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Cold Blood, Chapter 10

***
I touched down in sight of Olympus Mons(not that I was sure what it looked like; I just looked for the tallest mountain on the planet, thought that took a while). The other undead were gathered in rough squads, except the zombies, who naturally gravitated around their masters. The still-living necromancers had been issued with safesuits. We working stiffs didn't need protection from the environment.

I looked around for anyone I knew, and ended up with jackshit, as in most situations. I'd been hoping the lich had made it before me, but-

Ah. I turned around at the shift in the aether. A pillar of darkness, filled with screaming skulls, parted like a curtain, revealing the lich. And they call me a showoff...

"Good time, Liam." The ghoul colonel said, his voice sounding even more eerie in the thin air. "And thank you for the comm spell. This way, we won't have to use sign language...again." He shot a meaningful look at another ghoul officer, who shrugged, grinning toothily. I had a feeling their unit was more concerned with results than discipline.

"Remember: only kill them if they try it first. We don't want to spur the Collective into a war. The ARC personnel wil remain here, at the arrival point." To mark it, he stomped down with his reinforced boot, pulverizing a bathtub-sized hole into the red soil. "If we fail, or are overwhelmed, you are to return to Earth and seek reinforcements. Questions?"

The ARC mages and agents shook their heads, though I noticed the latter did it grudgingly. Maybe they'd hoped to keep a closer eye on us, but the colonel was in charge of this mission.

"We do not know the nature of their defences, but expect the worst. That way, you won't be disappointed." Did I dare ask if he was joking?

"Good. Now-"

The ground burst apart under our feet. I jumped away just as it began shifting, and turned to mist in midair, letting the supersonic chunks launched by the reptilians' entrance pass through me. I didn't believe they could harm me, but...

Liam the lich cursed as three reptilians seized him, clutching and ripping at his withered form with the strength to level small towns. Flaming eyes flashing, he raised his staff, even as a reptilian tried to wrench it from his grip. Then all three shuddered, their eyes rolled upwards, and they fell. Liam drew his robes around him, muttering a petty spell to sew the tears shut.

The draugr brought axes and hammers down just as the reptilians burst from the ground, splitting heads with such force Olympus Mons shook on the horizon. The runes tattoed on their arms and throats glowed red at the kills, revelling in the spilled blood.

Zombies drew around vodoo priests, defending them as their masters prepared battle spells. The dead men were turned to red mist dozens of times as the reptilians tried to get through them, but healed just as fast as they were destroyed, stalling them. Then, the priests held up wands and amulets surrounded by auras of black light, and the reptilians burst apart into dust, or turned into piles of bone, or simply flopped down onto the ground, bodies emptied of guts and life alike.

I glanced over at the ghouls, but they had already taken care of their attackers. Now, the colonel and his subordinate officers were beating the soldiers about the head and shoulders, to get them to stop eating the enemy. They'd have enough time for that when the mission was over, they promised.

I looked down at the reptilian who'd tried to jump me, and saw it coming up at me, fire blazing around its body from the speed. The spot where it had jumped from was a steaming crater, the sides smooth and glassy.

As it reached for my throat and eyes, claws extended, fanged mouth open and snarling, I jabbed two fingers through its eyes, and kept pushing until I felt something spongy and soft-in comparison with its scaled body, that is.

Fingers scrabbling at its brain, I drew upon my power to shape weather. The bastard was still moving-the only thing my move had done was removing its sight-, still trying to beat me to a pulp. Grinning, I tapped into my power, and lightning danced around my hand, shaped into a spear by my will. I sent it deep into its brain, and received a claw swipe to the eyes in response. A clawed foot kicked me in the balls.

I frowned. No respect for showmanship, I swear...I'd been hoping to end this scaly arsehole with a lightning spear, but  no.

I ripped my hand free of its skull, pulverizing it, and returned its little favour. The reptilian didn't have genitals of any kind, but that didn't stop my kick from pasting its body.

I watched the bloody mess fall to the ground. A ghoul who'd started laughing at the beginning of my fight with the reptilian was still in mid-laugh. The fight had only seemed long to me.

I let myself fall, and zipped over to the colonel. His eyes flickered from my bloodied, loaned ARC uniform to the remains of my opponent, and he nodded approvingly.

I was going to ask about the next step when Olympus Mons rumbled.

You know those Bond movie scenes when the villain's lair rises or opens, if it's domed? It was like that. Roughly humanoid, reptilian-sized figures broke off from the mountain in their millions. It was like seeing the mountain shed a layer.

The mountaintop split apart to reveal three figures. Not stone men, but reptilians, though unlike any I'd seen yet.

One seemed to be an albino, white-scaled and pink-eyed, twice my height, a muscular tail covered in black spikes lashing at the air behind it. Its pink eyes zeroed in on me, and turned red.

The second was an ordinary reptilian, in terms of size, but it was changing colour and fading out of reality like a glitch in a videogame. It smirked widely, showing needle teeth.

In the middle was a hunched, pale green reptilian, barely a metre tall. I couldn't see anything unusual, besides its tiny, unassuming appearance.

It worried me the most.

Accidentally posted chapter 10 twice for some reason. Edited one post into this message.

Cold Blood, Chapter 11

***
I didn't see the albino move. It was only later that I learned it hadn't.

One moment, it was standing on the mountaintop with the other two weird reptilians-and thank God for my superhuman sight, or I couldn't have seen them from the ground. At least this way, I saw where it was coming from, though I couldn't tell how.

There was no thunderclap, no flash of light, distorted air or bent space. One moment it was twenty-five kilometres above me, the next we were clashing.

Fists larger than my head almost tore my arms in half as I blocked, elbows and forearms held together by ragged strands of flesh. The ground between us and the horizon turned to steam from the force, though-strangely-the mountain was untouched.

In an instant, I was pushed down through the ground, clothes atomized, lava swirling around my knees. But my arms had healed, and I started pushing back.

To little effect. The giant albino was stronger than me. Much stronger, in fact.

My punches and kicks struck its body like pebbles hitting a wall, and every counterattack ripped chunks out of me. It shattered limbs, punched head-sized holes through my torso and beheaded me so many times, we were left standing in a lake of lava and bobbing strigoi heads.

It was fucking unsettling. I look like Ichabod Crane crossed with Dracula at the best of times, and the glassy eyes and crushed faces didn't help. At least they were gone quickly. The albino crushed them under its heavy feet as we struggled back and forth.

But I healed. Every time it tried to sweep my legs out from under me with kicks or tailswipes, I healed before I could lose balance. My torso regenerated just as it drew its arms back, briefly trapping it and allowing me to strike at its joints.

Not that it was doing me any good. Whatever this bastard was made of, it was far tougher than anything I'd fought so far. It didn't seem to be tiring, either.

Looked like I'd have to get creative. I hoped everyone who'd survived had been thrown away by the shockwave, because I was going to cut loose.

As it tried to clamp its jaws around my head, I turned into mist, and it bit nothing. A fun fact about my mist form: any part of it can become any part of my body. I surrounded it, formed the mist behind its head into a tensed arm, and struck at the base of its thick neck. It staggered, but more in surprise than pain, if I'd even hurt it. Its spiked tail came up at my arm, so I turned it back into mist, and formed a leg beneath it.

I kicked upwards, lifting it off the ground, and formed my arms around its tail as it sought to regain its footing. I pushed another tendril of mist into its snarling mouth-I was annoying it, at least- and formed my fanged mouth around its snakelike tongue.

The albino grunted in annoyance, and snapped its jaws shut, but I was mist again. I dispersed the body parts around it into mist, too, and tried a different angle.

I tried to push the mist in its mouth deeper, into its throat and stomach, but couldn't. It had no throat, only a sort of fleshy wall at the back of its mouth.

Frowning mentally, I tried my idea anyway, and turned solid again.

Friendly advice: if you want to phase through something, then turn solid again-or pull a similar move, like I was trying-be sure you're tougher than whatever you're phasing through. Otherwise, you'll get crushed inside it, like I was.

Instead of splattering its head and neck, my body was crushed into a compact mass against the walls of its mouth, which bulged slightly.

The albino opened its mouth to spit me out, but I had another idea. Summoning lightning around me, I pushed its upwards, trying to reach its brain, if it even had any. Either its mouth was insulated, or it was just too tough, because it spat me out, lightning sparkling harmlessly in its mouth.

I scowled. Seemed like there was no hurting this thing, not with brute force. Maybe I could put it in time out...

As it spat out my pulped body, I healed, upside down, and kicked it in the chin with both feet. It wasn't hurt, but the sheer force sent it flying upwards. Good. Now...

