she could come to our universe. "Nothing." He lies easily, his round face still lending itself to smiling, despite the gauntness of his default appearance. "Just wondering...do you think drinking ectoplasm is be like drinking blood, or molten flesh?"

"The fuck?" Andrei grunts, looking up from a raw, bleeding hunk of something.

"Oh, I have these two grave neighbours who are arguing whether they're cannibals, or if they just like the equivalent of blood meals..."

Right. Put them at ease. Don't burden them with your worries-you're already dead. Let them live.

***
 Mihai

"And what did you do today, son?" Marcel Codrea asks, not breaking eye contact, or even blinking, as he cuts the steak(perfectly rectangular, perfectly cooked. His wife would hurt herself as much as he did beating her if she made a mistake, for she is a proper housewife, and cannot stand failing in her duties).

Mihai smiles, showing as many teeth as is proper, hoping it doesn't make him look like he is cringing. Again. "I had a good day, father. Answered the most questions in class, then went to the tennis field and won every match. The coach is thinking of signing me up for a competition with three other high schools."

"How did you return home?" His mother, Maria, asks. Both she and her husband are honey-blond, both green-eyed, with flawless skin and teeth. Many people mistake them for siblings. She wears her hair in a long braid, and only uses makeup for special occassions. "Did you take the bus, or a taxi?"

"The bus." Mihai lies. Alex had wanted to go to this animal shelter, because he'd had a nightmare about weres being trapped in animal form, then caught and mistreated. Both he and David had considered it nonsense, but had agreed to go with him. Not wanting his friends to walk, or spend money(they had less than him, so why not help?), Mihai had hailed and paid a cab.

"Good." His mother asks coolly. "Then you will not mind if I check your wallet."

Now, not cringing is even harder. Maybe he can wash the dishes fast enough to get to it first and put more money in it? Aw, dammit, why didn't he do it as soon as he got home...

"I hope you are not spending money on frivolities, son." His father says dangerously. "The bus is only needed because you are too slow to walk to school on time, and being late is lamentable." Marcel takes a bite and swallows before speaking again. "It is your fault for not getting into a school closer to home. Still, at least you've stopped donating."

Helping others instead of yourself, especially when it is at your own expense, is abominable in his parents' eyes. "Of course." He replies coolly. "Why be charitable when no one is in return?"

But the people he helps are, even if some only take pity on the three of them because of Alex.

"Indeed." Marcel says, then puts down the knife, grabs his son by the hair, and smashes his face into the table. Mihai's teeth rattle as his nose breaks, making the white tablecloth red.

"You will wash that, too." His mother says. "And, since you are so eager to waste money, you can help with the next water bill, pay from your own pocket."

"You little liar." His father sounds more amused than angry, or even surprise. "You think we cannot read you, especially when you try-and fail-to act like you should?"

His father drags him out of his chair, then out of the kitchen and the house, into the yard. "We brought you into this world, boy, and trust me, we can take you out of it. Which we will, if you keep failing. Do you not even think about how you are shaming your family, you selfish little worm?"

Every word is punctuated by Mihai's head being smashed agains the cellar door. By the time the door is opened, he cannot see anything, and not just because it's pitch-black inside.

His father's words are slurred by the dizziness as he is tossed down the short stairs, knees and elbows bleeding. It is June, so he is wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

"A human can survive several days without water. I am not sure how long it takes before isolation becomes damaging, but I am glad you will help me find out. I will not thank you, though: there are several friends down there who will love you for what you are, unlike those two leeches milking your wallet dry."

The door slams closed, the sound painfully loud in Mihai's ears, before he can defend his friends, or ask what his father meant.

Then, he hears chittering and skittering. The boy tenses at first, then laughs nervously at himself. Rats aren't dangerous, they're scared of peo-

"Aaaasgh!" Mihai shrieks, more in fear and shock than pain, as a teeth like tiny pickaxes dig into his shin. Shit...what if he gets an infection? What if...what if...

Alone in the darkness, thinking of every possibility and trying to solve every problem, his magic awakens. It is not unique, not special, but it is versatile and useful.

Mihai survives until, what feels like an eternity later, like a few seconds later, his father returns, opening the door once more. His eyes, used to the gentle azure glow of his mana, burn painfully at the sunlight.

His parents are smugly satisfied at this development, especially when it forces him to leave Urziceni and David and Alex behind and go to a magic prep school in Bucharest.

Mihai meets Adriana in college, while he's running himself ragged, trying to obtain his licence to practice magic. His future wife only has a little magic, and her specialty is reinforcement. Nothing fancy. She can, however, replenish people, objects and wards, or make them even tougher.

The young woman is a head shorter than him, even in her thick-soled work boots, making them both average height, with long, frizzy brown hair, and green eyes behind a pair of black glasses.

As she pins him to the wall of the empty workshop, he absurdly worries if she's related to him, or if she's been sent by his parents, or-

"Wait." He begins. She's physically stronger than him, muscled rather than curvy, and, though he could easily push her away with magic, he doesn't want to. "I get that you want to help me, and that's sweet, but I'm really busy tonight-"

Bullshitting her, that is. Mihai is aware he's a magic nerd with few activities outside study, which only slightly pisses him off.

"I don't believe that." She says plainly, looking up at him. "I know broken things, remember? A healthy mind equals a healthy mage, and you're not powerful enough to ignore that, Codrea."

As she says him, she moves closer, and Mihai whimpers. He's always been shit at keeping a poker face under, ah, pressure.

"So." She says with a small smirk. "Wanna do some maintenance work?"

"No-not here." He corrects hastily, eyes darting at the cameras and observation wards. "Um...my dorm is empty right now..."

Alright, he's bullshitting her again, but at least it's for a good reason this time. 'I share my dorm with two jokers I'll have to throw out' is, like, the opposite of a pickup line. Just because she's coming onto him, it doesn't mean he should prove how much of a dork he is. At least, not this soon.

"Good to know. Let's take a look under the hood..."

The pun is fucking awful-he's sure she's been waiting to make it since she first saw his new Dinamo hoodie-but, to his surprise, it doesn't make him want to groan, unlike David's would.

They marry shortly after graduation, though the girls come much later: Adriana doesn't want children at first, partly because she's a workaholic, partly because she thinks they're not prepared for that. Still, they make it work. Not visiting his dead parents(at first metaphorically, soon literally; car accident involving a taxi. At the funeral, Mihai shares his regret that they didn't take the bus) helps with-

"Thinking about things like that?" Andrei scoffs, pointing a finger at the ghost. "I'm not surprised an undead's being morbid, but really?"

"Yes, Alex." Bianca smirks, rocking back and forth in a chair definitely not built for that. "Don't try to crash the pity party. We're here to feel sorry for ourselves, each other, and David."

"We'll have to brood on the double for him." Adriana muses, leaning foward, beer in one hand. His wife is only slightly tipsy(she's on her third bottle), but her eyes are still far away and unfocused. She doesn't even notice how her sizable chest squishes against the table, though he definitely does.

"Oh?" The iela's smirk widens, azure eyes sparkling. Lately, she's been using her chubby human disguise less and less. Mihai is usually happy that she's more comfortable with herself, but sometimes, she's too damn comfortable. "You're usually too busy  adorably worrying for each other to be sad for others, too."

"Well," Adriana shrugs. "Everything fucking up the world aside, we haven't really had a reason for that, lately."

"Hmm~" Bianca purses her lips, then lets out a bell-like laugh. "Did Mihai tell you about that time after we helped David out? I joked about him being alone with me and my sisters, and asked what you'd do. He said you'd join in."

"Oh, really?" Adi gives him a very curious look, which means he can't gesture for Bianca to shut up, then looks back at the iela, mirroring her smile. "Do tell..."

"Gladly~"

"Andrei?" Mihai mouths, knowing the werebear is always paying attention to his surroundings. He's also pretty good at reading faces, so he can probably tell he's asking for help.

"Get a load of that guy!" Andrei says, head turned away, looking straight at a were by the bar. Wearing a tracksuit, with long, red beard and hair, the werebull(Mihai's arcane sense informs him) is leaning on the yamadium bartop, and slowly patiently explaining to the (mentally) tired, blonde vampire bartender he's talking over that having foreign drinks in their selection weakens the country's spirit, which is tantamount to treachery in these trying times.

"Should try saying that five times fast." Andrei mutters under his breath, turning back to them with a small grin, eyes narrowed. "Guy looks like the people I used to beat up for money!"

Mihai would rather not end up on the couch than hear a story about Andrei taking bribes as a Securist, but no dice.

"Oh, wipe that look off your face." The werebear tells Mihai, not pouting, for men like him do not pout. "I meant back before I was conscripted. Lots of people hated lots of other people, and I loved their money. In fact," He devours the chunk of meat, twice the size of his head, and polishes off the blood on the plate faster than Mihai can see. "I'm sure I'll get into the owner's good graces after showing him the door. Maybe even into her pants~"

Andrei is out of his chair, by the bar ten metres away, and throwing the werebull through the automatic doors twelve metres away faster than Mihai can see, but that's not why the mage is staring at him in disbelief.

Was the last a joke? Is he making up for Lucian's absence...? Wait, no. He's not horny enough for that. But, still. He got burned badly enough last time that Mihai is honestly surprised he wants to try again.

Good for him. Now, if only he remembered to save him from the doghouse. Bros before-

"Oh no, Andrei!" Bianca gasps in mock-outrage, hiding her grin behind a slim, marble-white hand. "Do not cause a scene~ Anyway..." She returns her attention to Adriana. "You were saying?"

"So what if I did join in?" She replies. "Feeling threatened by a real woman?"

"Darling, I would eat you alive. I just don't wanna ruin you for your hubby." The iela turns to Mihai. "No need to thank me. You're just too cute together for me to steal Adi away from you."

"Thanks." He says stiffly, trying to cross his legs under the table. Dammit, now Andrei's chatting up the bartender and his wife is, what, play-flirting with his friend?

He's not insecure enough to feel threatened by that. He knows Adi doesn't mean it, but still, what is the world coming to?

"You're welcome, sweetie." Bianca smiles blandly, reaching across the table to pat his hand.

"Yeah, sweetie." Alex coos, slinging an arm across his shoulder and snickering at his deadpan look. "So follow your own advice, and stop looking so moody. The girls are just giving you a hard time."

Oh, ha ha.

***
Bianca

Bianca swallows a laugh as Mihai carefully stands up and goes to the bathroom. Humans are awfully prudish about relationships, especially when more than two persons are involved, but she was just joking. She's no homewrecker, Lucian's palace when she doesn't feel like giving a damn notwithstanding.

Thinking about her zmeu bo-friend, makes her nostalgic. Which is absurd, really. They'd been together for nearly a month(a record) before their similar urges had drawn them apart a few days after the whole eldritch wave of nonsense had seemingly ended.

Bianca looks from Adriana, who's already starting to feel unsure about the number of buttons her orange flannel shirt has(she always tries to count things once she gets tipsy, but rarely manages anything besides pissing herself off), to Alex, who's leaning back through his chair rather than in it, arms spread as he eggs Andrei on.

"Don't pussy out!" The ghost calls out across the room. "Or I'll tell David you admitted he has more game than you!"

"You cannot say that with a straight face!" The bear growls, half-turning, and Bianca sees his eyes are black and his mouth is filled with fangs.

Everyone else in the bar is looking between their table and the bar, and have been since Andrei's intervention. She supposes getting lucky with girls they help is a family thing...too bad her father never had their luck.

Iele were, as a rule, both possessed of senses far sharper than those of humans, and worse at reading people, or at least emotions. They were quite similar to the Fae, in that regard. Bianca's skill at aping mankind came from decades spend among them, with occassional visits to her sisters(by nature, not blood), rather than the other way around.

Her mother had not spent any time among people between her first and last foray out of the woods.

Moonlight-over-ebony-pools had not been malicious, at least by iele standards. Just...enthusiastic, and inexperienced.

So much, in fact, that, while looking for the mage she had wanted to breed with, she hadn't paid much attention whether he was a skilled charlatan, as her sisters called magicians, or a true mage.

As such, the kind man, whose name Bianca had never learned, for he had forgotten it himself shortly before her birth, had been rather overwhelmed by the bold advances of...whatever he had seen her mother as. She'd been good with glamours. Better than her.

She'd charmed him, in the human sense of the word, and taken him to the woods and broken his mind and body, and he had been all too eager to go along with it. His mind had remained his, for as long as it had lasted, and he had, apparently, truly loved the laughing woman with silver skin and hair and eyes.

Bianca had been learning to float and sing and fashion an body of flesh for herself when the Securists had come for her mother, declaring her a rapist and dragging her away, never to be seen again. Her father had unceremoniously been shot after trying to save his wife, teaching his daughter how frail humans were.

Her sisters, the older ones who had raised her and clothed her and filled the voids in her music, had told her such things were to be taken in stride, for both the world and its inhabitants were uncaring. Still, by the time she was fifteen, she had gotten bored of their...not coldness. The fact her kind helped each other as all made them far kinder than some supernaturals out there, and even some human families.

Indifference, then.

As Mihai returns, cussing Alex out when asked how cold the shower had been, Bianca laughed.

Humans cared both too much and too little, but she loved them, for all their little quirks. She had learned to be like them, finishing what her father had started trying to teach her, over sixty years ago.

***
 Constantin

As Constantin prepares for the convention, he is not thinking about the event, bur, rather, his new verger.

Rebeca Ghinea is filled with energy, even disregarding the way her magic passively absorbs heat and electricity from her surroundings. The girl's(he is showing his age, he knew, she is over twenty-six) black hair, which would have normally been in one of those bobs he had never been able to see the appeal of, is frizzy, practically pointing upwards, small arcs of blue electricity bursting in and out of existence along it.

"I'm just saying," Her eyes are wide as she gesticulates at the painted and framed icons on the walls. "That it's not fair to leave me holding down the fort just because my beliefs might be a teensy bit, uh, niche."