Keeping my eyes on it, I whipped the air into a frenzy, enclosing the albino in a sphere of hurricane-force wind. No leverage, no way to use its strength-I hoped.

Just to be sure, I created a larger sphere of lead-grey, impenetrable clouds around it, too. Raindrops like bullets and hailstones the size of fists battered the reptilian, punctuated by lightning strikes and thunderclaps that would have turned a human's teeth to dust.

And then, I briefly felt something appear behind me, and my head burst apart. I turned and jumped away as the albino tried to grab me.

Damn it. I had hoped it couldn't teleport, or whatever it was that it did, while its senses were obscured by my artificial storm. Maybe it just needed to visualise a place to teleport to it? But even so, it should have been distracted...

Snarling, I leapt at it, wrapping my arms around its huge torso, and jumped. The city-sized lake of lava created by our clash turned into a geyser from the force of my jump.

It tried to rip me apart, even as we cleared Mars' atmosphere and passed Deimos and Phobos. I turned to mist again, and reformed with my feet against its chest, legs tensed. Growling silently, I kicked, and sent it flying through the vacuum like a rocket, towards the sun, until it was just a tiny dot set against the star's glow. Finally, it disappeared from my sight.

And reappeared behind me. For the second. Fucking. Time.

Motherfucker just kept coming, and I hadn't even hurt it. It threw its monstrous strength behind every blow, repeatedly pulverizing my body. Even as I was turned to red mist and healed, I was thinking of what to do, and...

God forgive me.

It wasn't dying, like the plants or animals I'd fed from in recent years. Hell, I wasn't even sure it was a real being, rather than some reptilian homunculus. I certainly couldn't hear a heartbeat, or any other organ working inside its body.

But it was alive. It had a body, mind and soul, and its lifeforce was like a raging ocean.

I grasped it, and drained it until it turned into a desert.

The albino didn't show any pain as I drained it of life. It just slowed, blows becoming weaker, its red eyes narrowing briefly, perhaps in surprise.

It died silently. Even if we hadn't been in space. I doubted it would have made a sound. It hadn't, during the fight.

It was stupid, but...my strigoi side, the side that reveled in bloodshed and torment, was sad to see the passing of such a mighty opponent, even if it had tried to kill me, even if its life had fed me.

The dead albino's eyes were now pink and glassy, its face a mask of blank incomprehension. It didn't look scared, or angry, or even frustrated. I hoped that, wherever I had sent it, it would find peace.

I wracked my brain for something to say, but it was as deaf as any corpse, and there was no air to convey my words. Even so...

"You fought well." I mouthed to the corpse, then turned away and flew back to Mars.

This was not over. And, somehow, I doubted it would get any easier.

Cold Blood, Chapter 11

***
I didn't see the albino move. It was only later that I learned it hadn't.

One moment, it was standing on the mountaintop with the other two weird reptilians-and thank God for my superhuman sight, or I couldn't have seen them from the ground. At least this way, I saw where it was coming from, though I couldn't tell how.

There was no thunderclap, no flash of light, distorted air or bent space. One moment it was twenty-five kilometres above me, the next we were clashing.

Fists larger than my head almost tore my arms in half as I blocked, elbows and forearms held together by ragged strands of flesh. The ground between us and the horizon turned to steam from the force, though-strangely-the mountain was untouched.

In an instant, I was pushed down through the ground, clothes atomized, lava swirling around my knees. But my arms had healed, and I started pushing back.

To little effect. The giant albino was stronger than me. Much stronger, in fact.

My punches and kicks struck its body like pebbles hitting a wall, and every counterattack ripped chunks out of me. It shattered limbs, punched head-sized holes through my torso and beheaded me so many times, we were left standing in a lake of lava and bobbing strigoi heads.

It was fucking unsettling. I look like Ichabod Crane crossed with Dracula at the best of times, and the glassy eyes and crushed faces didn't help. At least they were gone quickly. The albino crushed them under its heavy feet as we struggled back and forth.

But I healed. Every time it tried to sweep my legs out from under me with kicks or tailswipes, I healed before I could lose balance. My torso regenerated just as it drew its arms back, briefly trapping it and allowing me to strike at its joints.

Not that it was doing me any good. Whatever this bastard was made of, it was far tougher than anything I'd fought so far. It didn't seem to be tiring, either.

Looked like I'd have to get creative. I hoped everyone who'd survived had been thrown away by the shockwave, because I was going to cut loose.

As it tried to clamp its jaws around my head, I turned into mist, and it bit nothing. A fun fact about my mist form: any part of it can become any part of my body. I surrounded it, formed the mist behind its head into a tensed arm, and struck at the base of its thick neck. It staggered, but more in surprise than pain, if I'd even hurt it. Its spiked tail came up at my arm, so I turned it back into mist, and formed a leg beneath it.

I kicked upwards, lifting it off the ground, and formed my arms around its tail as it sought to regain its footing. I pushed another tendril of mist into its snarling mouth-I was annoying it, at least- and formed my fanged mouth around its snakelike tongue.

The albino grunted in annoyance, and snapped its jaws shut, but I was mist again. I dispersed the body parts around it into mist, too, and tried a different angle.

I tried to push the mist in its mouth deeper, into its throat and stomach, but couldn't. It had no throat, only a sort of fleshy wall at the back of its mouth.

Frowning mentally, I tried my idea anyway, and turned solid again.

Friendly advice: if you want to phase through something, then turn solid again-or pull a similar move, like I was trying-be sure you're tougher than whatever you're phasing through. Otherwise, you'll get crushed inside it, like I was.

Instead of splattering its head and neck, my body was crushed into a compact mass against the walls of its mouth, which bulged slightly.

The albino opened its mouth to spit me out, but I had another idea. Summoning lightning around me, I pushed its upwards, trying to reach its brain, if it even had any. Either its mouth was insulated, or it was just too tough, because it spat me out, lightning sparkling harmlessly in its mouth.

I scowled. Seemed like there was no hurting this thing, not with brute force. Maybe I could put it in time out...

As it spat out my pulped body, I healed, upside down, and kicked it in the chin with both feet. It wasn't hurt, but the sheer force sent it flying upwards. Good. Now...

Keeping my eyes on it, I whipped the air into a frenzy, enclosing the albino in a sphere of hurricane-force wind. No leverage, no way to use its strength-I hoped.

Just to be sure, I created a larger sphere of lead-grey, impenetrable clouds around it, too. Raindrops like bullets and hailstones the size of fists battered the reptilian, punctuated by lightning strikes and thunderclaps that would have turned a human's teeth to dust.

And then, I briefly felt something appear behind me, and my head burst apart. I turned and jumped away as the albino tried to grab me.

Damn it. I had hoped it couldn't teleport, or whatever it was that it did, while its senses were obscured by my artificial storm. Maybe it just needed to visualise a place to teleport to it? But even so, it should have been distracted...

Snarling, I leapt at it, wrapping my arms around its huge torso, and jumped. The city-sized lake of lava created by our clash turned into a geyser from the force of my jump.

It tried to rip me apart, even as we cleared Mars' atmosphere and passed Deimos and Phobos. I turned to mist again, and reformed with my feet against its chest, legs tensed. Growling silently, I kicked, and sent it flying through the vacuum like a rocket, towards the sun, until it was just a tiny dot set against the star's glow. Finally, it disappeared from my sight.

And reappeared behind me. For the second. Fucking. Time.

Motherfucker just kept coming, and I hadn't even hurt it. It threw its monstrous strength behind every blow, repeatedly pulverizing my body. Even as I was turned to red mist and healed, I was thinking of what to do, and...

God forgive me.

It wasn't dying, like the plants or animals I'd fed from in recent years. Hell, I wasn't even sure it was a real being, rather than some reptilian homunculus. I certainly couldn't hear a heartbeat, or any other organ working inside its body.

But it was alive. It had a body, mind and soul, and its lifeforce was like a raging ocean.

I grasped it, and drained it until it turned into a desert.

The albino didn't show any pain as I drained it of life. It just slowed, blows becoming weaker, its red eyes narrowing briefly, perhaps in surprise.

It died silently. Even if we hadn't been in space. I doubted it would have made a sound. It hadn't, during the fight.

It was stupid, but...my strigoi side, the side that reveled in bloodshed and torment, was sad to see the passing of such a mighty opponent, even if it had tried to kill me, even if its life had fed me.

The dead albino's eyes were now pink and glassy, its face a mask of blank incomprehension. It didn't look scared, or angry, or even frustrated. I hoped that, wherever I had sent it, it would find peace.

I wracked my brain for something to say, but it was as deaf as any corpse, and there was no air to convey my words. Even so...

"You fought well." I mouthed to the corpse, then turned away and flew back to Mars.

This was not over. And, somehow, I doubted it would get any easier.

Interlude: Liam

***

AN: This chapter will be focusing on Liam the lich, who will likely play a major role in the following books as well. It's taking place at the same time as David's fight with the Unscarred, the albino reptilian.

***

He had come prepared.

However brash Ryan considered him to have become after undeath, he wasn't the type to rush into dangerous situations headfirst.

And this  was dangerous. Maybe not for him, maybe not even-not directly-for mankind, but it was scaring the world, and that never ended well.

This wasn't like refusing to join the Army. He was helping the world as a whole, not just Australia's interests.

And he didn't have a death wish, no matter what his husband often grumbled under his breath.

Liam felt something would go wrong before it happened. It wasn't precognition, not really; he was just close to death, and knew of things that could bring it.

The albino brute was the first to make a move, going for the Romanian showoff-Silva. At least he was smart enough not to give his full name to a mage. He might have been untouchable to non-holy powers, but it never hurt to be safe.

Liam knew their clash could bring death, and would definitely bring destruction. In the instant it took the big bastard to disappear and reappear, he focused his magic, grasped the others with aethereal hands, and whisked them away.

Most of them would have healed from the damage-anyone save the priests, really. But there was no point to sticking around.

As the two clashed, Liam went intangible, letting the shockwave pass through him. He flew away and upwards, knowing this wasn't his fight. Maybe he could draw another of the scaly bastards away-or even both- and kill it.

It was the grinning weirdo, the one shifting colours every moment, who came for him. Liam wasn't sure what it could do; it wasn't a mage, at least. He felt no active mana from it. But he knew it was unna-

Space shifted. One moment he was an immaterial whisp, floating in the sky, the next he was solid again, and in some sort of cave.

Liam glanced behind him. The cave's mouth was laughably tiny, like it had been carved by ants. He could go through the stone itself, but he had a feeling he wouldn't get away too soon.

Grinner was suddenly in the cave with him, shifting in and out of reality like a bad recording. It stared at him, eyes narrowed in amusement, but made no move to attack.

"Smart move, separating me and the strigoi." He started, tilting his head to one side. "I suppose one could see us as the heaviest hitters...though, one should also be careful not to bite off more than they can chew. What can you do?"

That shit only worked in manga, really. But maybe it was cocky enough to spill something about its powers, or at least what it and its buddies were planning.

"What can't I?" It replied in a scratchy voice. And suddenly, Liam's body was covered in wounds: joints broken open, stomach torn apart, neck hanging by a thread.

He wasn't hurt. He hadn't been able to feel pain in decades, and it only took a pulse of magic to heal his wounds.

But...what had it done?

"Familiar? Those were old wounds, Liam Marvin Lloyd." It rasped.

He shrugged off the shock at the fact it knew his full name, and tried to think. "Interesting fantasy. But I've never gotten fucked up like that."

"But you  could have." It said, laughter bubbling under its words. "Is every thinking being aware of your body's state? No. And isn't reality defined by what the majority thinks?"

Liam tried to reply, but realised he had no mouth to speak of...or with.

Or a body, for that matter.

It was gone, unmade on such a level he was only aware of its absence. His spirit was now fleshless, unbound, observing the physical realm from the shadowy expanse where life ended and death began.

With a mental grunt of frustration, Liam wrought a new body for himself. This bastard wouldn't shut him out, whatever its powers were...

Its powers. It had dropped some stuff about possibility and consensus while it was busy kissing its own arse. But it was not a mage...

Liam's magic was death. He could kill living beings, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. He could kill inanimate objects too, making them fall apart and crumble. He could kill communication, making people incomprehensible to each other.

He reached out to the reptilian, and stopped its heart, crushed its neck. It staggered for a moment, then faded out of reality.

And returned. Looking just as healthy as before, with an even wider grin. Liam's staff cracked and shuddered, then burst apart in a shower of enchanted stone and wood.

The focus of his will, gone. And-

And his body was gone, too. Again. Fucking cunt.

Liam reformed again-slower, this time, without a staff to shape his powers around. The reptilian was crouching casually, arms folded lazily, like it was watching a dumb animal try and fail to do a trick.

Snarling, Liam reached out for its mind-and gasped, despite himself.

He saw an existence chipped away at, until it could only be while observed by someone else. He saw that same existence cut open and displayed in front of endless eyes, eager to see what the strange experiment could evolve into.

It had become real. More than real, perhaps. Uncertainty, possibility itself, shaped into a scaled form and set loose to stride through the universe.

Liam tore away. He didn't give a damn for its sob story. It had forfeited any right to live when it had helped ruin the attempt to shape a new world for everyone.

Liam grasped its will to live, to exist. It was a cold, detached thing. Alien, in every sense of the world.
The reptilian's body flickered, as if it wasn't sure what was happening, then faded.

And reappeared.

Liam grit his teeth as the thing grabbed the quantum strings of his being, and twisted. He wouldn't let himself be destroyed once more. Liam pitted his magic against the thing's will, and it was enough to exist for the time his gambit needed.

If this didn't work, either, he had little else to try. He...

Liam stretched his magic into realms he had rarely ever touched in his sixty years of life and unlife. He found the chance of this abomination of science existing-and killed it.

The death he commanded laughed joyously as it seized and tore at the core of the reptilian's existence. The experiment that had made it so powerful had also left it a wound in the meat of reality, a frayed thread in the fabric of the universe. A paradox.

And the universe abhorred mistakes.

Liam unmade the reptilian, on the most fundamental level. He made it impossible for the thing to manifest in reality again. In time, those with unprotected minds would forget it had ever existed, as well the fact that something like it could exist, in the first place.

The reptilian screamed as oblivion came for it-but there was a note of relief under the horror. Weary joy, at the end of a nightmarish mockery of life.

Liam snorted. Like he was one to talk...

The lich remained in the cave a little longer, to gather the remains of his staff and make sure his enemy was truly, finally gone.

And it was. That, or he'd scared it so badly it wouldn't show its face anymore. Same thing, as far as he was concerned.

Time to break out of the cave, rendezvous with the others, and take care of the remaining scaly douchebags and their stone soldiers.

Cold Blood, Epilogue

***
Calling Olympus Mons a mountain is like calling Dravich an arsehole: a  huge understatement. I've heard it compared to some American State in size-Arizona, I think- and seeing it from space, I had to agree.

I flew down, covering thousands and thousands of kilometres, until I was floating face to face with the tiny, hunched reptilian. An instant later, Liam appeared behind it in a flash of pale green light. I gave him a brief, approving nod. We had it caught between us. If the rest arrived as well...

The Yoda wannabe was still smiling blandly, like it had just seen its face in the mirror and realized how dumb it looked. It was making no move to attack, nor to put up defences between itself and us.

I narrowed my eyes, focusing my senses. Reptilian physiology was strange to listen to; human enough to feel familiar, alien enough to feel strange and unsettling. But I had learned to listen to it and analyze the sounds made by the organs.

This guy, much like the big bastard I'd just killed, didn't have anything to listen to. But, unlike it, it didn't smell like anything, either.

I frowned. What? No, wait-

The sound I'd mistaken for the Martian wind was coming from it. Oh, it sounded just like the wind, and even reached my ears at the same time, but now that I listened, I realized the second, subtle layer over or under the howling wind.

"Construct." Liam said coldly at the same time I reached my conclusion. "Soulless. You are not really here, if you ever were." His flaming green eyes burned black for a moment. "Are you mocking us, or trying to save yourself? Both will end badly for you."

I wish  I had such a ghastly voice. It was perfect for threatening people, and-

Dumb distraction. Ugh.

"Your fellow aberration is right." The midget said quietly, unblinking, still smiling. Aberration was the term reptilians used for anything outside the bounds of mundane science. "But it does not comprehend two facts. One, I actually am here. Among many other places. Two, neither of you are a threat to me."

"Bet?" Liam raised his staff, mana coiling around it. "You nope rope byblows have made me  real creative. Necessity is the mother of invention."

"And the death of smug arseholes." I added. "You were clearly the reptilian leader-even if not, you're the last one on Mars, which makes you representative by default. Why did you do this?"

Its smile thinned at that. "Some sort of aberrant mental affliction. It affected all sapient beings that fit the reptilian archetype. I have almost fought it off, which is...concerning."