More like unorthodox, if one allowed the pun. "It's not that." He promises as he adjustes his surplice. "But someone must remain to mind the church, my dear."

Rebeca huffs, crossing arms that almost disappear in the sleeves of her black habit. "Then why not pray for the Lady to send an angel?"

"Because God expects us to handle our own business." Constantin truly does not care about what gender the Creator assumes when talking to people. Male, female, both, neither; they are all projections, for the benefit of humanity's peace of mind. He is used to thinking of Him as the Lord, because that is how he was raised, but he knows there are cults that worship God the Mother, or even as a hermaphrodite, though these are looked at askance. They are harmless enough, usually.

He finds his verger's passion more endearing than anything.

"If you say so." She says in a tone that promises the discussion was not over, then looks around, as if someone is eavesdropping on them.

"Please take a good look. Last week, I found three tiny Satanists in a flower pot. They were standing on each other's shoulders, so they could see out of it." Constantin isn't usually so sarcastic, but the upcoming meeting with his...siblings in Christ, and everyone else, makes him rather less willing to indulge tomfoolery.

"Huh?" Rebeca shoots him a confused look as she rummages through her pockets. Must be strange to have ones large enough to contain things, he muses. "You found three...nevermind." She takes out a battered-looking piece of paper, shaking it until it straightens out as much as it can. "Please show this to the Patriarch and the others? It might help attract more potential converts!"

Constantin takes the paper and only needs to peer at it for a few moments before his face falls. "Didn't writing this prevent you from graduating Theology and Faithcraft until you exorcised a demon without holy tools?"

"Misogynists!" She spits, crossing her arms once more as she glares at nothing in particular. "They pretended not to like the way I expressed myself, but I knew the truth, oh yes I did..."

Constantin can't present something containing phrases like 'God the Mommy', unless he pretends it is a joke, which would be a lie...at least, not with a straight face. Hm...

"You know what, Rebeca?" He asks with a smile, creating a pocket universe with his faithcraft and putting the paper into it. "I know several people who won't even know how to react to your work."

"Yes! Thank you, Father!" The verger grins, hands balled into fists as she bounces up and down. "Together, we might be able to get rid of the fossils in charge!"

Constantin himself could be considered a 'fossil in charge'. Yes, his church is in a small town, but it is close to the capital he often works in, and he has been a priest since before David's birth. He is actually several years older than Romania's Patriarch, Laurențiu Zarnea.

Thinking of his son's birth fouls his mood, which he does not need before even getting to the convention. Andrei might have come clean, in the end, but it had taken David's near death for that. But then, Constantin isn't surprised. The man has always been a coward.

Serving the Party rather than dying and denying them a tool. Not taking the woman he had left heavy with child to a hospital. Running from fatherhood. Constantin would believe the man would go to Hell, but Andrei isn't Christian enough for that.

Truly, he isn't sure if the werebear believes in anything. Constantin has met agnostics and atheists who at least believe in humanity and its potential, but the werebear isn't just non-religious. He is faithless. He drinks and fights and works and hoards money like the men who'd never make it to Heaven, and for what? He just lives because he doesn't want to die, and that makes him an animal more than his nature did.

Some days, he had half a mind to take some silver and-

"Father?" Rebeca seems hesitant. Why...? Ah. He must have let his emotions show. No need to burden the girl with his...sinful thoughts. He told David to forgive his biological father, anyway, all those years ago. He knows many who would be cybically amused by his hypocrisy. "Aren't you leaving?"

"I just was, my dear. God help us." They both cross themselves, then he is out of the church.

Travelling from Urziceni to the North Pole takes only slightly more than a second when he exerts himself. Constantin's faithcraft makes him physically equal to his son in all respects, even providing endless stamina when needed.

The Syncretic Convention takes place somewhere else every year, but it is always a neutral place, both politically and metaphysically. No one wants to wreck the Vatican or Mecca, except, of course, everyone who does. Said people are, coincidentally, both suspiciously unlucky, always being caught in mysterious accidents, and lucky, because they always escape unscathed.

As Constantin draws closer to the site of the convention-a circular area the size of Pitești, covered in a glamour that makes it invisible to mundane humans but is useless to his blessed eyes-he dearly, dearly hopes Angus Murphy won't be present.

Constantin crosses himself at the thought of the Irishman, muttering a prayer as he grimaced. He has not seen the Catholic in a decade, because either or both were been called away to respond to an emergency or another, but just because something is unlikely, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

Actually, it is more the opposite...

Constantin decelerated to a jog, taking in the gathered priests, rabbi, imams, monks and so, so much more. It looks like the reptilians had even sent an observer! And...ah. Suzana and Laurențiu have arrived before him.

The weresheep waves at him with a blocky-fingered, wool-covered hand, standing under the Romanian flag next to a square-jawed man whose severe expression is only accentuated by his mitre and white beard. The Patriarch, who has not yet started mingling with the heads of the other Orthodox churches, greets him with a curt nod, his gilded, purple-trimmed, diamond-white robes almost blinding in the sunlight reflected off the snow.

Thank God, Angus hasn't made it. He is always the first to arrive and the last to depa-

"TOP O' THE MORNIN', YA CUNTS!" A cheerful voice bellows as its owner lands boots-first in the middle of the gathering, folding the North Pole in half. The halves rise by nearly ninety degrees, and begin to shatter, before the newcomer laughs, clasping his hands and sending out a wave of faith.

The land restored to pristine condition, Angus Murphy grins. Bald, with a goatee red as blood and half the size of his head, the Irishman is well over two metres tall. His blue eyes roam across the gathering, first taking in the Pope, then settling on Constantin.

"Costiiii~" Angus' grins broadens as he spreads his arms wide. "Missed me, corpse-fondler? God would fuck me blind if I didn't come now! As She should do to you..." The priest's grin becomes sharklike as he crosses the distance to the Romanian, his green-trimmed white robes shining like fire. "You fookin' heretic."

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 2

***
"Hello there."

I wasn't startled by the words. At the moment, I told myself it was because I'd gotten used to people and beings that could bypass or evade my senses. But that was just my mind trying to convince itself, not realising it was being pushed.

Let me tell you, I got pushed around and moulded a lot after my undeath. Adam doesn't have shit on me. Eventually, the scales fell from eyes that would never be closed, but, at the time, I was still blind.

The person who had entered could not be described beyond the grey suit they wore. My sight slid off their face and the skin(?) they showed, and I couldn't tell whether their height and build were average, or changing every moment.

"Hello." I replied, far calmer than I should have been.

My visitor smiled next, I think. "Places like these one are not fit for the likes of us, David. But you will have to remain here a little longer-just a little."

I nodded, neither frustrated nor impatient. Their voice was as soothing as my father's had ever been. Still, a nudge I thought an impulse made me ask. "The likes of us...?"

"This is a white room, David." They said in a patient, chiding tone, which made me cringe at myself, just a little. "Gray people like you and I, we do not belong here. It is, however, not a 'white room'. It is not a place for creation, or testing, or brainstorming. It is a cell. A white cell," Their smile widened a little. "That, like the ones in a human body, helps fight off diseases. In this case, the body is creation, and the disease consists of those dangerous enough to be imprisoned in such places."

They got down on one knee in front of me, allowing me to see a name I hadn't noticed before, on the suit's left breast pocket.

'Gray Mann'.

"But we are not the disease, David. We are the cure, the fire burning down the forest so new trees might grow. Or, I am. But you're getting there." They turned their head to the side, and I felt their amusement. "I am loathe to even suggest a course of action, but please, remain here. Not that you could escape, but with patience, you'll cross even the sea...you know how it goes."

Gray stood up, straightening their suit, then did something that could only be equated to blinds being drawn.

"Wait..." I said, feeling weirdly hesitant. "We've just met. Why do you care?"

Gray laughed from behind the curtain, something I would later learn was common, both metaphorically and literally. "This is not even the first time we've met this minute, David. Good luck. Try to imagine you have it."

I....remembered Nacht's words, smiling wistfully. The way its phrasing had, perhaps accidentally given me hope. If even a broken clock is right twice a die, I suppose even a monster like Nacht does not always bring despair to others.

The fact nothing had happened since its and Hex's departure was pretty disappointing, though. Undead could cope with boredom and sensory deprivation indefinitely, unlike humans, but, having nothing to do, I opened Mimir's sight, and took a look at my cell. It was one of the few powers I could still use, so I might as well train it while I could.

In the present, it was exactly what it looked like: an endless, white void, a canvas that would never be painted on. I wasn't sure where that comparison had come from, but it felt like I hadn't used it enough up to that point.

Looking at its past, I saw the cell had never been occupied before my imprisonment, having stood empty since the destruction that had taken place for it to be created. And looking in the future...

I saw myself looking back through the past at me, my back turned to myself, so I wouldn't see myself looking back through the past at me, my back turned-

I blinked. Alright. That hadn't made much sense, but few things did, as of late. It had, however, been pretty concerning, given the precognition looped, or whatever I'd seen. ARC would have to know about that, that I wouldn't be able to use my precognition. Why, though?

Maybe I should just focus on my postcognition, instead. I opened Mimir's sight, and saw myself staring back at me, back turned to myself, so I wouldn't see myself looking forward through the future at me, my back-

Dammit. What the fuck did that even mean?

***
Fairie, 2030

Puck was running.

That was not unusual. The little Fae, whose current form resembled a satyr more than anything, if one with antlers, often ran during the errands Oberon sent him on.

But his King did not speak to him these days, nor to anyone else, even the Queen who ruled in his stead and name. He could not, nor would they be able to hear him if he did.

Oberon, despite the warlike aspect he sometimes drew around himself, had an artist's soul, and the bodies of several more. He was a creator and a preserver, not a destroyer, unless the situation called for it. He could often be seen tending the gardens and orchards in and around his palace, sometimes shapeshifting or glamouring himself to look like one of his gardeners, for he did not wish to disturb them with his presence.

Nowadays, however, Oberon devoted himself fully to preservation, for he had no other choice. The Black God had planted his seed in Fairie, and-

Puck cursed as he flipped over the twisted, twisting black branch. It was not a thinking plant, not like the ones they cultivated. It merely felt, without knowing, and the empty malice that dripped off it felt almost as foul as the pus dripped down the branch, not killing the grass, but making it live in death.

Another one. But this time...this time, at least, it was just a tree. Not an animal, with eyes that were the cracked mirror of an empty soul, body hollowed out enough that it could only feel pain. Not one of his kind, jerked on strings of iron.

The tree ripped free on the ground, walking on diseased roots that looked more like bloated, throbbing maggots, or...

Tapping into his magic as he leapt around the Black tree's strikes and blasted it with emerald flames(this one, he would stop. No more villages turned into grotesque nourishment. The things that had entered their realm treated them like they treated humans. The sheer audacity...),Puck hoped his King would be able to hold the thing growing from the heart of his domain, like a poisonous flower feeding on a dying body, at bay, for at least one day longer.

He wondered if the gods knew, then laughed at his foolishness. There was no way they wouldn't learn, anyway. And then, they would come with tide and thunder, with screams of ancient pacts and friendships broken, and all would drown in blood.

If they didn't drown in darkness first.

***
Zmeu country, 25th December 2030

The Brazen Mantle, Aaron knew, was far more than a weapon, or a toolbox, or even a factory. It was a way to uplift those both less and more powerful than himself, in ways that ranged from creating weapons and tools for them to use(the Mother of the Forest, he had learned a few years after their bargain, was a signatory of the Syncretic Treaty, and everyone who used her creations to upset the status quo would result in her being held accountable) to simpler things, like spreading the armour the war-harness could grow into to them, like Lucian and Lucas currently were.

His brothers were connected to the bands of bronze at his joints by wires barely visible to even his sight, and Aaron could count the hairs on a fly in Istanbul from Constanța. He still did that, sometimes, feeling nostalgic for the days of the Long Watch, when it had been one of his favourite pastimes and ways to meditate.

Aaron hadn't been made Admiral for any particular skill in naval warfare. Zmei were made for fighting, not warring, and he often felt ashamed of his rank when conversing with officers who made him look average. He was, however, possessed of senses and reflex far sharper than any human's and most non-divine beings. In fact, he dwarfed Lucas in speed like the blue zmeu dwarfed Lucian, nearly seventy thousand times over.

Of course, that level of speed was too much for anything that didn't involved speeding to the Oort Cloud and back in about as much time as saying it took. There had been some plans to use him as a living combination of a starship and a terraforming engine, during the Space Race, but everyone arguing about the Galactic Romanian Socialist Republic(name undecided before the project had been shelved) had been told to cool off until Earth at least was red. Aaron's reflexes had sufficed for most of the Turkish-Romanian skirmishes during the Long Watch. Some of them had even been caused by genuine misunderstandings.

Ah...dammit, he was acting like an old man again, getting lost in memories.

But then, someone had to at least pretend to be an adult here, and his father definitely didn't seem eager to try.

Maws had, not too long ago, by his standards('When did it happen? Hmmm...I don't exactly keep count, but that dirtball you insist to stay on got oceans and air in the meantime'), been offered a choice between finally being able to negate the collateral damage caused by his starbreaking power, something he had been struggling with and now could never get rid of, or becoming even stronger, jumping in power whenever challenged, before returning to his baseline once a conflict was over.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he had chosen the latter.

It had been, Aaron had to admit, a logical choice, in a way. Maws had nothing tying him to Earth, as he had only met his eldest son once, and treated him with supreme indifference; he spent his time either in zmeu country, where he could rampage as much as he liked, or working as a mercenary for the few beings willing to reach across space or other realities to hire him.

Still, couldn't he try to keep the fucking volume down?

"Weak, weak..." Thousands of heads, each large enough to swallow mountains, shook in disappointment as Myriad-maws-with-their-bottoms-scraping-the-earth-and-their-tops-piercing-the-skies, took in the sons he had never seen before.

Both of them were armoured up to avoid being pulverised by their father's voice, which, unlike a mundane explosion, which damaged objects according to their surface area, applied Earth-shattering force to everything for hundreds of thousands of kilometres around, regardless of size. Aaron himself, being more than able to punch the planet in half or kick it to pieces, was unarmoured, but his fangs still rattled with every word Maws said.

"It is not their fault, mate-counterpart. This one senses they are at the peak of their physical prowess-capacity. They cannot improve-grow stronger." His mother chimed in, going for chiding, but merely sounding clinical.

She was still trying to act more like them, bless her. Even if looking at the orrery of impossibly-angled shapes of unlight that was her form caused his eyes to cross.

She had even shrunk down so as not to make them feel strange, even if being around her husband's size was the equivalent of squeezing into a shoebox for her. At full size, such little things as planets were too small to see.

Maws grunted, scratching his belly with his three right hands, sparks like solar flares jumping from the rainbow scales. "Even so. Are they really even mine? The first one, the slightly bigger worm-"

"Aaron." He growled. He and his brothers, who were still looking for their words after seeing how strange, respectively arseholish their parents were, stood on a planet the size of Earth and the texture of marble, which Maws had created on a whim.

The older zmeu blinked like a crocodile, then laughed, turning the planet to dust. Lucian and Lucas leapt away, unharmed thanks to their armour, but Aaron felt bones break and shake all over his body as the force shook him to the core. With a curse, he armoured himself, too, just as the damage healed.

"A name! I bet you imagine you're smart for giving yourself a human one, boy. What's your true name?" Maws leered, his enormous body shimmering as he turned the dust back to a planet and wrapped around it.

Yes, because he had moron stenciled on all foreheads... "Bronze-scaled-father-slayer." He spat in reply, before speeding over to his father and picking him up by the chest, all fifty sextillion tons, then flipping him and smashing him down heads-first.

Steel-hard ground turned to dust for millions of kilometres around as the gigantic zmeu's heads split the land, then was devastated even further when he roared in approval.

"You've got some fight in you!" Maws grinned, turning the dust caking him to steam as he heated up his body, then narrowing his green, black-slitted eyes. "Even if you need that cheap toy to hide behind...I can see the marks left by her hands, you know. Had her once or thrice. Worst fucks of my life. Damn If I know why I went back each time..."

"I could do that unarmoured, you old bastard." Aaron crossed his arms. Each of the bands he wore was as heavy as the world he walked, enchanted to only affect him with their weight, so he would never forget the power at his command. "You're not as heavy as you think, despite that huge ego."

"Ha! What can I say, the old lady likes them slim~" Maws dropped his wife a wink, tongues flicking out at her. She just stared back blankly, something like an oval eye in the centre of her form not blinking.

"This one would ask you to stop the baiting-posturing, mate-counterpart. This one would like to learn more about her offspring-shards, which is why we agreed to this meeting." The eldritch being said, and Aaron felt like a bastard for not asking her name during their first meeting. It wuld be so awkward now...but she had been so distracted, and he so hotheaded...ugh.

Maws shrugged, beards swaying. Nine-thousand-ninety-nine were grey and long, reaching down to his chest, but the last, the one in the centre, was gold, shining like the dawn. "If you're asking so nicely..." He smirked.

"And maybe get a damn notebook if you can't talk without breaking planets." Lucian groused, seemingly having gotten his father's measure. "For a clown who fell in a crayon box, you're pretty shit at charades."

"So demanding!" Maws bared kilometres-long fangs in amused frustration. "You remind me of that prick who woke me up rambling about light. The water was so nice, too...fine."

The giant zmeu sat down, his mate following and their sons flying down to join them. Maws smiled, lifting up a hand and producing a projector as his wife began leaning over him. "Just a moment...work offer, in a week from now, give or take...huh. Someone from around Rigel is sure something bad will show up there in the near future. Hope I won't be asked to punch stuff into the past again...I always end up fighting myself. Can't stand that. I'm too gorgeous to hurt."

Lucas opened his mouths under his helmets, then thought about it for a bit, and sighed. At least he was starting to know who took after whom. "Anything interesting?" He asked instead.

"Hmm?" Maws turned a few eyes to him. "Oh, I can smell the old blood on you, boy, but it's buried under...something. What do you do nowadays?"

And that was when the dam broke, and their parents, mostly their father, began asking questions.

"You draw on people? What even is this childish shit?"

"It's art." Lucas was fully aware he sounded like every jobless wannabe artist on Earth, but it didn't matter. "Anyway-"

"And you say the runt of the litter found his calling before you?" A few heads jerked towards Lucian. "What do you do?"

"Fight and fuck, mostly."

"Ha! Figures..." Maws leaned against his wife's shoulders, ignoring the way reality rippled and decayed around her body. "Say...any of you got a bitch?"

All three brothers grimaced.

"I get by." Aaron said tersely, huffing at Maws' 'Ah, prostitutes.'

"Don't need any." Lucas said, wishing he could smoke through his helmets.

"Unlike Aari over there," Lucian cracked his neck. "I don't just 'get by'. I got this iela I see more often than anyone else...see, we'd be together if we could, but we can't stand sharing, and don't wanna get mad at each other."

"Bah!" Maws waved a dismissive hand. "Tell me about it. I understand...half your problem. Your mother-I call her Angles, mostly, besides pet names; someone once suggested 'Anglela', but that sounds stupid as all get out, and I can't pronounce her name," The zmeu stared adoringly at his mate with half his eyes. "Doesn't really get the urge to sleep around, or any other urge, really. But I don't want to upset her, so I stay far away when I need to avoid tedium."

"This one appreciates your attempt to resist your nature, mate-counterpart." An appendage rose to trail fire across Maws' chest as his mate cracked a smile that dragged light towards it, briefly covering their surroundings in darkness.

"Only the best for you." He said graciously. "But I still marked her, so everyone can see we're married. Wanna see?"

"Yes!"

"Lucian!"

"Shut up, you two!" Aaron barked, then turned back to his parents. "Why don't you instead tell us how you two met?"

"Sure, right after I answer Lazlo."

"Lucas." The blue zmeu corrected.

"Right. That question about the job offer...someone will want me to put an evicted grouch back to sleep." Ten thousand mouths were split by savage, gleaming grins. "They must have heard about my beautiful voice~"

***

Strangeguard headquarters, Moscow, 3rd january, 2030

"We are quite surprised you agreed to this, sir." Alexei said as he led Grey One through the featureless, mirror-walled corridor, the weredog's paws making no sound. "We know you are sensitive even around normal minds, let alone twisted little bitches like her."

Grey One tried to smile at the Caucasian Ovcharka, but instead winced. The faces of its kind were not made for concealing emotions on the rare occasions they chose to physically express themselves. Even after being cut from the Greater Mind and learning to speak and gesticulate out of necessity, the alien still struggled.

Grey One did not begrudge the Multitude of Minds their curiosity regarding travel through the aether in addition to wormholes. One more method to pass lightspeed was always useful, and it had been a curious being even before becoming an explorer. Its kind, lacking reproductive organs, reproduced by parthenogenesis, shedding a piece of themselves in a moment of physical and mental tranquility and desire for creation. Grey One had been an Honoured Parent-Progenitor before it had been stranded on Earth.

"Sofia is a young telepath, who had no one to teach or touch minds with her. It is understandable to lash out-expected, even." Grey One argued. "I know several species that-"

"Here we are, sir." Alexei cut it off, stopping before another featureless section of the hallway. Grey One couldn't pick up any thoughts besides the were's, but it somehow knew the young witch was behind that. "Just remember: the moment either you or her are compromised, I'm killing you both."

Grey One nodded. Telepathy that could reach out to and dominate nearly twenty billion humans, if the usual protections fell, coupled with telekinesis to toss Earth into the sun or compress it to a billionth of its size, and suborned by a mind like Sofia's? It would rather kill itself.

Its mind had grown worse in the decades since its crash-landing, sensitive to the pain and horror felt by its adoptive homeworld's inhabitants. Or it would have crushed the reptilians on Mars by itself, had it not been so cowardly.

Alexei beat a certain rhythm on the mirror-like wall with his knuckles, causing part of it to slid away, allowing him and Grey One to pass through.

Sofia, covered in wards that suppressed her mana from her explosive collar to her ankles, sat on a floor of metal that would absorb any unexpected pulse of mana. The young witch's manacled hands were clasped together and her mouth hanging open as she stared upwards, like she was praying.

Gray Mann turned to greet the newcomers with a smile. "Grey, Alexei! Working hard, or hardly working?"

"Who the fuck are y-" The weredog's particles gathered together as soon as Gray drew back their fingertip, and Alexei growled, trying to leap at them once more.

The weredog cursed as he slammed against the cell's far wall, creating a deep dent in the yamadium. "How the fu-" He growled, trying and failing to move.

"Who are you and how did you enter?" Grey One asked, sending out its mind, and feeling nothing except Alexei and Sofia. Its eyes kept sliding away from the-

"Grey, come on." Gray shook their head in disappointment. "This is just like our old capers, remember? When Uncle Sam sent us to Mother Russia to take care of business..."

The alien smiled placidly as it remembered. Yes, its friend had saved its life countless times during their missions, just like it had saved it from the aether and guided it to Roswell. "Apologies. And thanks once more for that."

"No problem, comrade." Gray snickered. "Just like when we tweaked the pig-dogs' noses."

Grey One nodded firmly, standing straighter. Soon, the USSR would throw off the facade of 'democracy', and unite the workers of the world.

"But really, now, Sofia and I we have to go. Things to see, people to do..." Gray trailed off as Alexei leapt at it from behind. With a sigh, they walked backwards through time, and Alexei found himself strangled in his crib by a suited, featureless figure.

The weredog disappeared, then popped back into existence as his regeneration overcame the paradox. No mundane human would remember him with the timeline altered, but he would, as would supernaturals who healed like him.

***

"Who is that?" Grey One asked, bewildered, as a weredog it had never seen appeared from thin air.

"Someone I should have killed." Gray Mann said, making their friend gasp.

"But...but why? Where are we? Why are we here?"

Gray turned to it, disappointed. "Have you forgotten? You murdered him, and wanted to stay to gloat."

***
Grey One stood over the body of a weredog it had never seen, the silver knife with which it had carved out his heart in one hand, the crushed lump of muscle in the other. It would have never managed this without its friend's help, but now-

"Comrade Grey..." Gray Mann whispered. "How could you betray us?"

Grey One bowed its bulbous head in shame. Ever since it had landed in Siberia, the Soviets had cared for it like it was one of them. But now, heart seized by greed-

"What is an animal like you doing with a tool? Put that down!" Gray Mann said harshly, and the beast that had never been Grey One dropped to all fours, biting at its flesh, and drooling.

***

"What now?" Sofia whispered in awe, her magic going haywire as it tried to reconcile the timeline shifts. How did she know...? Why had she forgotten...?"

"Not now, Sofia." Gray Mann said. "We have to get you back to school, now don't we?"

The schoolgirl clapped in delight, jumping up and down, as her guardian smiled at her. Ever since Gray had saved her from that village in the middle of nowhere, they had always been together.

"Yes!"

"Where do you think you're going, prisoner? Stand down!" Gray Man barked.

Sofia slumped. The guilt from the time she had enslaved her village flooded back into her mind. She could only give thanks to Gray, who had shown her the error of her ways, and killed the strigoi who had come to terrorise her.

"Come on, girl." Gray Man cooed. "Don't you want to see your dog? Loric will be sad if you don't."

Sofia gasped. The old tailor had travelled all the way to Siberia to gift her the puppy-one of the greatest adventures one could set on in their quiet world-and it would not to be ungrateful.

"Sofia..." Gray Mann chided. "Your meal is coming back."

The young witch choked, falling onto all fours as her dog's remains came rushing up her throat and the fat strigoi's grinning face flashed into her mind. Its guts and limbs, covered in fur and matted blood, came first, far too big for her small body to contain. Then came the face, staring at her in glassy-eyed horror and judgement.

Sofia broke down in tears, but not for long, for her dog's remains came rushing up her throat and the
fat strigoi's grinning face flashed into her mind. Its guts and limbs, covered in fur and matted blood, came first, far too big for her small body to contain. Then came the face, staring at her in glassy-eyed horror and judgement.

Sofia broke down in tears-

And Gray Mann left, whistling, hoisting the witch up with one hand.

***

"You rotten liar..."

"Are they lies, when the world and the past change to fit my words? You have fought against schemers for so long, you think all you oppose is a lie. You have grown too used to your mirror...put it down, and see the truth."

"Do you expect my mind to break as my shriveled humanity falls away? I have grown past such things."

"We shall see."

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 3

***

"You're good, Silva." Gaol John grunted, with the air of finally getting rid of something unpleasant, but necessary.

If you add an 'un' before the 'necessary', you'll even have a description of me!

"Thank you, sir." I said, still sitting on the grass. "I was going to fish for compliments today, but, since you're just doing it..."

John crossed his arms. "I meant you're good to go, you smarmy little shit. I want your arse in Omu base as soon as possible, so you can acquaint yourself with the Crypt's senior Romanian agent," Wait, what? We'd gotten a new one? "And so we can free this cell."

"...It's a literal endless void. Can't you just-"

"Give you a cellmate? You want to stay here, Silva?" John crossed the half a dozen metres between us faster than I could see, leaving behind a series of red afterimages. His false flesh had sloughed away again, to reveal a skeletal, sarcastic grin. "Then get the hell out. Sensory deprivation is considered torture for people. I've heard they're even considering extending that to things like you."

Much as I hated his phrasing, he was right. Strigoi had the potential to go off the reservation any moment, which meant they were seen as undead time tombs across Eastern Europe, and killing one, if they were a criminal, was considered no different to putting down a dog. I remembered the psychological exam needed to get back into society after my undeath.

But then, most undead had it rough. Leaving aside the most of us couldn't sense the zombies that had no minds to think about how shit their unlives were, ghosts were almost always bags of issues obsessed with something, and ghouls were, well, ghouls and vampires. Eating and drinking their own flesh and blood could make them stronger, but it didn't sate them. They retained their sense of taste, and autophagy apparently left them with an aftertaste of cold mud. Human flesh and blood tasted the best, which was why labgrown variants were so popular with them.