"It's concerning that you're fighting it off?"

"Yes. It shouldn't have affected me in the first place. This form only resembles my first incarnation due to...I suppose you could call it nostalgia. Or attachment. Sentimentality."

"Ok, Thesaurus Rex." Liam said tersely. "So, you don't know squat beyond what the whole damn world knows?"

"Rejoice in this moment." The reptilian said, turning to look at Liam over its shoulder. "It is the only time I am not better-informed than you."

While the two traded barbs, I thought about the reptilian's words. If it wasn't bullshitting us, it was some sort of reincarnated being, and probably something with multiple bodies too.

And what was that damn noise?

"We can compare sizes later." I said, cutting the two off. "You said you've almost fought the madness off. Why didn't you stop your fellows earlier? Before Yamada called his Security forces back, or at least when we arrived."

"I could not." The reptilian said, sounding frustrated. "I have never been suborned to anything other than my own will. I was unable to control myself earlier." It got a thoughtful look on its face. "Your dead-and ours. You would like them back, yes?"

"No shit." I crossed my arms. "But we're not going to dabble in necromancy." The expedition personnel had not been criminals. Their bodies would be left undisturbed. Maybe we could pray for a mass resurrection, but...

"No need for such practices." The reptlian spat, making 'practices' sound like a curse. "Science will provide the answer. Behold!"

At first, nothing hapened. Then, I realized the air around the reptilian was darkening. Something like a cloud of flies, though the dark shapes were round and much, much smaller. I had to strain my superhuman sight to pich them out.

"I gathered them into this large clump so you could see the fruit of my engineering." Large clump? What? "Yoctomachines! One yoctometre in diameter. Able to enter and meld with any material. Those stone constructs that appeared to oppose you? My machines, bonded with this mountain and controlled by my will. I put them back into the mountain when you," It nodded at me. "Clashed with the Unscarred. You have likely neutralized it by now-through some aberrant method, no doubt. It had never even been slowed down before."

I crossed my arms. "Get to the point..." If it even could. At least it wasn't inverting its words. Really annoyed me, that would have. "What are you proposing? That you put your machines in their corpses or remains, so you can have puppet spies in every country? Hell no."

It smiled pityingly. "Yes...because there is so much you surface-dwellers know and we do not. Bah!" A section of the cloud broke off, then scattered further. The yoctomachines were a narely-visible blur to my eyes. I was surprised they didn't turn into energy from the sheer speed.

It didn't take long nefore the mountain and the devastated ground around it began shaking, as every fallen reptilian gathered around us, their bodies driven by the machines inside them. The giant albino appeared by the tiny reptilian's side, and I had to stop myself from jimping at it again.

"See? No manipulation of intangible, aberrant factors. No breaking of physics." The midget said, gesturing at the corpses. "Yes...you should return to Terra, aberrations. The Collective has lowered its defences and is attempting parley with your governments. I think you would not want to miss something."

"How do you know that?" Liam asked, sounding like he wanted to tackle the reptilian to the ground and search it for communication devices.

Its pitying smile remained. "I have selves in many places. I am never separated, except by distance. Goodbye." And it burst into a cloud of yoctomachines. The Unscarred's corpse, eyes glassy, disappeared and reappeared next to the other dead reptlians, who had gathered into a circle. It grabbed one's shoulder, which grabbed two other reptlians, until they were all linked. Then, the group teleported away.

I blinked one, twice. Then, I looked at Liam.

"Was that...magic?"

The lich shook his head. "Just bullshit, mate."

We quickly left the mountain behind, travelling to Mars' north pole, where Liam had sent the rest of the taskforce away when I had clashed with the Unscarred. We would give our reports on Earth, the colonel said. Being pushed to the side had annoyed him, as well as some of the others, but they knew they couldn't have done much to help me or Liam.

The Japanese undead hadn't even fought before they'd been whisked away by Liam's spell. A giant, half-buried skeleton told me, in detail, what it could and would have done to the reptlians.

Liam and the ARC mages teleported the taskforce to Earth, then followed. I retraced my steps, so to speak, flying until I reached the Moon, then flying down to Earth. I didn't want to jump this time. My early enthusiasm was gone. I had a bad feeling that things were only going to get worse from there.

***

The Cold Madness-as it had been dubbed by the media after (they hoped) its disappearance- had ended, but its effects were still present.

Eventually, the afflicted, or formerly afflicted, had been allowed out of the ARC facilities, or those of their country's supernatural agency, but they weren't allowed freedom of movement. Not really. Most of them, the least dangerous ones, were allowed to move in designated areas around their homes and workplaces, but they were watched. The most dangerous ones were asked(very politely, of course) to submit to what was, essentially, house arrest. Reactions were...varied.

On the bright side, after the hole in Siberia was filled with water, they got a sea. Sure, it was cold as balls, and few people wanted to go there to swim or fish, but at least it was there.

My ARC consultant prep course having ended, I was invited to either become a full operative, or return to the civilian sector, after being sworn to silence. I could return for the first option any time I wanted, they said. And, eventually, I did.

But I spent the remaining months of the school year as a teacher. My students had so little left until graduation, and I wanted to be there for the brats. Not all of them were allowed to attend physically, and I tried to visit those who learned online.

My favourite scaled headache was among them. I learned so many new jokes about private tutoring, I just had to make sure the guys I wasn't about to talk to ever learned about them.

Lucian and his older brothers had among those placed under house arrest, but, thanks to Aaron pulling some strings(prowling the Black Sea and sinking anything that looked funny at Romania brought some perks with it), they had been quarantined, for lack of a better term, together, in one of Aaron's houses. This one was located on the outskirts on Bucharest, because the dimensions would have made it awkward if it was in any of the city's residential areas.

I started the video call, and it was Luci who picked up. His bottle-green scales looked polished, and his long, black mustache seemed to have been groomed.

I could tell the confinement was getting to him. He only cleaned up like this when bored out of his mind.

Lucas was sitting on the armrest of an immense stuffed chair in the background, smoking like a chimney. He noticed me and waved without enthusiasm.

"Yeeees?" Lucian drew out. "Finally got curious about the madhouse, eh?"

"Maybe. You three getting along?"

"We're still alive, aren't we? Aari has only threatened to brain me twelve times."

"Huh. That is impressive."

"Today."

"...Ah. " That made more sense. At least they were still normal. "Hey Luc, can you hear me from there?"

"What?" He bit out around what looked like the bastard lovechild of a cigar and a torch.

"Do you need an assistant at work? Once they let you out, of course."

He looked at the phone skeptically. "You into tattoos, Silva? You don't seem...the type."

"That might be because I'm not. No, it's for an...acquaintance."

"Ah." Lucas was grinning now. "The very friendly one, right?"

Did everyone know about that? No, forget it. I didn't need to know the answer.

"Little brothers." A new voice rumbled, and I swear my phone's screen cracked a bit. "What are you screwing around with now?"

A pause. "Give me that, Luci. The way you're holding it, I won't fit into the frame."

You know how some people are said to fill rooms when they enter? It's a figure of speech-Aaron didn't fill his living room when he entered, but only because it was bigger than a football field.

All zmei were tall, but Aaron was huge. Lucas was twice my height, a metre taller than Lucian, and he wouldn't have reached his older brother's knee.

I mentally laughed at the image of Aaron taking the tiny phone into his hand and holding it far enough to fit in the frame. The old zmeu had scales the colour of burnished bronze, and wings that would have looked at home on a plane. He had a torso like an old oak, six legs and six tails, one of them split from halfway down-a result of a fight he shouldn't have entered. His nine heads bobbed and shook constantly, like a nest of snakes, looking at me with unblinking red eyes. Each of them was only half-visible, due to a massive red beard and moustache.

"Silva?" He started in a confused tone. "Why aren't you watching the news?"

"Why, are they showing the horoscope?"

"You're hilarious, boy. Now, turn on your TV. They've been showing the footage over and over since the live transmission ended. And think about what you see and hear. Analyze it. That's what me and these two were going to do before you called."

"Sounds serious. What channel?"

He grunted. "All of them." Then, he turned to his brothers. "Get your game faces on, brats!"

Luci leapt from the floor to land on Aaron's shoulder. "See you soon, David."

"I hope so."

After I ended the call, I turned the TV on, and Odin was talking to me.

No, I wasn't having a trip. I don't do drugs, not that they'd work if I did.

"...know how Nidhogg was slain. He admitted-shamelessly! He regrets nothing! This was never fated or predicted. It should not have happened. Shouldn't have been able to happen."