Yes, there were still people who thought both the providers and the consumers were monstrous and we should just kill them all, but then, aren't there always?

But... "My, sir. For a ghost jenga puzzle, you're pretty damn good at throwing stones."

"Blatter all you want, Silva. Hypocrisy is something you define when you're safe enough you don't have to worry about survival. Security risks like you, who can't control their urges? I'd kill you all if I could. ARC doesn't need chinks in its armour."

"It lifts my heart to see you so worried about the good of the organisation."

"I told Reem to just brainwash you, you know." He said, raising an amused eyebrow at my surprised expression. "If she wanted to keep you around. But, damn, I've been telling her things like that for decades. She's all heart. The fact we could actually put a leash on you, unlike Gilles' animals, makes it even worse. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only one who cares..."

There was no way to reply politely to this, so I changed the subject. "I'm surprised you aren't more worried about how Chernobog can apparently just slip in and take over me-"

"We are. Hence why I've been advocating to kill you more than usual-after removing Mimir's sight, of course."

I stared blankly at him for a few moments, causing his grin to somehow widen. "Don't worry, David, that was just my idea. Most of the other Heads advocated for either executing you, and damn the gods, they can get mad about the sight being lost after, or removing the sight and imprisoning you until we decide what to do." He leaned forward. "But Reem argued that you can't be blamed for being manipulated by gods. I guess she knows what that's like. Another security risk...and Shiftskin, who begins frantically looking for his spine whenever she's present, agreed with her. Mind, he doesn't give a damn about you. You're just the latest thing he can use to court her...don't you feel honoured?"

I swallowed. "You keep calling me 'thing', and you know what? I might be a loser who felt too sorry for himself to stay dead...but you're thousands of people like me." I grinned, only regretting the fact my shapeshifting was locked down, and I wasn't naturally ugly enough to ape his face. "You're so obsessed with my sight? Maybe put down the 'restless ghost gestalt' mask when you look in the mirror."

John snorted, shaking his head. "Until now, only people worth a damn knew that. Go away, Silva. I've bound my senses to you, so I should be able to see when the universe is winding up for the next kick to your arse."

Ooh, he'd always be watching me? It'd be nice to get a BDSM's expert opinion, from time to time...

He stood still, hands in the pockets of a ragged ARC jacket over a prison shirt, head bowed. As I began moving away from him, waiting for the cell's controllers to let me out, I thought to get another shot in.

"By the way, I thought you should know, as Head of Internal Affairs: your security is shit. The fucking Devil waltzed in to-"

"Satan or Lucifer?"

"I don't know." I said, frustrated at both the fact I couldn't tell and his nonchalance. "He seemed angry enough for the former and smug enough for the latter, but-"

"We know, Silva. We've known he's marked you since you came back from the dead again." He gave me an ironic look over his shoulder, and I remembered the interrogations, how I'd spoken about...about my soul being judged. "Don't you think that we'd have stopped him if we could have? It's almost like you're not the only one being moved by higher powers. Anyway...changing between aspects in one sitting is concerning, but not unusual."

The fact he was too prideful and angry to feel both at once, which also led him to switching between powersets, had probably saved countless people over the years.

The last thing we need was a smug, literally unapproachable bastard who'd add the power of the few things able to damage him to his own.

"And, Silva? There are many people whose natures I hate, but I don't hate them. Stay in that category."

Sure, you xenophobic arsehole. Right after you stop hating people who never heard of those who tormented your selves just because they happen to descend from them or live in their country.

***

"It's not because I'm the best option," Rivka slumped in her chair. "I'm just...not the worst. I think I'm just filling in, anyway, until-"

"There's no one coming to replace you, Riv." I said, cheerful as ever. "Not unless they pull an agent from another country, but that'd just create another vacuum to be filled, and we'd get nowhere."

The ghoul blew out a raspberry, leaning backwards in her chair-it was made for rolling around, but also sturdy enough to withstand the many people who'd use it for far more-to stare at the ceiling. Milky grey eyes closed, fangs bared and dressed in a black shirt and combat pants, like I was, she looked like a resting shark.

"No, we wouldn't." She said grudgingly, one clawed hand toying with her thick, black ponytail. She opened one eye to glance at me. "Gaol John sent me a message that said he's got his eye on you," With how many eyes I had on me, I'd end up looking like a cluster of grapes. "So I can tell you about this. How much do you know about ARC's internal structure, David?"

"Not much." I said, annoyed. "I've basically spent the last few years as a paid intern."

"What, and no one told me? Go fetch me something from the freezer, Silva. I'm your boss now." She added, holding up a finger as she shifted in her chair to look straight at me. "We can't just keep you sitting in one place! What if your muscles atrophy?"

"I have muscles?" I blinked, looking blearily at my stretched arms.

"I once had a dog we always kept leashed, and he died! Of old age. But I doubt the lack of freedom helped with his mood."

I sighed. Sure felt like someone's dog right now. "Did they tell you...?"

"Yes." Her eyes grew more serious, all mirth leaving her face. "And I don't think you're dumb enough to think I blame you. That'd be impressive, even for you."

"Wow, thanks..."

"You're welcome." Her gaze softened. "David...I can't really do anything about the fact some overpowered bully seems hellbent on fucking your life up." Then her expression turned fierce. "I can, however, smack you whenever you start moaning about how you don't want or deserve to live. The first is utter bullshit, or you wouldn't be here. The second? Well, you're wrong."

I looked down at my hands. To Mimir's sight, they were red, redder than anyone's I'd ever met. "He made me kill so many people, Rivka..."

"The Fae?" She asked softly. "They wouldn't have seen you as a person even before your undeath. The Seelie might honour deals and warn people who've mistakenly wrong them, but they don't see anyone as an equal. They only have servants and enemies."

I didn't say anything. Maybe all those Fae had been racist, speciesist bastards, but had they all been kidnappers? Murderers? What had they done in their Wild Hunts-those who had been on them?

"I know what you're thinking about." Rivka had moved faster than I could perceive, as she'd been able to do since her growth in power, leaning across her desk to put a hand on my shoulder. "And I think you're still reeling from the scale. You'd think the possession would put some separation between the deed and your feelings on it, but it seems to do the opposite." She smiled crookedly. "Here's an idea: you have to train your sight anyway, right? I mean, it's the only useful thing you can really do. So, why don't you check out their pasts? You'll get better at it, and probably at finding new ways to blame yourself, too."

Fucking-why hadn't I thought about that? "Thanks, Riv." Then, bowing my head exaggeratedly, I added, "The criminal always returns to the scene of the-"

Rivka's slim, calloused hand tore through my chest like paper, wrapping around my spine and snapping it in half. "What'd I tell you?"

"I was joking!" I protested, pulling back in my visitor's chair as I healed.

"Bad joke." Rivka's tongue darted out, blurring over the cold gore covering her hand and cleaning it up. "Don't start spouting shit like that around people who give a damn about you." 'So feel free to do it when you talk to yourself.' Her tired eyes said. "You'll remain here until we find a way to free you, provided we don't need to move you to another ARC base."

Which meant I wouldn't be seeing anyone close to me, besides Mia, until the whole mess was over. Maybe it was for the better. I wouldn't want any of them to see me like this. Pops would...

"You were saying something about our internal structure?" I asked her in order to distract myself.

Rivka nodded. "Your phone is being updated remotely right now, so you'll get to read through everything yourself, but, in short...ARC holds a lot of elections. I haven't been in any since my recruitment," Rivka was nearly a decade younger than me, but had been an ARC agent since she'd become a ghoul, in her early twenties. "Because Marcus was Romania's senior agent since shortly after ARC built bases in this country, but it goes like this: all the grunts a division has in a country choose one from among them as senior agent. These guys then choose the Heads-who, you may or may not know, haven't changed since ARC's founding, except for the Scion and Salem division Heads. There are only three ranks, to keep it simple, and no insignia, to confuse snipers. Many supernaturals can cross continents in second and communicate even faster, so there's no need for an overly-intricate command structure. We say." She chuckled drily. "Your probationary period would have ended before the Headhunt, if not for...well."

Well, indeed. "What about the Directors?"

"What about them." Rivka rolled her eyes. "Each country's director is appointed by its government, usually but not always from among law enforcement or military veterans. Since they're political appointees, they're meant to make sure ARC doesn't overstep its boundaries, so they work with Internal Affairs a lot, but make no mistake: a Director liaises between us and the government more than anything else. The senior agents handle national operations." The ghoul clasped her hands on her cheeks with exaggerated cheerfulness. "Which makes for such fun times in the countries the division headquarters are in! You should see Tamar butting heads with Israel's director. It's hilarious."

Before I could reply, a ping caught my attention, and I took out my phone. "Thanks for the cliff notes," I told Rivka. "But it seems like I've got the full package."

The ghoul's eyebrows nearly met her hairline, and I realised my mistake. "That zmeu's really been rubbing off on you, huh? I suppose it was inevitable."

"H-Hey, I meant-"

"It's alright, David." She said airily. "I get pretty excited when I receive full packages, too. Maybe we can go pick up guys later."

I buried my head in my hands, rubbing my face, but didn't groan. "Am I really out of my internship if you just keep ribbing me like this?"

"By that logic, you'll never be." Rivka lowered her voice. "And it's a paid internship, chump. So go get me some meat."

"Yes ma'am."

"Maybe even a full package..."

"Alright." By now, I was more concentrated on my phone than on her: a transformation even more horrifying than my undeath. I was turning into a modern teenager. I saw that new app, the ARChive, which had our white shield on black, with an open grey book inside it as a symbol, had been installed. I gave Rivka a questioning look.

"The book is grey because knowledge is neutral." She said in a nasal voice. "You can leaf through the longer synopsis on ARC later. Right now, you'll probably want to check the forum."

Crypt section, to be exact. I'd check the Romania subsection later. I already had a profile, with my name, picture(they'd used the one from my ID, so I looked like I was caught between life and undeath, but belonged to neither) and country already filled in. But that wasn't what caught my eye. No, that came when I looked through the Crypt members list. Not all of them, obviously-ARC had millions of official agents, never mind the ones we didn't talk about-but a name still drew my attention.

"Szabo is a moderator!?"

What the everloving fuck did that twisted bastard prevent?

I raised my undoubtedly wide eyes to meet Rivka's amused ones. "Please tell me you treat him as an example of what not to do..."

***
"Angus." Constantin said stiffly as he walked forward to meet the other priest. "I see God still burdens you."

At two metres twenty-four, Angus was nearly half a metre taller than the Romanian, and his laugh befitted his stature. "Burdened, am I? How, pray tell?"

Constantin felt all the eyes burning holes into his back, and resisted the urge to roll his. "You often have to interact with people you can't stand. Trust me, I know your pain."

Grimacing, Angus raised a huge, muscular hand, Constantin mirroring his move in response.

Then, the Irishman brought it down, clasped around the Romanian's.

"Costiii..."Angus whistled through his teeth. "Still a morose fuck, eh? We could've broken the bloody continent with that!"

"There are many things we could do." Constantin agreed. "For example, you could stop swearing like a sailor when you're wearing your cloth of office."

"Ha! Then I can stop drinkin' an' smokin' an shaggin' too, right?"

"If you wish." Constantin said diplomatically. "I doubt God would mind."

"No." Angus drew his hand back. "No, She wouldn't. But there's worse vices to 'ave, and, as long as no one's hurt..."

Constantin knew his...friend, was extremely paranoid about sex. He only ever slept with sterile women, and even then he blessed the protection he used.

An absurd use of faithcraft, if he was one to ask, but Angus only asked for his opinion(through messages, in the last decade. Thankfully) when he wanted to know what not to do.

Constantin sighed. "I know what you're going to say-"

"That pet corpse of yours has been getting slapped around ever since he got that hemp tie, from what the Lady tells me." The Catholic priest grinned harshly. "Imagine yer suicide being the happiest life of your life, huh?" His eyes grew steely. "You should've killed him right then, Constantin. Put 'im outta everyone's misery."

"And murder my son?"

Angus drew in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, so that it sounded more like a whistle. "Not yer son. Son of two worthless fucks, an' a suicide. And what's he been doing since then?"

Helping people, you lecherous fool, Constantin thought. David's day-to-day missions, the ones that had never become known to the world at large, had been nothing but that, for three years. But, of course, everyone wanted shock and controversy, something spectacular, and... "David has found happiness. God willing, it'll help him overcome all future obstacles."

"Tch." Angus sneered. "God willing, She'd smite him so the sad fuck doesn't have to hurt anymore. Have you noticed none of us are tormented like he is? The Lady's way of telling him to stop the mockery that is a strigoi fuckin' praying." He chuckled. "But he can't take the hint! No hint! Otherwise why'd he have started fucking that cuckolding whore-"

The Irishman swirled his shattered teeth around his blood-filled mouth, looking down at Constantin to see the shorter priest raise an eyebrow. Shaking his head with a sad smile, he healed the damage. "I'll pretend your hand slipped, Costi."

"Like I'm sure your tongue will again, now that I've wet it a little." The Romanian replied.

"See? This is exactly the problem. You hear the truth an' respond with violence. You raised the little hypocritical shite to think like you, an' now he's a goddamn walkin' paradox! But, you know what? I won't get angry at you. I'll turn the other cheek-"

Angus blinked stars out of his eyes as he pulled his head free out of a pile of icy dust, watching the half of the Arctic that had been shattered by the strike drift across the ocean.

"Did that for you." Constantin said, wiping his bloodied fist on his surplice. "Feel free to preach when you stop shaming your cloth."

Angus got to his feet with an exasperated groan. Blind. The Romanian was blind, like the other sects, like the pagans. Blind...

"I never have." The Irishman huffed, then turned to the gathered priests. "What are y'all sittin' on yer arses for!? We're 'ere t' talk about crises of faith! Is the End of Days comin'? Where the goddamn fook did Chernobog's latest worshippers spring from?"

And, more urgently, he'd have to talk to the Scandinavians, about Constantin's revenant, and whether or not to change their sagas. After all, the strigoi, whether pssessed or not, had murdered...

***

Asgard, Borson Cluster, 2030

"Thor."

Sif sat in a field of golden wheat under a sky full of clouds as thick as grey as lead. To a casual observer, the goddess might have appeare to be alone, but she could feel his presence, like she had always been able to, even before their wedding.

As if in response, a breeze passed over her pauldrons, but she felt the wind under her golden armour, and it was more like the touch of a hand than anything else.

"Can you hear me?"

His shade only responded to Odin's summons, when the Allfather called it to drill the Einherjii. Nowadays, with fate gone, the warriors were no longer immortal, no matter what, until Ragnarok- and if that ever came, no one was sure what form it would take.

But Sif did not care for Odin's company at the moment. And she feared the spirit he summoned was only a simulacrum of Thor, a repository of his memories, jerked upon his father's strings.

"I have asked them to make you a body, husband." She spoke softly to the wind, which whispered in reply. "A body of oak and earth, of lightning and thunder."

The sky went white for an instant, then shook, as if the World Tree was going to end.

"Loki labours alongside the dwarfs, and the foreigners." The device Sindri had thought would help find Mimir's head had only been half-finished when everything had gone wrong. The dwarf had not given up, though, altering his work instead of abandoning it. "I fear what paths his mind would take him down, without this to focus on."

A gale howled across the field, like a sharp, mournful sigh.

"Our children," Her voice caught a little at this. "Have split your weapons among themselves. Magni bears your hammer, Modi your gauntlets, and Thrud your belt..."

Sif trailed off, attention drawn by a scrabbling in the ground. When she saw was the wind had carved, she couldn't hold back her laughter.

Did they give her Megingjord because she's a girl? They know I was fatter than her, right?

Yes. Her husband...could definitely hear her.

***

Rigel, 2030

The Sleeper awoke under the glare of a blue giant star. Tens of times as heavy as the sun of the world it had been banished from and tens of thousands of times as luminous, it was surrounded by a ring of softly-glowing dust: all that remained of the Sleeper's city.

But...this was wrong. The stars were wrong. They were different, not aligned. The city's destruction should have freed it, but it still felt drowsy. Why? How?

A fist the size of a moon smashed into the Sleeper's tentacled face, sending it flying through Rigel, obliterating the star.

The fist-shaped indent in the Sleeper's squamous head disappeared in moments. It had not been actually harmed, by the punch or the impact, but it had not been truly awakened either.

"Sleepy? Good! All the pay for half the work!" Maws proclaimed cheerfully. Though large enough to wrap around Earth several times, the zmeu's body was minuscule next to the Sleeper's.

This did not deter him. Nor did the Sleeper's indignant shriek, which unmade reality for light-years around, replacing it with madness that erased matter, energy, space and time alike.

"Ahhh~" Maws sighed as he flew to face the Sleeper. "This is making me nostalgic..."

***

Sicily, Kaos Cluster, 2030

"I thought about breaking free," Typhon rumbled. "When you were running around after knowledge, like chickens with their heads cut off. Perhaps I will rip them off, and see if you act like that again."

One moment, the monster's face, which filled most of Etna's interior, looked like that of a man, if enlarged to grotesque proportions, with skin black as coal and a beard as red as blood. Glancing at it, Asterion could see why he had been equated with Set.

The, the face shifted, becoming swirls of white, ribbed flesh, like curled-up maggots; a ridged expanse broken only by the unblinking eyes set in the middle. Then...

"Ignore him." Hephaestus grunted, his soot-stained ruddy face screwed up in concentration as he continued to cut at one of the monster's claws. He does that to disgust people. "Too stupid to realise I'd bring my mirror along if I wanted that."

"At least you were not created solely to be a weapon, blackmsith." Typhon sneered. "Then imprisoned by the enemies you failed to crush, and who harvest your body like mortals do with cattle."

Bound by chains both adamantine and immaterial, the venom of the snakes rising from Typhon's shoulders was regularly gathered, and used to cover the Olympians' weapons.

Hephaestus shook his head, saying nothing, thick black beard swaying as he worked the adamantine file(which looked more like a saw, if anything, given its size) along a claw the size of a mountain. Ages ago, these claws had parted Zeus' flesh and armour, before Typhon had ripped out his tendons: metaphysical mutilation, for any paltry spirit could remake mere wounds of the flesh. Now, if they could fashion them into wargear...

"But then my wife spoke to me." Typhon continued. "For the world's seas and heaven cannot fully keep us apart. She reminded me that, even if I broke free...what would I fight for? The half-slumbering, half-mad mother who birthed me because she needed a tool for revenge? The father who has never spoken to me?" The voice like a dozen avalanches softened. "You have killed so many of our children. She was sure you would kill the rest, and both of us, too."

Neither the Olympian nor the minotaur said anything, instead continuing to work on the nails. Typhon's boy spanned the island's underground, and his every movement could cause a disaster, which meant they had to be fast, but careful.

"And then, she came." He said, sounding wistful.

Just from hearing you? Damn, Aster thought drily. Mine doesn't like me that much yet.

But that was vanity speaking. The fact Eidolon loved him at all was...well. He had never expected anything but hatred from anyone but his mother.

***

Asterion ran clawed hands down his lover's arms. Flesh that, moments ago, had been as smooth as marble was now as cold as it, too. He could smell no blood, hear no heartbeat-but the woman, the statue, moved.

Gingerly, at first. As if surprised. Like him, when he had entered the world as a calf-instant, too twisted to suckle or graze, instead falling upon hiss mother's retinue and devouring them.

A fitting comparison, if his dull mind was any judge. She had, in a way, been born again.

Eidolon smiled sadly, looking down at her stone body with unblinking eyes. "It is her revenge, Aster. It is not your fault."

But it was. Saving Elsbeth Crane and leading her into the wider world-he doubted the demigoddess that would end up leading all hybrids like her inside ARC had truly perceived him, but he was sure she had known. Her ilk always did-had made him thinking he was some sort of hero, as opposed to a monster let off his leash and pointed at a target.

Hubris, pure and simple. And that never went unpunished.

The woman he had saved Eidolon from had made dozens of living mannequins, flesh dolls created by mixing and matching the most beautiful parts of the most beautiful corpses she could find. In a way, she hadn't truly hurt anyone, not even to feed her creations-for Eidolon and her siblings needed to regularly consume human flesh, lest their literally sculpted bodies fall apart. And for that, their creator found the people nobody would miss or bury. Dead or alive, though not for long, snatched from side alleys and crossroads and shallow, unmarked graves.

Maneaters still, Asterion had thought with a sneer. The Black Hunger's prey. He had put the mindless things out of their misery without any of them raising a hand in defence of themselves or each other, for they had been created to be beautiful, to please their creator by reflecting her skill back at her, not to fight.

Only Eidolon had been spared. She had been the smartest of them, or perhaps the strongest-willed. In the end, the distinction had been academical. When Asterion had seen the patchwork girl put herself between him and her wizened, mad mother, he had not devoured her, like he had her siblings. Soft-hearted. Instead, he had taken her into the world, leaving the terrified crone behind, showing Eidolon what her mother had killed so her siblings could live.

Eidolon had returned home to kill her mother herself.

After that, there had been bliss, for a few years. He had created a glorious image of himself, as Hades' virtuous enforcer, performing a grim, but necessary duty, and returning to the home of the woman who, though grown in body, was still learning to be human.

This...should have been their first night together. Truly together.

But Hera had found out about his intervention, and why had he imagined she wouldn't? Why had he fooled himself into thinking she would stand idle?

"Eidi." He said, voice choked with rage, caressing her stone flesh as gently as he could. "Can you feel anything?"

Still smiling, the statue took the minotaur's hand, pressing it against her face.

"I can feel your love, Aster."

***

Adam rose from sun-tanned clay, body unmarred save by a coating of dust. He remembered the Creator, speaking to him in a place of endless, colourless light, talking of his purpose, of his glorious destiny as his greatest creation...and son.

Adam walked through the garden, naming all the the plants and animals he could see-nonsensical gibberish, that would only be deciphered ages later, by his descendants.

Adam remembered growing wiser and wiser, lonelier and lonelier, wishing for something that would fill the void. He remembered asking the Creator for a companion-a wife-and being spurned.

The pain of the rejection brought him to one knee. Bracing himself on his hands, Adam looked down into the puddle, and beheld himself.

His stature was far greater than one might expect from a man, powerful, untiring muscles dancing under pale skin, marked by nothing save the stitches that held him together.

He knew, in the bottom of the void he had instead of a soul, that he had outgrown the stitches the moment he had killed his father. But still they remained, marking him in both the seen and unseen worlds, declaring how he had been created.

Adam snarled as he pushed himself to his feet. His body was beautiful, his hair long and dark, shining even in this alien, benighted jungle. Drawing a deep breath into dead lungs, feeling thick, black bile ooze through cold veins, Adam raised his fist, and brought it down upon the world.

Trillions of light-years away from Earth, beyond the universe known to man, there was a planet that shared Terra's dimensions, mass, and little more. The plants and animals that covered its surface were, in, truth, little more than tendrils of an unfathomably vast and ancient organism, that sought to assimilate whatever made contact with it.

Neither its acidic secretions nor pheromones, its crushing vines or noxious gases left any mark on Adam's patchwork body. His punch turned the organism to atoms, and its world to innumerable pieces, propelled countless kilometres away at speeds approaching light.

He had grown stronger, he could see that now. But...how had he come here? He had ran away from that frozen land, yes, ran from the humans and their stunted little minds, beyond their sphere of influence, beyond...

Their...

Sphere...

Adam squinted at the harsh, emerald light that could not harm his eyes, but made rage boil within the core of his being, for reasons he could not...ah.

Sunlight. He had never been able to truly walk into the light, on Earth. He had hidden.

The nameless green sun was larger and heavier than Sol, just as far from the former and only world that had orbited it as Sol was from Earth.

Leaping off a piece of debris, Adam cleared the hundred and fifty million kilometres between him and the star in less than a second, plunging through layers of emerald plasma, and reaching the star's core: a sphere of solid iron, dozens of times larger and heavier than Earth.

With a silent grunt, Adam seized the core, lifting it overhead and tossing it through the star's layers. Watching it make its way to the surface at a speed frozen to his dead eyes, Adam tensed, body bathed in flames hotter than any human nuke, and unharmed. Even his hair was cold when he leapt out of the gutted star to reach the core.

The headbutt that shattered the core into thumb-sized shards left a small bruise on Adam's forehead, which healed instantly. Then, standing on nothing, he turned to stare at the hateful lightbringer.

Adam, no matter what humans had grown to believe, had not been animated through lightning. He did not know what force had given him his mockery of life, and doubted even Victor had truly understood.

But he could feel the animus swirling inside him, hungry for anything, everything. Just like him, it wanted.

Adam nodded to himself. It was only fitting for desire to form the core of his being.

With a thought, Adam reached towards the gutted star, and drew it towards himself, far faster than light, faster than physics should have allowed it to move. Radiation, heat and plasma rushed to fill his mouth, parted in a joyous grin that showed perfect, human teeth. It passed through his pale skin and flesh without damaging it, coiling up inside him, for him to use and shape as he saw fit.

Somehow, in his slumber, he had unknowingly begun to walk the path of the creator.

***

"Do you see him, Sofia?" Gray Mann asked softly, one hand on their young companion's body. The witch's mouth was parted as she watched Frankenstein's Monster-not Frankenstein, Gray chided her, he was both dead and (metaphorically) buried, not just dead-destroy a world and unmake a star, all because he could. "Can you imagine, your mind in his body? You could make everyone be friends..."

Sofia grinned, a mind that could dominate billions of human rushing out of the bubble of space Gray had created for her, to sustain her and hide her from the Monster's senses. It covered millions of kilometres in moments, wrapping around the Monster-

And hit a brick wall. Nothing, The Monster was as impervious to mind control as any were or vampire, or strigoi-

"I see you." He said coldly, black eyes in a pale face somehow seeing her, despite her defences, piercing her soul. He had come again, to kill her friend and take her away and-

"I know what you want." He continued. "I am no longer anyone's tool. My purpose is for me to choose and fulfill."

Unknown to Adam, on Earth, at that moment, a strigoi echoed him, word for word, as he conjured up an image of a black-souled, black-hearted god.

And Gray Mann smiled at both.

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 3

***

"You're good, Silva." Gaol John grunted, with the air of finally getting rid of something unpleasant, but necessary.

If you add an 'un' before the 'necessary', you'll even have a description of me!

"Thank you, sir." I said, still sitting on the grass. "I was going to fish for compliments today, but, since you're just doing it..."

John crossed his arms. "I meant you're good to go, you smarmy little shit. I want your arse in Omu base as soon as possible, so you can acquaint yourself with the Crypt's senior Romanian agent," Wait, what? We'd gotten a new one? "And so we can free this cell."

"...It's a literal endless void. Can't you just-"

"Give you a cellmate? You want to stay here, Silva?" John crossed the half a dozen metres between us faster than I could see, leaving behind a series of red afterimages. His false flesh had sloughed away again, to reveal a skeletal, sarcastic grin. "Then get the hell out. Sensory deprivation is considered torture for people. I've heard they're even considering extending that to things like you."

Much as I hated his phrasing, he was right. Strigoi had the potential to go off the reservation any moment, which meant they were seen as undead time tombs across Eastern Europe, and killing one, if they were a criminal, was considered no different to putting down a dog. I remembered the psychological exam needed to get back into society after my undeath.