Seemed like I'd caught him in the middle of a rant. He was unstoppable once he got started, but Aaron had said there would be reruns.

"...While fascinating, that does not answer our question, Allfather. If you don't mind-"

"I do mind, human." Odin's scarred, one eyed face wrinkled in distaste. "You do not understand. Nidhogg gnawed at the corpses of rapists and oathbreakers-now, they are without punishment, for finding a replacement may unravel the threads of fate even further." He shook his head, beard swaying. "And it does answer your question. Do not be small-minded, human. The dragon was torment and pain and venom, every thing that gnaws at the soul, ruining it. When it was cut apart, its vile blood spread beyond the World Tree, and poisoned the mind of any that could be called kin to it. It carried the pain that was its domain, and brought madness."

"And who was it who...murdered Nidhogg?"

Odin spat. "Why don't you ask him? I'm sure he's still shouting it from the battlements of his castle, like he did at the gates of mine."

"We will be sure to get his side of the story too, Allfather. But who-"

"In Dagda! The Dagda!" Odin shook his head again and spat once more. "Fool. He knows the gods of different realms must never cross each other, lest we all be drawn into war. But he did. He snuck beneath the ash's roots like a knave, like a thief, and cut Nidhogg apart with that thrice-damned sword."

"But the Dagda is... he is said to be a great teacher and sage, like you, Allfather. Why would he do this?"

If Odin cared about the compliment, he didn't show it. "Damned if I know. He's bound to fertility and agriculture, like my thundering ox of a son. Perhaps the creature's nature offended him, and he sought to end it."

"But...you do not know? For sure?"

"My ravens might as well be chickens, with what they tell me. And the fool only told me he 'should have done it earlier'." Odin scoffed. "If it wasn't for the sword, mayhaps we could have dressed the dragon's wounds, brought him back to life. The Norns would have allowed it, I'm sure. They loathe everything that goes against the destiny they weave. But all our runecraft and lore cannot heal wounds inflicted by the Answerer."

"Fragarach?" The reporter asked, receiving a curt nod from Odin. "This...is indeed a conundrum, Allfather. But, if things are still unclear, why didn't you consult Mimir?"

I wondered that, too. Odin was said to keep the severed, speaking head either in his vault or on his person, and seek advice on the rare occasion his wisdom didn't suffice.

Odin grinned mirthlessly at the question. "Because we are missing more than Nidhogg at the moment."

Dead Head, Prologue

***
Father

"I wish I had been on Mars with you."

I raised my eyes from my crossword puzzle. My awkward conversation with Andrei had reached a point resulting in a not-at-all comfortable silence, only for him to break it in a way that almost gave me whiplash.

"Your pardon?" The werebear just stared steadily at my question. What did he mean? Was he talking about his were instincts, or just plain old human urge for violence? He hadn't really fought since his Securist days, only working as a bodyguard or bouncer.

Andrei rubbed his clean-shaved chin as he considered his next words. So young, you'd have thought if you saw him on the street. Judging by our faces alone, I could have been  his father.

"You could have died there, David."

I scoffed. "How?"

"The reptilians might be atheists, as far as we know, but what if they weren't? What if they had holy powers? Or allies with such powers?"

Aaaah...that was his fear? "Then we wouldn't be talking right now. And, if they did and you were there, you could have, what, saved me? Here's a hypothesis of my own, a much more likely one: what if they had silver?"

The were smirked darkly. "Then we wouldn't be talking right now, I suppose."

His order-the usual, as he'd told the waiter-arrived, and I wasn't surprised so much at the size of the keg as I was at the smell.

"Honey with your drinks? Really? Way to avoid the stereotypes..."

He shrugged. "I've already abandoned my cub," I cringed. "-as male bears are wont to do. Why not go all the way?" Shrugging again, he knocked back enough mead to stop a human's heart.

"Andrei? If you ever call me 'cub' again, I'll have to kill you, everyone who heard, and then myself. After I cut my ears off."

"Hah! Fair enough..."

A few more minutes passed, the bar unusually quiet for a Saturday night. But then, Andrei had ordered so many rounds for everyone it was a surprise they weren't snoring.

"Do you know  why I didn't come with you to Mars?"

I looked at him sharply, wondering if the drink had got him maudlin. But his black eyes were as sharp as ever. Not that weres could get drunk, or even buzzed.

"It was a job for the dead. The people-depending what country you ask-no one would miss."

"You really think anyone would miss  me, David?" Andrei asked drily. "The reason I didn't-couldn't-go has little to do with what I am, and much to do with  who I am."

Leaning back in my chair, I gestured for him to continue. Taking another swig and nodding, he did.

"When I met Simona," We both winced at my mother's name, though, I imagined, for different reasons. "I didn't know she was a minor. More fool me-what good are these senses if they can't help me see disasters coming? But, just as foolishly, I carried on, and only learned the truth several months into the pregnancy. Maybe her fear of what could-and did-happen made her talk." Andrei gripped the steel tabletop, his-only human in appearance-hand crushing it like silly string. "Damn her for lying and riling me up, and damn me for letting myelf be led on." He lowered his head, raven hair shadowing his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a rasping whisper, edging into a growl. His eyes were just as dark and beady as the beast's he became. "Damn us both for not thinking ahead."

"...What does that have to do with Mars?" I asked, not knowing how to feel about this...apology?

Andrei snickered sardonically. " 'Comrade Dravich, a  child? How could you? The apparatus will not be stained by the memory of your reckless advances'. That black mark is  never going away, David. You can be sure all my employers since then knew who they were hiring, and felt I was the right man. But ARC didn't. Indiscipline like that is not telerated within their ranks, it seems...good for them. Once you put on that uniform, remember what it means. Don't be stupid like me."

***
Friend(?)

In the years since the Cold Madness, I quit teaching for the second time, and the first in my unlife. Not immediately, of course. After my generation at the time graduated. I still met with Eric and Bogdan sometimes, when the vamps patrolled as Supernatural Servicemen. Romania's supernatural law enforcement organisation was relatively new and thinly-spread, so they needed all they could get. And my other students still greeted me when we crossed each other on the street, which was all I could ask for, really. At least I hadn't been one of those boring or forgettable teachers.

Because I was still in my training period, ARC didn't have me on a base all the time, so I found different ways to fill my free time. And, if I could help people both at work and outside it, and kill time while doing it...well, what more could I ask for? The pantheons were still in a cold war, glaring at every suspicious move the others made, and ARC, and its national counterparts, mostly acted to mediate skirmishes and misunderstandings.

I sometimes played veterinary, treating supernatural animals, but mostly, I worked with my hands. Strong and untiring as I was, overseers wanted me almost as much as workers felt I was showing them up. And, since I couldn't work without getting paid or people would cry undead slavery, I had to be careful not to hog jobs.

I was moving debris, both physically and by manipulating air, while my colleagues for the day demolished an old city block straddling the edges of Bucharest's old centre and the Haunts, the quarter populated by undead. I didn't expect her there.

Mia had grown even taller since graduation-not as tall as Lucian, but I still felt short next to her. Her orange-yellow scales, usually reflective, glimmered dully under the dust covering them.

"Lucas doesn't have me at the counter everyday, David." She grinned, tossing an I-beam into the truck like a multi-ton pillow. "Says my presence is 'distruptive to a serious workplace environment'." As she quoted her boss, the zmeu mimicked chewing on a blunt, eyes narrowed in disapproval. "And having me hang around when he's greeting people doesn't help his blood pressure, so...a girl's gotta keep herself entertained."

With how many jokes she cracked about working the stick when he made her mop, I imagined he loved these days when she was away almost as much as he hated me for suggesting her as an employee.

"It's good to see your generation helping out." I nodded, tossing a car-sized slab of reinforced concrete on top of the steel beam. "Don't listen to those grumblings about apathetic youths."

As we cleaned out the place, I mostly ignored her flirting or responded with sarcasm. Much like we used to do in class.

Unlike in class, however, there was another flirty joker here, and he thought he was hilarious to boot.

"We should clean each other later, scales." The wereowl chuckled as he threw down a a mostly-compacted fridge down at her. "We can wash too."

"Oh, good idea!" Mia waved up at him with a fanged grin. "I'm rarely covered in white stuff like this, mind. There's usually a  lot more of it..."

The steel pipe I was holding turned to metallic dust in my grip. Another worker, a purple, four-headed zmeu, saw my scowl and put a hand the size of a trashcan lid on my shoulder.

"Dude." He whispered. "Don't get wound up. We're all like that..."