But then, most undead had it rough. Leaving aside the most of us couldn't sense the zombies that had no minds to think about how shit their unlives were, ghosts were almost always bags of issues obsessed with something, and ghouls were, well, ghouls and vampires. Eating and drinking their own flesh and blood could make them stronger, but it didn't sate them. They retained their sense of taste, and autophagy apparently left them with an aftertaste of cold mud. Human flesh and blood tasted the best, which was why labgrown variants were so popular with them.

Yes, there were still people who thought both the providers and the consumers were monstrous and we should just kill them all, but then, aren't there always?

But... "My, sir. For a ghost jenga puzzle, you're pretty damn good at throwing stones."

"Blatter all you want, Silva. Hypocrisy is something you define when you're safe enough you don't have to worry about survival. Security risks like you, who can't control their urges? I'd kill you all if I could. ARC doesn't need chinks in its armour."

"It lifts my heart to see you so worried about the good of the organisation."

"I told Reem to just brainwash you, you know." He said, raising an amused eyebrow at my surprised expression. "If she wanted to keep you around. But, damn, I've been telling her things like that for decades. She's all heart. The fact we could actually put a leash on you, unlike Gilles' animals, makes it even worse. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only one who cares..."

There was no way to reply politely to this, so I changed the subject. "I'm surprised you aren't more worried about how Chernobog can apparently just slip in and take over me-"

"We are. Hence why I've been advocating to kill you more than usual-after removing Mimir's sight, of course."

I stared blankly at him for a few moments, causing his grin to somehow widen. "Don't worry, David, that was just my idea. Most of the other Heads advocated for either executing you, and damn the gods, they can get mad about the sight being lost after, or removing the sight and imprisoning you until we decide what to do." He leaned forward. "But Reem argued that you can't be blamed for being manipulated by gods. I guess she knows what that's like. Another security risk...and Shiftskin, who begins frantically looking for his spine whenever she's present, agreed with her. Mind, he doesn't give a damn about you. You're just the latest thing he can use to court her...don't you feel honoured?"

I swallowed. "You keep calling me 'thing', and you know what? I might be a loser who felt too sorry for himself to stay dead...but you're thousands of people like me." I grinned, only regretting the fact my shapeshifting was locked down, and I wasn't naturally ugly enough to ape his face. "You're so obsessed with my sight? Maybe put down the 'restless ghost gestalt' mask when you look in the mirror."

John snorted, shaking his head. "Until now, only people worth a damn knew that. Go away, Silva. I've bound my senses to you, so I should be able to see when the universe is winding up for the next kick to your arse."

Ooh, he'd always be watching me? It'd be nice to get a BDSM's expert opinion, from time to time...

He stood still, hands in the pockets of a ragged ARC jacket over a prison shirt, head bowed. As I began moving away from him, waiting for the cell's controllers to let me out, I thought to get another shot in.

"By the way, I thought you should know, as Head of Internal Affairs: your security is shit. The fucking Devil waltzed in to-"

"Satan or Lucifer?"

"I don't know." I said, frustrated at both the fact I couldn't tell and his nonchalance. "He seemed angry enough for the former and smug enough for the latter, but-"

"We know, Silva. We've known he's marked you since you came back from the dead again." He gave me an ironic look over his shoulder, and I remembered the interrogations, how I'd spoken about...about my soul being judged. "Don't you think that we'd have stopped him if we could have? It's almost like you're not the only one being moved by higher powers. Anyway...changing between aspects in one sitting is concerning, but not unusual."

The fact he was too prideful and angry to feel both at once, which also led him to switching between powersets, had probably saved countless people over the years.

The last thing we need was a smug, literally unapproachable bastard who'd add the power of the few things able to damage him to his own.

"And, Silva? There are many people whose natures I hate, but I don't hate them. Stay in that category."

Sure, you xenophobic arsehole. Right after you stop hating people who never heard of those who tormented your selves just because they happen to descend from them or live in their country.

***

"It's not because I'm the best option," Rivka slumped in her chair. "I'm just...not the worst. I think I'm just filling in, anyway, until-"

"There's no one coming to replace you, Riv." I said, cheerful as ever. "Not unless they pull an agent from another country, but that'd just create another vacuum to be filled, and we'd get nowhere."

The ghoul blew out a raspberry, leaning backwards in her chair-it was made for rolling around, but also sturdy enough to withstand the many people who'd use it for far more-to stare at the ceiling. Milky grey eyes closed, fangs bared and dressed in a black shirt and combat pants, like I was, she looked like a resting shark.

"No, we wouldn't." She said grudgingly, one clawed hand toying with her thick, black ponytail. She opened one eye to glance at me. "Gaol John sent me a message that said he's got his eye on you," With how many eyes I had on me, I'd end up looking like a cluster of grapes. "So I can tell you about this. How much do you know about ARC's internal structure, David?"

"Not much." I said, annoyed. "I've basically spent the last few years as a paid intern."

"What, and no one told me? Go fetch me something from the freezer, Silva. I'm your boss now." She added, holding up a finger as she shifted in her chair to look straight at me. "We can't just keep you sitting in one place! What if your muscles atrophy?"

"I have muscles?" I blinked, looking blearily at my stretched arms.

"I once had a dog we always kept leashed, and he died! Of old age. But I doubt the lack of freedom helped with his mood."

I sighed. Sure felt like someone's dog right now. "Did they tell you...?"

"Yes." Her eyes grew more serious, all mirth leaving her face. "And I don't think you're dumb enough to think I blame you. That'd be impressive, even for you."

"Wow, thanks..."

"You're welcome." Her gaze softened. "David...I can't really do anything about the fact some overpowered bully seems hellbent on fucking your life up." Then her expression turned fierce. "I can, however, smack you whenever you start moaning about how you don't want or deserve to live. The first is utter bullshit, or you wouldn't be here. The second? Well, you're wrong."

I looked down at my hands. To Mimir's sight, they were red, redder than anyone's I'd ever met. "He made me kill so many people, Rivka..."

"The Fae?" She asked softly. "They wouldn't have seen you as a person even before your undeath. The Seelie might honour deals and warn people who've mistakenly wronged them, but they don't see anyone as an equal. They only have servants and enemies."

I didn't say anything. Maybe all those Fae had been racist, speciesist bastards, but had they all been kidnappers? Murderers? What had they done in their Wild Hunts-those who had been on them?

"I know what you're thinking about." Rivka had moved faster than I could perceive, as she'd been able to do since her growth in power, leaning across her desk to put a hand on my shoulder. "And I think you're still reeling from the scale. You'd think the possession would put some separation between the deed and your feelings on it, but it seems to do the opposite." She smiled crookedly. "Here's an idea: you have to train your sight anyway, right? I mean, it's the only useful thing you can really do. So, why don't you check out their pasts? You'll get better at it, and probably at finding new ways to blame yourself, too."

Fucking-why hadn't I thought about that? "Thanks, Riv." Then, bowing my head exaggeratedly, I added, "The criminal always returns to the scene of the-"

Rivka's slim, calloused hand tore through my chest like paper, wrapping around my spine and snapping it in half. "What'd I tell you?"

"I was joking!" I protested, pulling back in my visitor's chair as I healed.

"Bad joke." Rivka's tongue darted out, blurring over the cold gore covering her hand and cleaning it up. "Don't start spouting shit like that around people who give a damn about you." 'So feel free to do it when you talk to yourself.' Her tired eyes said. "You'll remain here until we find a way to free you, provided we don't need to move you to another ARC base."

Which meant I wouldn't be seeing anyone close to me, besides Mia, until the whole mess was over. Maybe it was for the better. I wouldn't want any of them to see me like this. Pops would...

"You were saying something about our internal structure?" I asked her in order to distract myself.

Rivka nodded. "Your phone is being updated remotely right now, so you'll get to read through everything yourself, but, in short...ARC holds a lot of elections. I haven't been in any since my recruitment," Rivka was nearly a decade younger than me, but had been an ARC agent since she'd become a ghoul, in her early twenties. "Because Marcus was Romania's senior agent since shortly after ARC built bases in this country, but it goes like this: all the grunts a division has in a country choose one from among them as senior agent. These guys then choose the Heads-who, you may or may not know, haven't changed since ARC's founding, except for the Scion and Salem division Heads. There are only three ranks, to keep it simple, and no insignia, to confuse snipers. Many supernaturals can cross continents in second and communicate even faster, so there's no need for an overly-intricate command structure. We say." She chuckled drily. "Your probationary period would have ended before the Headhunt, if not for...well."

Well, indeed. "What about the Directors?"

"What about them." Rivka rolled her eyes. "Each country's director is appointed by its government, usually but not always from among law enforcement or military veterans. Since they're political appointees, they're meant to make sure ARC doesn't overstep its boundaries, so they work with Internal Affairs a lot, but make no mistake: a Director liaises between us and the government more than anything else. The senior agents handle national operations." The ghoul clasped her hands on her cheeks with exaggerated cheerfulness. "Which makes for such fun times in the countries the division headquarters are in! You should see Tamar butting heads with Israel's director. It's hilarious."

Before I could reply, a ping caught my attention, and I took out my phone. "Thanks for the cliff notes," I told Rivka. "But it seems like I've got the full package."

The ghoul's eyebrows nearly met her hairline, and I realised my mistake. "That zmeu's really been rubbing off on you, huh? I suppose it was inevitable."

"H-Hey, I meant-"

"It's alright, David." She said airily. "I get pretty excited when I receive full packages, too. Maybe we can go pick up guys later."

I buried my head in my hands, rubbing my face, but didn't groan. "Am I really out of my internship if you just keep ribbing me like this?"

"By that logic, you'll never be." Rivka lowered her voice. "And it's a paid internship, chump. So go get me some meat."

"Yes ma'am."

"Maybe even a full package..."

"Alright." By now, I was more concentrated on my phone than on her: a transformation even more horrifying than my undeath. I was turning into a modern teenager. I saw that new app, the ARChive, which had our white shield on black, with an open grey book inside it as a symbol, had been installed. I gave Rivka a questioning look.

"The book is grey because knowledge is neutral." She said in a nasal voice. "You can leaf through the longer synopsis on ARC later. Right now, you'll probably want to check the forum."

Crypt section, to be exact. I'd check the Romania subsection later. I already had a profile, with my name, picture(they'd used the one from my ID, so I looked like I was caught between life and undeath, but belonged to neither) and country already filled in. But that wasn't what caught my eye. No, that came when I looked through the Crypt members list. Not all of them, obviously-ARC had millions of official agents, never mind the ones we didn't talk about-but a name still drew my attention.

"Szabo is a moderator!?"

What the everloving fuck did that twisted bastard prevent?

I raised my undoubtedly wide eyes to meet Rivka's amused ones. "Please tell me you treat him as an example of what not to do..."

***

"Angus." Constantin said stiffly as he walked forward to meet the other priest. "I see God still burdens you."

At two metres twenty-four, Angus was nearly half a metre taller than the Romanian, and his laugh befitted his stature. "Burdened, am I? How, pray tell?"

Constantin felt all the eyes burning holes into his back, and resisted the urge to roll his. "You often have to interact with people you can't stand. Trust me, I know your pain."

Grimacing, Angus raised a huge, muscular hand, Constantin mirroring his move in response.

Then, the Irishman brought it down, clasped around the Romanian's.

"Costiii..."Angus whistled through his teeth. "Still a morose fuck, eh? We could've broken the bloody continent with that!"

"There are many things we could do." Constantin agreed. "For example, you could stop swearing like a sailor when you're wearing your cloth of office."

"Ha! Then I can stop drinkin' an' smokin' an shaggin' too, right?"

"If you wish." Constantin said diplomatically. "I doubt God would mind."

"No." Angus drew his hand back. "No, She wouldn't. But there's worse vices to 'ave, and, as long as no one's hurt..."

Constantin knew his...friend, was extremely paranoid about sex. He only ever slept with sterile women, and even then he blessed the protection he used.

An absurd use of faithcraft, if he was one to ask, but Angus only asked for his opinion(through messages, in the last decade. Thankfully) when he wanted to know what not to do.

Constantin sighed. "I know what you're going to say-"

"That pet corpse of yours has been getting slapped around ever since he got that hemp tie, from what the Lady tells me." The Catholic priest grinned harshly. "Imagine yer suicide being the happiest life of your life, huh?" His eyes grew steely. "You should've killed him right then, Constantin. Put 'im outta everyone's misery."

"And murder my son?"

Angus drew in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, so that it sounded more like a whistle. "Not yer son. Son of two worthless fucks, an' a suicide. And what's he been doing since then?"

Helping people, you lecherous fool, Constantin thought. David's day-to-day missions, the ones that had never become known to the world at large, had been nothing but that, for three years. But, of course, everyone wanted shock and controversy, something spectacular, and... "David has found happiness. God willing, it'll help him overcome all future obstacles."

"Tch." Angus sneered. "God willing, She'd smite him so the sad fuck doesn't have to hurt anymore. Have you noticed none of us are tormented like he is? The Lady's way of telling him to stop the mockery that is a strigoi fuckin' praying." He chuckled. "But he can't take the hint! No hint! Otherwise why'd he have started fucking that cuckolding whore-"

The Irishman swirled his shattered teeth around his blood-filled mouth, looking down at Constantin to see the shorter priest raise an eyebrow. Shaking his head with a sad smile, he healed the damage. "I'll pretend your hand slipped, Costi."

"Like I'm sure your tongue will again, now that I've wet it a little." The Romanian replied.

"See? This is exactly the problem. You hear the truth an' respond with violence. You raised the little hypocritical shite to think like you, an' now he's a goddamn walkin' paradox! But, you know what? I won't get angry at you. I'll turn the other cheek-"

Angus blinked stars out of his eyes as he pulled his head free out of a pile of icy dust, watching the half of the Arctic that had been shattered by the strike drift across the ocean.

"Did that for you." Constantin said, wiping his bloodied fist on his surplice. "Feel free to preach when you stop shaming your cloth."

Angus got to his feet with an exasperated groan. Blind. The Romanian was blind, like the other sects, like the pagans. Blind...