"I know you're all like that." I said. Dammit. "But there's this thing called self-control, which you have and she clearly doesn't." Then, turning to the owl. "Piss off, hooters! Horny clown around my age leering at college girls? That's the reason everyone thinks our generation just swung it around."

"We're just playing, strigoi." The owl scowled, though it was hard to tell with the wide eyes and beak. "Don't get so-"

"Wound up, yes. And you!" Mia raised an amused eyebrow as I pointed at her. "Don't encourage such people, and don't talk like that, it's improper." Her eyes glazed over as I got into a long rant about Aaron, Lucas and the dignity zmei could achieve, if they wanted. The owl threw his wings up at my rambling, while the purple zmeu retreated, bushy goatees swaying side to side as he shook his heads.

Mia asked me to hang around for a bit after the gig was done, saying she wanted to talk.

"You know, David, I always found it cute that you tried to raise me and the others, not just teach us. I, personally, really appreciated that. You were my first parent, in some ways." She said as she slipped off the overalls. The original owner would likely have found them baggy, but on her, they had looked almost skintight.

I blinked as the clothes underneath were revealed. Nothing overly-exposing(shocking, for her), but...

Damn. I didn't have abs. Not that that was an excuse to notice hers.

"But," She continued, red eyes narrowed in slight annoyance. "I think I can choose how and who I talk with, ok? You might not have noticed, but I'm a big girl now."

"Oh, I noticed, alright." My dumb mouth blurted before my brain could catch up and slap it.

Mia smiled. "And speaking of adults...I think I'm old enough now for you to consider me one in reality, not just on paper." She had actually been an adult even in high school. Having started out school an year later than most, she'd been nearly twenty upon graduation, three years ago. The zmeu scratched at her bony, spiky head crest. "How about we clean out the air between us? Your affronted daddy instincts are kind of funny, but only up to a point."

"It's a date." Fuck you  again, mouth.

Dead Head, Chapter 1

***
"Why so offended?" Mia asked as we continued our stroll through the Bites, Bucharest's were quarter. Most of the inhabitants knew me as Dravich's son, even if they didn't know me personally, so it was a relatively safe area.

Both for me, and for them.

"Why shouldn't I be?" I shrugged, weighing how much bullshit I could spew before she got offended herself. "As you said, I was there to watch you grow-"

"Oh? I thought I was being followed sometimes."

"Ha, ha. I remember when you were..."I almost held out a hand, then remembered she'd been taller than me in her early teens as well. "Younger. I'd have reacted like that if any of your classmates was in you place."

"Hmmmm?"

"Yes, really." I sighed. "But I just didn't like how that were was talking to you. And, again, you really shouldn't play along with such people..." I trailed off as she stopped walking, giving me a weird look. Had I said something wrong? Or...

"David." She said, leaning down so we could look each other in the eyes. "One of the first things I learned as a zmeu is that, when everyone gets your motor running, you'll attract unwanted attention. I know how to handle that type. And..."She smiled conspirationally. "Hypocrisy isn't much netter than possessiveness."

I blinked at the non-sequitur. "Your pardon?"

"Would I be wrong to say we grew closer during the Cold Madness?" I shook my head. "Because you helped keep me sane. You might have missed it, but your presence really helped me hold myself together. So I got attached to you. Call it graitude, or imprinting, or whatever. Maybe it's just my missing daddy complex." She rolled her eyes. "But I think it goes both ways."

"...I thought about killing you that day." The zmeu cocked her head to one side, like a curious bird. "I thought that, if you went mad, I'd have no way to stop you without killing you."

"You couldn't have." She said bluntly. "Stopped me without harm, I mean. And...I'm sure that tore at your heart, didn't it?"

How could it have not? One of the children I'd never have, slowly losing herself in front of me, and I was powerless.

Mia blew out a breath after I told her this. "It's sweet there's at least one guy who sees me as his daughter, but I really don't need a paranoid father scaring off potential squeezes. Keep that shotgun tucked, ok?" She squeezed my right shoulder. "Or, we could just hook up, and you'll be able to stop worrying. About the random flirting, I mean. All my exes tell me I'm enough to worry about." She grinned.

Before I could reply, my phone shifted subtly, making a sound inaudible to humans. Mia pulled away from me, nose slits scrunched up. "Where's that call from, the nails on chalkboard union?"

I shook my head, fishing it out of my jacket pocket, and saw the white shield and arc on black. No rejecting this call. "Something like that..."

***
 Monster

During all my missions up to this point, I was supervised by a senior ARC agent-usually undead from the Crypt division-and this time was no different.

So I told myself, at the start.

Loric Szabo was a strigoi of average height and more than average girth. With his shoulder-length grey hair, bushy beard, plump belly and wide smile, he looked like the uncle who always made you laugh. Or could have, had he been human.

Szabo spoke with a lilt, his Hungarian accent giving a sing song quality to his words. You could have thought he was a poet, but his family had been tailors for generations.

Szabo had killed himself out of boredom. Deciding his death, at least, would be memorable, for his life hadn't been, the man had jumped on chainsaws, one tearing a ragged hole through his chest, the other splitting his head in half from the nose up. His brain jiggled when he moved.

When we met in the sky above the Urals, Szabo called out to me, arms open wide to hug me. I hesitantly smiled back.

Then saw his clothes.

The black shirt with the ARC symbol was the only thing signifying his allegiance. It was covered by a jacket made of discoloured leather strips, roughly sewn together. So were his pants and boots.

"Don't touch me with that shit." I warned him, a fist raised, the other hand's nails shaped into claws.

Szabo chuckled. "Little brother in death." He intoned. "Do you not like leather?"

"Look at you, how shocking. I've seen no strigoi make use of human resources before."

Szabo shook his head, still smiling. "And here I thought you'd appreciate the tolerance...one from every race, so no one can say I'm bigoted!" Szabo clasped his hands in front of himself. "Ah! You have no idea how it feels to eat a flayer, David! The dears so often have skins prepared for you. It's like when you rip open a woman and see she's pregnant! Twice the joy for half the work!"

"What's the mission?" I asked tersely, wishing to beat something to death before he made another dead baby joke. "I received no briefing or text."

"Of course not. She can pluck things out of minds, and minds out of heads! We must keep everything related to this operation quiet." Szabo turned, jacket crackling, and I barely stopped myself from ripping it off him, then shoving it down that foul throat. "We are untouchable to her power, mind, but it's better to be careful. So our leash-holders say."

As we touched down at the edge of a snow-covered village, I couldn't help but ask. "Why hasn't ARC killed you?"

"You think I'm crazy! But mad dogs become pig feed, and I'm no slop, no-this world is my trough!" Szabo threw his head back, laughing. " You're insane, Silva! You think acting like a hairless monkey and whining at a god that hurts you will make the voices stop!? Talking back only makes them louder!"

"I can tell you've never talked back." I said, walking away from him and towards the objective. He laughed even louder this time.

"I've been screaming along for decades!"

There are many monsters in Siberia. Most hidden. Some unknown, like the one we had come to stop. And then, there are the ones like my 'brother in death'.

Dead Head, Chapter 2

***
The village's name meant 'child of the peak', as it had been built at the foot of the Urals, like so many others.

Unlike the others, however, it was inside an inverted pentagram.

Just like the shape could bring demons to Earth, its mirror image, invented by Solomon, could both summon and trap-even bind, if the maker was skilled enough-them. With the right adjustments, it could trap other things too.

It was well below freezing, so the mages standing at each point of the purple, glowing pentagram were almost invisible under their thick clothes. Russian Strangeguard, their winter uniforms sporting a haloed soldier standing over a multi-coloured, chimeric monster, stabbing it with a bayonet. Each of them held chains, ropes or other bindings.

And far above the centre of the pentagram, their leader stood on air, clutching a pair of shears that could have cut a man in half. Nodding down at me and Szabo, the white-haired, matronly woman mouthed a spell, then spoke as if we were next to each other.

"We are sorry for calling on you, strigoi." She said, not sparing me a glance. Szabo grinned, waving up at her.

"Aw, it's fine, baba! I wasn't doing anyone at the moment." He giggled as her subordinates made sounds of distaste, and I swear I heard her mutter 'we are not sorry for you..."

"You are the junior?" She asked me, still keeping an eye on my supervisor. "Strigoi are always useful. We need as many Tunguska Beings as possible to take down another."

The Russians classified supernatural threats into four levels. Bogeyman for threats to buildings or large groups of people, Tunguska for city-killers. I didn't know the last two, like most people outside the Strangeguard.

But...the village was sealed off. The monster was already inside, or why would they build a pentagram?

Were we too late? Were we here for extermination, not defence?

Was there no one to save?

"This village has been enslaved." The old woman began bluntly. "Little Sofia's parents never got along, and her magic awakened in response to a desire for peace and quiet." She clicked her shears once, twice. "Mind control, growing more refined with each enthralled mind. First the parents were made to play nice, then the neighbours..." The old witch smirked sardonically. "Whole place is like a damn dollhouse. Eerie."

"We're hemming her in." One of the mages on the ground, holding a pair of birdcages, spoke. His red beard was beaded with frost. "Keeping her mind here, so it doesn't drown the country."

Ah, that explained their trinkets-foci. Magic was enamoured with symbolism, and focusing mana through bindings made for good wards.

"And I'm cutting off her influence." The leader hefted the shears. "At the village's edge, her power ends."

I heard what they weren't saying, too: binding and severance, harnessed for a spell, called to the aether and shaped the symbolism of united, opossed forces into power.

And Szabo and I were the hammer to their anvil. We would walk in, and...

And what? Kill this stupid girl, who was probably insane too, now? For having the misfortune of being born somewhere with no one to teach her how to control her power?

A child cried out. It was not the little witch.

The boy in coveralls came skipping out of a windowless house. His smile was happy, so happy, and almost as wide as his eyes were.

As empty, too.

There were almost no teeth left in his mouth, only bleeding holes, seeping filth. His skin was almost as pale as mine, and one of his ears had fallen off. Frostbite.

The witch pouted at me with her puppet's mouth. I didn't understand her words. I just heard the meaning in my mind.

"Mommy always said the strigoi would come to take me if I was bad." Sofia said. "So why are you here?"

I took a sharp breath as Szabo grinned in anticipation, then nodded at me.

"Your mission. I'm just here to pull you out of the fire, brother mine." He casually leapt backwards, landing nearly two kilometres away and three up on a mountaintop, smashing through the stone like glass. Hands on his knees, he looked down, gesturing for me to go on.

I turned back to the wretched boy. He was still pouting.

"Why did you take over, Sofia?" I asked, trying to look into those hollow, doll-like eyes, not at the gaping wounds.

Sofia blinked in incomprehension, then spoke slowly, maybe worried I was dense. "Don't you get sad when people make each other sad, strigoi? I do-well, did. Now, no one in the village is sad! I knew we could get along."

"You're forcing them to...get along, Sofi." I tried not to spit the words, walking closer to the pentagram's edge. "Didn't you get mad when your parents made you do stuff? Didn't you feel they were being jerks?"

Sofia nodded. "Yeah, but. But I'm makin' things better! No one cries or cusses or drinks. It's good! I can feel what they do, you know? Everyone feels as happy as I do."

 Because you feel happy, I thought but didn't say. "Well, anyone would be happy to have nice friends! But what about other, everyday things? Don't they get tired, or hungry, or thirsty?"

The puppet boy stared at me once more, then giggled. "Silly dead man! Friends don't share dumb stuff like that with friends!"

An instinctive safety measure on her magic's part, maybe. Sensing things through other's senses, but not the weaknesses of their bodies. The perfect puppeteer.

"Even so." I squatted down, and the boy stepped back. "You should take more care of your friends. Look at the one I'm talking to. He's clearly not dressing warm enough. I'd say he should go inside, but his house seems open to the elements."

The boy shrugged, shifting from foot to foot. "Dunno how to fix stuff like that. Grown-up thing."

"Then," I tried to smile gently. "Wouldn't it be really nice if you let everyone be, and the grown-ups made sure everyone had a nice, warm house? They'll get along, I promise. I'll tell them."

The thrall's mouth hung open, then closed with a snap. "You just want to take them! You think we've all been bad, but we're friends! Stupid strigoi! Stupid stupid stupid-!"

The boy's bare foot stamped down until it was a ruin of blood and mangled bone, no matter how much I screamed at Sofia to stop.

"You're hurting him, dammit!" I snarled. "Again! Just like when you tore his teeth out-why even do that? Or his ear, did you force him to stay outside? He could have died!"

The thrall stopped, and Sofia growled thinly at me. "Ivan never wanted to play with anyone! Always cooped up inside with his dumb books, but I showed him!"

"And the teeth?" I pressed on.

"He was such a bad friend, he felt sorry and gave them to me, for the Tooth Fairy!" She giggled again, pus trickling slowly down the thrall's chin. "Just you wait, strigoi. I'll make everyone in this dumb world love each other, and freaks like you who can't be touched will be thrown aside!"

It was then that we realised she didn't control minds. She projected her mind into people, and things. Any thing.

The air above the village spun into a storm, and an ivory lightning bolt came at the floating witch, well over a thousand times faster than sound. She raised her shears so fast plasma blazed around them, and cut the bolt in half, harmlessly dispersing it.

But dozens of other bolts struck at the ground, blasting craters into the snow, setting houses on fire...and breaking the pentagram. It had been drawn with telepathy in mind, not control over the material world.

The mages fell back, swearing and brandishing their foci, as the village's hundreds of inhabitants came out of their ruined, blazing houses. Some were dragging along broken limbs, while others were burning alive, fat crackling under skin. And there was not one person among them not smiling.

They were friends, after all.

Dead Head, Chapter 3

***
The thralls were chaff. A few blades among them-knives, hatchets, axes-a few old guns, their bullets frozen in midair to my eyes, but nothing that could actually threaten the mages, let alone me. And I had a feeling Szabo was far, far more dangerous than he seemed.

The binder mages drew circles around themselves in the snow, raising transparent, shimmering forcefields. They words they spoke bent the frozen snow and air around the thralls, dragging them to the ground in chains forged from the elements, but the puppets kept moving. Wriggling, breaking their bodies in the attempt to free themselves. And why would they not? They weren't thinking like people anymore, if at all. There was only one mind in all those heads, and it seemed to feel their pain almost as much as it felt pity for them.

The old witch dropped down next to me, shears still smoking after stopping the lightning bolt. She didn't look at me when she spoke, focus held above her head like an executioner's axe. "Break the storm, strigoi! I will cut their strings!"

Nodding, I pushed my will into the lead-grey clouds, only to find another one already there. I had thought Sofia had simply made the storm by moving air, then abandoned it, but she still seemed to be holding onto it.

I frowned. If enslaving human minds sharpened her focus and broadened her range, what did taking over the environment do?

I was only thinking about that with half my mind, the other half trying to wrest control of the storm from the little witch. I could feel her childish frustration in my soul, hear her shrill, soundless screams. In her mind-her inhuman, ravenous mind-I was the monster at the window, come to take away her friends and ruin her nightmarish little world.

In the end, neither of us prevailed. I staggered back as the storm broke above us, clearing the sky impossibly fast. As I blinked, out of habit rather than necessity, my arcane sense slipped over my sight, and I saw as mages did.

The trapped, struggling thralls were bound by thin strands of pale white energy, like a spider's web, like a corpse's fingers, which spun and wrapped around their hearts and spines and brains. Not truly, for the mana was immaterial and invisible. Just my still human-in the ways that mattered-mind's attempt to make sense of the unseen world. The old witch's power manifested as shears over each string, but, each time they were severed, they remade themselves, even tighter-wrapped than before. The shears' frustrated snapping filled the aether.

The strings also passed through the air, seemingly attached to nothing, and the buildings, though it did not truly touch them. And at the centre...

Ah. Clever girl.

I raised my hand to stop the hill-sized fist when it was scant metres from me. Sofia had not placed herself at the centre of the metaphysical web. Indeed, I hadn't truly seen her, or the shape of her magic, yet. The thing I'd thought I had seen at the centre had been a concentration of mana and will, and my dead eyes barely caught it before it plunged into the ground, then the mountain behind me.

As a strigoi, and ARC agent in training, I regularly had to deal with immense-as far as baseline humans were concerned-weights, distances and speeds. As a result, I had gotten pretty good at judging them.

The mountain that had torn itself out of the ground, given only the roughest humanoid shape by the witch's will, was around four kilometres tall, judging by the clouds halfway across its 'chest'. As for the weight-

I slapped the hand aside, and the shockwave turned the snow and ground beneath it to superheated steam for kilometres. The mages' forcefields rippled like someone had thrown a grenade into a still pond, while the matronly witch, not looking, held up two fingers glowing with mana and snipped through the shockwave as it reached her, leaving herself untouched.

The mountain, eighty billion tons of now-scorched rock, stomped down with blocky feet, so hard lava shot past the clouds. It would take an eternity, from my perspective, before it hit the ground, raining down like Hell's tears.