"I never have." The Irishman huffed, then turned to the gathered priests. "What are y'all sittin' on yer arses for!? We're 'ere t' talk about crises of faith! Is the End of Days comin'? Where the goddamn fook did Chernobog's latest worshippers spring from?"

And, more urgently, he'd have to talk to the Scandinavians, about Constantin's revenant, and whether or not to change their sagas. After all, the strigoi, whether pssessed or not, had murdered...

***

Asgard, Borson Cluster, 2030

"Thor."

Sif sat in a field of golden wheat under a sky full of clouds as thick as grey as lead. To a casual observer, the goddess might have appeare to be alone, but she could feel his presence, like she had always been able to, even before their wedding.

As if in response, a breeze passed over her pauldrons, but she felt the wind under her golden armour, and it was more like the touch of a hand than anything else.

"Can you hear me?"

His shade only responded to Odin's summons, when the Allfather called it to drill the Einherjii. Nowadays, with fate gone, the warriors were no longer immortal, no matter what, until Ragnarok- and if that ever came, no one was sure what form it would take.

But Sif did not care for Odin's company at the moment. And she feared the spirit he summoned was only a simulacrum of Thor, a repository of his memories, jerked upon his father's strings.

"I have asked them to make you a body, husband." She spoke softly to the wind, which whispered in reply. "A body of oak and earth, of lightning and thunder."

The sky went white for an instant, then shook, as if the World Tree was going to end.

"Loki labours alongside the dwarfs, and the foreigners." The device Sindri had thought would help find Mimir's head had only been half-finished when everything had gone wrong. The dwarf had not given up, though, altering his work instead of abandoning it. "I fear what paths his mind would take him down, without this to focus on."

A gale howled across the field, like a sharp, mournful sigh.

"Our children," Her voice caught a little at this. "Have split your weapons among themselves. Magni bears your hammer, Modi your gauntlets, and Thrud your belt..."

Sif trailed off, attention drawn by a scrabbling in the ground. When she saw was the wind had carved, she couldn't hold back her laughter.

Did they give her Megingjord because she's a girl? They know I was fatter than her, right?

Yes. Her husband...could definitely hear her.

***

Rigel, 2030

The Sleeper awoke under the glare of a blue giant star. Tens of times as heavy as the sun of the world it had been banished from and tens of thousands of times as luminous, it was surrounded by a ring of softly-glowing dust: all that remained of the Sleeper's city.

But...this was wrong. The stars were wrong. They were different, not aligned. The city's destruction should have freed it, but it still felt drowsy. Why? How?

A fist the size of a moon smashed into the Sleeper's tentacled face, sending it flying through Rigel, obliterating the star.

The fist-shaped indent in the Sleeper's squamous head disappeared in moments. It had not been actually harmed, by the punch or the impact, but it had not been truly awakened either.

"Sleepy? Good! All the pay for half the work!" Maws proclaimed cheerfully. Though large enough to wrap around Earth several times, the zmeu's body was minuscule next to the Sleeper's.

This did not deter him. Nor did the Sleeper's indignant shriek, which unmade reality for light-years around, replacing it with madness that erased matter, energy, space and time alike.

"Ahhh~" Maws sighed as he flew to face the Sleeper. "This is making me nostalgic..."

***

Sicily, Kaos Cluster, 2030

"I thought about breaking free," Typhon rumbled. "When you were running around after knowledge, like chickens with their heads cut off. Perhaps I will rip them off, and see if you act like that again."

One moment, the monster's face, which filled most of Etna's interior, looked like that of a man, if enlarged to grotesque proportions, with skin black as coal and a beard as red as blood. Glancing at it, Asterion could see why he had been equated with Set.

The, the face shifted, becoming swirls of white, ribbed flesh, like curled-up maggots; a ridged expanse broken only by the unblinking eyes set in the middle. Then...

"Ignore him." Hephaestus grunted, his soot-stained ruddy face screwed up in concentration as he continued to cut at one of the monster's claws. He does that to disgust people. "Too stupid to realise I'd bring my mirror along if I wanted that."

"At least you were not created solely to be a weapon, blackmsith." Typhon sneered. "Then imprisoned by the enemies you failed to crush, and who harvest your body like mortals do with cattle."

Bound by chains both adamantine and immaterial, the venom of the snakes rising from Typhon's shoulders was regularly gathered, and used to cover the Olympians' weapons.

Hephaestus shook his head, saying nothing, thick black beard swaying as he worked the adamantine file(which looked more like a saw, if anything, given its size) along a claw the size of a mountain. Ages ago, these claws had parted Zeus' flesh and armour, before Typhon had ripped out his tendons: metaphysical mutilation, for any paltry spirit could remake mere wounds of the flesh. Now, if they could fashion them into wargear...

"But then my wife spoke to me." Typhon continued. "For the world's seas and heaven cannot fully keep us apart. She reminded me that, even if I broke free...what would I fight for? The half-slumbering, half-mad mother who birthed me because she needed a tool for revenge? The father who has never spoken to me?" The voice like a dozen avalanches softened. "You have killed so many of our children. She was sure you would kill the rest, and both of us, too."

Neither the Olympian nor the minotaur said anything, instead continuing to work on the nails. Typhon's boy spanned the island's underground, and his every movement could cause a disaster, which meant they had to be fast, but careful.

"And then, she came." He said, sounding wistful.

Just from hearing you? Damn, Aster thought drily. Mine doesn't like me that much yet.

But that was vanity speaking. The fact Eidolon loved him at all was...well. He had never expected anything but hatred from anyone but his mother.

***

Asterion ran clawed hands down his lover's arms. Flesh that, moments ago, had been as smooth as marble was now as cold as it, too. He could smell no blood, hear no heartbeat-but the woman, the statue, moved.

Gingerly, at first. As if surprised. Like him, when he had entered the world as a calf-instant, too twisted to suckle or graze, instead falling upon hiss mother's retinue and devouring them.

A fitting comparison, if his dull mind was any judge. She had, in a way, been born again.

Eidolon smiled sadly, looking down at her stone body with unblinking eyes. "It is her revenge, Aster. It is not your fault."

But it was. Saving Elsbeth Crane and leading her into the wider world-he doubted the demigoddess that would end up leading all hybrids like her inside ARC had truly perceived him, but he was sure she had known. Her ilk always did-had made him thinking he was some sort of hero, as opposed to a monster let off his leash and pointed at a target.

Hubris, pure and simple. And that never went unpunished.

The woman he had saved Eidolon from had made dozens of living mannequins, flesh dolls created by mixing and matching the most beautiful parts of the most beautiful corpses she could find. In a way, she hadn't truly hurt anyone, not even to feed her creations-for Eidolon and her siblings needed to regularly consume human flesh, lest their literally sculpted bodies fall apart. And for that, their creator found the people nobody would miss or bury. Dead or alive, though not for long, snatched from side alleys and crossroads and shallow, unmarked graves.

Maneaters still, Asterion had thought with a sneer. The Black Hunger's prey. He had put the mindless things out of their misery without any of them raising a hand in defence of themselves or each other, for they had been created to be beautiful, to please their creator by reflecting her skill back at her, not to fight.

Only Eidolon had been spared. She had been the smartest of them, or perhaps the strongest-willed. In the end, the distinction had been academical. When Asterion had seen the patchwork girl put herself between him and her wizened, mad mother, he had not devoured her, like he had her siblings. Soft-hearted. Instead, he had taken her into the world, leaving the terrified crone behind, showing Eidolon what her mother had killed so her siblings could live.

Eidolon had returned home to kill her mother herself.

After that, there had been bliss, for a few years. He had created a glorious image of himself, as Hades' virtuous enforcer, performing a grim, but necessary duty, and returning to the home of the woman who, though grown in body, was still learning to be human.

This...should have been their first night together. Truly together.

But Hera had found out about his intervention, and why had he imagined she wouldn't? Why had he fooled himself into thinking she would stand idle?

"Eidi." He said, voice choked with rage, caressing her stone flesh as gently as he could. "Can you feel anything?"

Still smiling, the statue took the minotaur's hand, pressing it against her face.

"I can feel your love, Aster."

***

Adam rose from sun-tanned clay, body unmarred save by a coating of dust. He remembered the Creator, speaking to him in a place of endless, colourless light, talking of his purpose, of his glorious destiny as his greatest creation...and son.

Adam walked through the garden, naming all the the plants and animals he could see-nonsensical gibberish, that would only be deciphered ages later, by his descendants.

Adam remembered growing wiser and wiser, lonelier and lonelier, wishing for something that would fill the void. He remembered asking the Creator for a companion-a wife-and being spurned.

The pain of the rejection brought him to one knee. Bracing himself on his hands, Adam looked down into the puddle, and beheld himself.

His stature was far greater than one might expect from a man, powerful, untiring muscles dancing under pale skin, marked by nothing save the stitches that held him together.

He knew, in the bottom of the void he had instead of a soul, that he had outgrown the stitches the moment he had killed his father. But still they remained, marking him in both the seen and unseen worlds, declaring how he had been created.

Adam snarled as he pushed himself to his feet. His body was beautiful, his hair long and dark, shining even in this alien, benighted jungle. Drawing a deep breath into dead lungs, feeling thick, black bile ooze through cold veins, Adam raised his fist, and brought it down upon the world.

Trillions of light-years away from Earth, beyond the universe known to man, there was a planet that shared Terra's dimensions, mass, and little more. The plants and animals that covered its surface were, in, truth, little more than tendrils of an unfathomably vast and ancient organism, that sought to assimilate whatever made contact with it.

Neither its acidic secretions nor pheromones, its crushing vines or noxious gases left any mark on Adam's patchwork body. His punch turned the organism to atoms, and its world to innumerable pieces, propelled countless kilometres away at speeds approaching light.

He had grown stronger, he could see that now. But...how had he come here? He had ran away from that frozen land, yes, ran from the humans and their stunted little minds, beyond their sphere of influence, beyond...

Their...

Sphere...

Adam squinted at the harsh, emerald light that could not harm his eyes, but made rage boil within the core of his being, for reasons he could not...ah.

Sunlight. He had never been able to truly walk into the light, on Earth. He had hidden.

The nameless green sun was larger and heavier than Sol, just as far from the former and only world that had orbited it as Sol was from Earth.

Leaping off a piece of debris, Adam cleared the hundred and fifty million kilometres between him and the star in less than a second, plunging through layers of emerald plasma, and reaching the star's core: a sphere of solid iron, dozens of times larger and heavier than Earth.

With a silent grunt, Adam seized the core, lifting it overhead and tossing it through the star's layers. Watching it make its way to the surface at a speed frozen to his dead eyes, Adam tensed, body bathed in flames hotter than any human nuke, and unharmed. Even his hair was cold when he leapt out of the gutted star to reach the core.

The headbutt that shattered the core into thumb-sized shards left a small bruise on Adam's forehead, which healed instantly. Then, standing on nothing, he turned to stare at the hateful lightbringer.

Adam, no matter what humans had grown to believe, had not been animated through lightning. He did not know what force had given him his mockery of life, and doubted even Victor had truly understood.

But he could feel the animus swirling inside him, hungry for anything, everything. Just like him, it wanted.

Adam nodded to himself. It was only fitting for desire to form the core of his being.

With a thought, Adam reached towards the gutted star, and drew it towards himself, far faster than light, faster than physics should have allowed it to move. Radiation, heat and plasma rushed to fill his mouth, parted in a joyous grin that showed perfect, human teeth. It passed through his pale skin and flesh without damaging it, coiling up inside him, for him to use and shape as he saw fit.

Somehow, in his slumber, he had unknowingly begun to walk the path of the creator.

***

"Do you see him, Sofia?" Gray Mann asked softly, one hand on their young companion's body. The witch's mouth was parted as she watched Frankenstein's Monster-not Frankenstein, Gray chided her, he was both dead and (metaphorically) buried, not just dead-destroy a world and unmake a star, all because he could. "Can you imagine, your mind in his body? You could make everyone be friends..."

Sofia grinned, a mind that could dominate billions of human rushing out of the bubble of space Gray had created for her, to sustain her and hide her from the Monster's senses. It covered millions of kilometres in moments, wrapping around the Monster-

And hit a brick wall. Nothing, The Monster was as impervious to mind control as any were or vampire, or strigoi-

"I see you." He said coldly, black eyes in a pale face somehow seeing her, despite her defences, piercing her soul. He had come again, to kill her friend and take her away and-

"I know what you want." He continued. "I am no longer anyone's tool. My purpose is for me to choose and fulfill."

Unknown to Adam, on Earth, at that moment, a strigoi echoed him, word for word, as he conjured up an image of a black-souled, black-hearted god.

And Gray Mann smiled at both.

[Strigoi Grey]

Buried Again, Chapter 4

***

Irrian Kzelze, Captain, former leader of his village. Died at the age of five hundred and three, impaled on an iron pike.

Laisha Gzar, Aetherspeaker. Joined the Seelie Army to escape a boring life as a public announcer. Died at the age of three hundred eighty-four, impaled on an iron pike.

Asharr Nayve, sapper. Prankster turned arsonist, then offered the chance between service and imprisonment. Died at the age of six hundred thirty-two, impaled on an iron pike.

Csalna Silse...

I turned my eyes back to the present with a sigh. Most of the Fae whose pasts I'd seen so far had been people with, by their standards, mundane lives and names. Admittedly, I'd started with the Seelie, because their pasts were more likely to be palatable on average. I wondered if Coldhold had given me a literal translation of his name, or if it had been a title. I didn't know much about Fae naming conventions and how they varied between factions, because they were all cryptic or misleading when they actually chose to interact with our world.

Still... I'd expected worse. I'd, in a way, wanted worse. Had wanted them to be abhorrent, so that my subconscious could rest easy, despite the fact I didn't really want to...forget it.

If I ended up just taking things like this in stride, I'd become more like Szabo, or even-

Forget that, human, my strigoi side spat. We didn't do anything, not that they didn't deserve it.

I clicked my tongue, but it just kept talking.

You think every parent whose child is kidnapped or replaced with a changeling thinks about the Fae's backstories? I bet every corpse under this world's skin you won't find a single Fair Fuck who didn't go along with that.

We don't know that yet. And-

Yes, yes, keep searching. And don't you start talking about how, by my logic, you're just as bad as all our kin. I wish you believed that! I wish you acted like them! It paced around in the back of our mind. Imagine how we would be seen, if we had done everything the Black God made us do out of our own volition! How feared we'd be! How-

How much Mia would hate us.

More pacing. A gnashing of fangs, thoughtful, with an undertone of sadness. I don't want that. And wipe that stupid smirk off your face, human!

Pussy.

We are what we eat. It shrugged. Anyway...keep looking through their pasts. Maybe you'll convince yourself of whatever you want. Maybe you'll even improve the sight! Get on my level, that is, it preened. You know, it would be oh so much easier to just let me take over. Go to sleep and forget all about those pesky moral conflicts.

How weak was I to consider its offer, even for a moment? Even if it didn't get worse over time, it would-

I wouldn't harm anyone you truly care about, human, it smiled blandly. Our zmeu would be safe-isn't that enough for you? The bear would have to go, of course. You won't truly be at peace until he dies, not if someone or something else kills him. The ghost, too-the weakling plotted with him, and you still hate that. You can't stand the other zmeu's boisterousness, for it clashes with your own demeanour, and are conflicted by the fact the iela never chose you. Better to tie up those loose ends too, eh? You don't resent the mage enough for him to die, so...hmph. And then, of course, there's the priest.

Go to hell.

You first~

***
Cnicht, Snowdonia, Wales, January 13th 2031

Emrys Pritchard stood nearly seven hundred metres above the ground, hands clasped behind his back, as he watched the sun set. The lich's eyes, the cold blue flames that burned in his sockets with no fuel and no smoke, could see every blade on grass between him and the horizon, and every soul, great and small, that walked or crawled under and on them.

The beasts were the only living beings around the mountain at the moment. People had frequented before he had chosen the mountain as the bedrock of his lair, though they had avoided Cnicht more and more often since then.

As they should. Mere mortals had no place disturbing the mediations of a great thinker like h-

"Message! Message for the master! Message!"

Of course, before being a lich, Emrys was in his mid-twenties, which meant he leapt to check out any notification, whatever form it took. His zombie crow was just more charming than his smartphone.

Alright, it also creeped the hell out of most passersby, especially when he made it eat itself from the inside out, then regenerate, but that was the point! Undead were meant to frighten and appall, disturb and shock. It...it was all those stupid sexy vampires-

Movies. It was all those stupid sexy vampire movies. He was through with being distracted by her-them! Yesss....his mind was like his observatory under a cloudless, moonless night, cold and unflappable.

"Bring it, servant." He commanded, waving a hand and silently cursing himself for not yet buying one of those robes with long, loose sleeves. They were comfy-that was, befitting of an unliving abomination against nature like him. Until then, he'd have to do with his t-shirt.

His crow landed on his outstretched hand, leaving him feeling rather stupid. He hadn't commanded it to do that, nor wanted it to. He had only been a necromancer a few years before the death he had not accepted, thus returning from the grave. The greater power was nice, but he was stillat the stage where his undead sometimes acted as if they still had free will, which often led to embarrassing situations.

Still...not always. Would he miss the unexpected, comical mishaps once his mastery grew? Such thoughts tormented him on sleepless nights(which was all of them, but he was not about to let facts interrupt his train of thought).

"It is not a physical message, master." The crow croaked, tilting its head. "I shall, however, recite it, if it pleases you."

For a soulless, stupid bird corpse, it was way too much of a smartarse for its own good. He'd torn it up a few times, frustrated with its attitude, to no effect. All undead raised by necromancers regenerated from anything as long as their masters existed, and liches...liches were nigh-impossible to get rid of. As his parents could attest. They'd cited the need for him to make his own way into the world, but he was sure they'd just hated the corpse smell, the insensitive pricks.

"The message," The crow's voice, a wheezing rattle only made possible through magic, seemed to waver, as if it had suddenly become capableof feeling fear. Emrys frowned in surprise. He definitely wouldn't be missing this facet of independence once he got rid of it. Undead shouldn't frighten each other, they should stand together, presenting an united front against an existence just as cold and uncaring as their unbeating hearts. "Is this: we are here."

"Wh-" Was all Emrys managed to get out before the crow burst apart on his wrist, replaced by a grey leather boot. The lich's head snapped up seven times faster than sound, but all he saw was the Fae smile down at him, before stomping down on his face, smashing him through the ground and into the mountain.

Emrys stood up from a dusty crater the size of a bus, unharmed save for his pride. The nakedness didn't help. Surprise stripping was never good, in his experience, whoever did it.

The lich didn't have any idea what the Fae wanted. But, judging by the drab getup-a suit of armour plates that overlapped each other like the petals of a particularly ugly flower-and the cocksure smirk, the pointy-eared fuck was probably a straggler from the Fright Before Christmas.

Ugh. At least he was just fast, not strong. From what mana Emrys could sense, this Fae couldn't do much more with magic than he could physically, which begged the question: exactly what was he hoping to accomplish, besides find out how much iron he could be stuffed with before he burst? In short order, he'd call on his other servants, and then, thee intruder...

Intruders. Of course. Jackals always hunted in packs, and so did jackasses, apparently. What about jackdaws?

Snickering to himself, Emrys spun his neck all the way around, flames flaring up at each Unseelie in turn. "Thanks for surrounding me. Now, it's impossible to miss." Then, both his eyes and his voice grew colder. "You're lucky we're alone on the mountain tonight. Otherwi-"

Emrys growled, teeth clenched. Whatever Fae had struck him in the jaw, pulverising the rock of his porch-lair entrance-for metres around, had moved to him and back to their spot far faster than he could see. But that was child's play for them. They could all outpace lightning, so why weren't they doing anything...?

Ah, of course, Emrys realised, standing up straighter, slim chest puffing. They were afraid of him, but who could blame them? Who hadn't heard of the Lich of Cnicht?

Or his servants, for that matter?

The granite dome of Emrys' lair had two dozen doors. Each hour, one opened, an enchanted vessel floating outside to catch sunlight or moonlight for spells. Now, all twenty-four slid aside, allowing dozens of bulky bodies to enter at speeds that not only belied their bloated frames, but surpassed those of the Fae themselves.

Trolls were notoriously hard to kill, and not just because it was easier to level countries than bruise one. Magic and the strangest effects science could produce slid off them like water off a duck's back, and they could regenerate from anything that did damage them.

Except, of course, the power of the sun that turned them to stone.

It had been a pain in the arse to shape so much sunlight into weapons and sneak up on the bastards while they slept, but it had been worth it. It would have been just for the challenge, not just the respect of so many Welsh. Trolls were like stupidly strong gorillas who thought they were racoons. These, at least, hadn't been sapient, or else it would have been harder to catch them offguard. But smart trolls lurked on the internet, or under bridges, not in the dumpsters behind pubs.

Emrys smirked as he floated up high in the air, grey hair free from its usual ponytail, rising over twenty metres above his ten-story lair. His death magic would be useless against the Fae, and they'd just regenerate if he blasted them apart. Either approach would result in a lifeless wasteland and a flattened mountain.

Before the Fae could direct their powers at the environment, the undead trolls were upon them, pushing them down and shattering skulls and limbs every time they tried to move, with broad grins under their bulbous noses and beady eyes shining with the cold fire of their master. Muttering a spell, Emrys transmuted a tiny amount of air into an iron knife.

Now...to get some answers from them, he thought, scratching his soul patch. He still hadn't gotten over the fact their punk-ass invasion had preempted the wave of bullshit that had seen him evicted(evacuated, they had said) from his own home, and while he was trying to get it on again! That werewolf had been so c,ute too...

Emrys touched down, twirling the knife as he approached one of the Fae. The arsehole who'd kicked him, he thought, though it was kind of hard to tell with a troll sitting on his back and repeatedly flattening his skull.

"Why are you here?" He rasped, knife just under the Fae's chin. "Is this another attack?"

He'd seen some bollocks in the paper(no, he wasn't an old man, he bought it for the jokes and the crossword puzzles) about some asshole from ARC who'd apparently killed off the Fae army because he believed they were in league with Satan or whatever. He hadn't paid much attention, but the prick had sounded like a Bible-thumping asshat. Fuck...was this revenge? Were they striking back? Emrys personally believed they were about even with the Fae, but he doubted people would listen to him, the fools.

They never did, but he'd make them see, oh yes he would. He'd show them all!

Before the Fae could answer, the troll having just paused its onslaught, a tall, lithe shape dropped between him and Emrys, causing the lich to draw back.

Unprompted, the troll smashed a ham-sized fist into the figure's left side before Emrys could get a good look at them, sending them flying. Scant moments later, the lick looked up at the moon, face falling at the satellite's newest crater. Damn thing looked both wide and deep enough to swallow Britain.

Fucking unreliable zombies-!

The figure returned to their prior position even faster than they had been sent flying, and looking perfectly fine. Perfectly fucking fine, actually, if Emrys was one to say.

The Fae was neck and shoulders taller than him, muscles like a panther's under gunmetal-grey skin, and completely, gloriously naked. Her body was only covered by a few patches of shadow, which writhed and throbbed in Emrys' arcane sight.

The lich choked on nothing, his body still used to human motions. "W-Who-" Gulping, he gestured at the restrained Fae. "Why?"

The shadow-clad Fae giggled, then pushed him to the ground faster than he could perceive.

"Let me show you why." She breathed.

***
Emrys stood up on legs that were still healing, pelvis regenerating for the umpteenth time. Dawn was approaching, and it seemed the Fae had grown bored, for she certainly hadn't grown tired.

"So..." He began hesitantly, then injected some confidence he wasn't sure he felt in his voice. "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Receiving no response, he walked closer as she drew her shadows around herself. "I suppose they've heard about the Lich of Cnicht even in Fairie."

She half-turned to him, bemused, half-lidded eyes slightly widening. "Ah...we are swapping names now! I am Cloudshade of the Everdark, and completely uninterested in yours." At his gaping expression, she added, "Oh, you can call me Shade, if you wish."

"Completely uninterested in..." Emrys echoed. "Then why-!?"

"I was bored." Shade shrugged. "Still am, but it is not yet time...hmm. Maybe I should have gone with one of your slaves. Roughly as smart, but so much bigger~"

"You damn bitch!" He screeched, mana flaring up around him. "You jump me in my own home, then get your rocks off, and don't give a fuck? Then why are you here? Is...is it that foray into Fairie? Are you going after New Camelot?"

"Oh, them." Shade waved him off. "Their time will come, too, but that is not my place, nor will it be, unless." She giggled again. "Oh, but I'm rambling. As I said, I was just passing time until the proper moment. Now, can your brutes let my people go?"

"Proper moment for what?" Emrys asked, curious despite himself, as he made his trolls free the Fae. He had to admit, making them watch had been pretty hot.

"For going to David Silva, of course." Shade looked at him like he was slow, and Emrys wracked his memory, until he remembered that section of the paper.

"Silva...who, that religious fanatic who tried to commit genocide in Fairie? Do you wanna kill him yourself, or what?"

"I would rather avoid that." Shade said, amused, and Emrys noticed her thighs were still covered in his cold blood and bone dust as she strode. "Silva will help us remove the blight in our realm, or help us find a new home. He will pay in blood too, of course, but...hmm. Perhaps, not so much. He was just a tool, after all."

"Yeah, he sounds pretty dickish from what I've read." Emrys aggreed, though he was uneasy at the fact she'd dismissed a killer bigger than any in human history-by orders of magnitude!-as 'just a tool'. "Still," He scowled. "Next time, at least tell me why, alright? And the home raid was, what, an attempt to grab by attention?"

"You could say that." Shade stretched, and her shadows lengthened, quickly scooping up the patches of gore that covered her. "Not that you will get the chance."

And then, she and the rest of the Fae were gone. Emrys tried to sense them, but felt a heavy hand land on his shoulder, cracking it in half. He tried to turn, but was forced onto his knees.

"And what," Arianrhod growled, gesturing at the still-visible moon with a hand just as white and pockmarked as it. "Did your tool do to my moon above my land?"

"I-You-" What the fuck was the Welsh moon goddess doing here...? Was it the crater? But that had been unintentional! She had to know! She- "Wait." He managed. "How long had you been watching?"

"Long enough to know I'd have time after she was done with you." Arianrhod replied. "Unlike some people, I'm not utterly tasteless."

***
English Channel, 14th of January, 2031

"What now, Everdark?" One of her misfits-it was getting harder and harder to remember faces, let alone names, for all that they were more important; still, she told herself, it wasn't her fault they all insisted to be so insignificant-asked as they walked on the tides, far from the sight of any human vessel.

"We must act before the Black God strikes again." He had marked her and several of her kind, through methods yet unknown, but highly unlikely devised by him alone. Shade knew acting while empowered by him, however distantly and indirectly, could simply be a move in whatever game Chernobog was playing, but such was existence. If one feared the meddling of gods, one could never act. "He would break the strigoi out of spite, and we must at least learn why, if not prevent it. His godsight would be useful, if harnessed to a proper cause." And breaking him and his mate, for he seemed bizarrely attached to her, would not hurt. She could have fun with both, though Shade wagered the zmeu would crack first.

But Silva, weak and slow in body and mind as he was, may have still held the key to their salvation. Fairie could not be swallowed by Chernobog's parting gift, or the Fae would bear the shame forever. And, even if Silva could not stop that, he could help them find a new abode.

Of course, Shade and her entourage were unknown to the worthies who allegedly led their kin, except in the vaguest sense. This was not an official, recognised mission. She...was going out of her way, to preserve her home, rather than topple the rotting edifice that was civilisation.

The little bastard better be worth her time.

"Oh, David..." She whispered to the rising sun. "Why be ARC's dog, when you can be my wolf?"