I shook my head, stealing a glance at Szabo's viewing spot, but the older strigoi was nowhere to be seen.

Of course, I thought with a sneer. Cruel bastards like that always run when faced with an actual challenge.

I jumped up to the mountain's chest as it futilely tried to slap me away, flames forming around me. Would this shake the witch's control?

My punch turned the mountain to eighty billion tons of steaming dust. To avoid damage to Russia-or, hell, the world at large-I focused my weather control power around the dust cloud, trapping it into a spinning sphere of air, condensing the particles until they formed a roughly human-sized lump.

And, while I was admiring my handiwork, Sofia reached out with her will, and grabbed at my lifeforce.

The raging ocean I had drank upon killing the Unscarred was both the first and last to go-after it slipped from me like sand between fingers, I clamped down on my remaining lifeforce with a growl, locking it into a metaphorical iron cage.

Clever, clever girl, indeed. I wasn't sure how much Sofia really knew about strigoi, but she was obviously aware of one of our weak points. While she could not affect me directly with her power, sufficiently skilled mages could take away a strigoi's lifeforce, leaving them as 'weak' as if they had just risen from their grave.

I tried to grab the Unscarred's life, but it slipped away once more, then poured into the dusty lump. With a flex of nonexistent muscles, the lump dispersed my air sphere, then was reshaped once more into a humanoid form.

This one was much smaller-only twice my height-and more compact, but it still weighed as much as before. It fell straight through the lava upon landing, but quickly made its way back to the surface, jumping at me so fast its rocky form glowed white-hot. The land around shook so as far as I could feel, and I would later learn all of Eurasia had.

It was starting to look like the Unscarred, too. Same long, spiky tail, same muzzle. Did Sofia know about the reptilian or my fight with it? Or did her magic simply inform her about the things she pushed her will into?

It was not as fast as the albino had been, though. The little witch must have still been getting the hang of it. Still...

I caught the hypersonic punch with one hand, and the resulting flash was only scarcely less overpowering than the sound it preceded. That day, people had their eardrums blown out from Mongolia to Ukraine. Thank God for His priests, and for those who healed, though they did not follow Him.

A mountain's weight packed into that relatively tiny frame was nothing compared to what would happen once the witch learned to fully control the Unscarred's lingering strength. It had turned me to red mist dozens of times when it had seriously hit me, despite the fact enough force to turn mountains to gravel couldn't even bruise my skin.

Leaning to the side to avoid a headbutt-the witch might have not known how to fight, but I wasn't about to take her minion for granite- I wrapped both arms around the monster's torso, and with an earth-shattering, crashing sound, threw it skyward and flew after it.

Then, I cocked back my fist and struck it square in its faceless, triangular head. It flew away from me like the world's heaviest rocket, and I followed, faster than lightning, wary of another trick. But none seemed to be coming.

The rock monster crossed Siberia so fast, it parted the land kilometres beneath itself like a ship breaking through ice. It kept flying, then landed in the Pacific like a skipping stone on steroids. Japan's national ward, extending far beyond its borders, seized the waters just as the ocean threatened to turn into a geyser, and forced them back into stillness.

Completely unharmed, the monster leapt back at me, as fast as the albino had been. I braced myself, but, when it was only a metre away from me, I saw red.

I didn't lose my head, or something. I literally saw nothing but red...then dust, again.

Turning in disbelief, I saw Szabo floating where the monster had been, a satisfied grin on his face. And, extending from him and far beyond the horizon, was a series of scarlet afterimages.

Redshift. The bastard had reached us despite our headstart, and jumped between us almost as fast as light. Furthermore, he had turned something as heavy as a mountain, and maybe as durable as the Unscarred, to dust with one strike. I looked at the strigoi with new eyes.

Literally. His aid had pulped the last set as a side-effect.

"Congratulations, little brother! You are almost strong!"

***

Where the village had stood, there was now nothing but a jagged obsidian plain, the lava forcibly cooled by the same mages who were now securing the former thralls. The destruction of her strongest minion, into which she had put so much will and focus, had shaken Sofia's concentration enough for the old witch, codename Anastasia, to sever her connection to both her thralls and her magic-though the latter would not be permanent.

The girl would be taken away for containment, therapy and rehabilitation, as would the villagers, until we could be sure they were once more normal people, not sleeper agents.

Sofia had been put into cuffs, but she did not want to go into the armoured Strangeguard van. Instead, she sat on the ground, a gangly, shivering mutt wrapped around her. The dog-the only being in the village she hadn't taken over, for it had always been nice to her-had been preserved by her magic, and did not want to leave her side, either.

"Allow me." Szabo smiled, a hand on the stiff Strangeguard officer's shoulder. Smile widening, he walked to the little witch and her dog. The child who had broken five hundred minds looked up, thin blonde hair falling into red eyes.

"I don' wanna." She croaked, throat raw from crying. At what, she herself hadn't known.

Szabo nodded as he squatted down in front of them. "Aren't you hungry, Sofi? Come with us. There's nothing to eat here."

She shrugged. "No. Not without him." She jerked her head towards the mutt.

"Well, of course! But don't worry, love. Uncle Szabo will solve both of your problems, at the same time."

***
Subject Illych, Sofia(age 10, mage)-suspected food poisoning after trying to swallow raw dog meat for unknown reasons. Agent Szabo claims insanity, but we know his inclinations. I Suggest fast-tracking Silva's training. We need a balance to that grinning monster.

-[REDACTED], Head of ARC'S Crypt division, to [REDACTED], Director of the Romanian Branch.

***
-Attention, citizens of the Russian Republic: A classified, but lamentable event involving an atrocity perpetrated by a young, rogue mage has occurred in the Ural Mountains. Using the blood spilled and the symbolism of the acts that took place there, Chernobog has gained a foothold into our world, manifesting himself where a desecrated church once stood. The Black God claims Odin's mishandling of Mimir's head is a sign of incompetence, irresponsibility and lack of interest that threatens the world as we know it. Chernobog is ready to do 'anything I must, to restore order to the neutral ground of this world. My rivals of the other realms can stand at my side or die at my feet, but there will be war. We have been too lax in dealing with the uncaring Aesir. Chaos will not reign.'

***

-'WAR BETWEEN THE GODS!?- For more information, check out page...

Dead Head, Chapter 4

***

"We will speak on the road."

Flavius Marcus didn't look at me as he spoke. The short, wiry ghost had his back turned as he put on his wargear, which he capped off by holding up a lantern that glowed bone-white.

Marc's eyes had stopped needing light long ago, but he still needed something he could follow when travelling. Ghosts, being completely unbound by physics, could move fast enough to reach any place in the universe instantly, or even travel backwards or forward through time, if they weren't careful. The lantern's spectral light would keep him focused.

The Crypt division's Romanian base was under Omu Peak, the hollow section still appearing completely solid from the outside.

I bit back a curse at his dismissal. "How is that bastard still walking free, or even walking, for that matter? Why the fucking hell is he in ARC, rather than a name on our list of kills?"

"Those are the wrong questions, Silva."

Breathe in, breathe out. Pretend you're human, David. Both will help you keep your patience. "Why did nobody tell me about Szabo until I met him?"

"Ah." The Roman glanced over his shoulder with a kind of bitter amusement-revealing an old in joke to a newcomer, except the joke had never been funny. "Why do you assume you needed to know? Or, to sound less insulting...you've done good work, Silva. You could have certainly toured most of the archives several times by now-if you wanted to."

I let out a sharp laugh. "That's it? The monster in the closet was left as a surprise because I assumed we didn't have one?"

"You know what they say about assuming?" Marc was suddenly in front of me, a transparent hand on my shoulder. To me, ghosts were actually solid. Strigoi were closer to the spiritual world than to this one, after all. "Why think ARC is all glory and honour? Because we defend the world? Sometimes, you need a monster, to do a monster's job. But don't underestimate Loric, Silva. He's smarter than he looks. If he just rampaged, we-or the Church in his country, or someone-would have killed him decades ago. But he's made himself useful, while still able to indulge himself." The legionary, who had killed more people than I've met in my life, sneered at the mention of said 'indulgences'. "Has he told you that analogy with the mad dogs? He rambled like that when we met. If not..."

"Yes." I said curtly. "But, since I've apparently been asking the wrong questions until now, why did you say we'd speak on the road? Where are we going?"

The legionary held up his lantern with an excited grin, like a boy about to go on a road trip. "You haven't since the Crypt's central headquarters, have you? Be bold, revenant! All roads lead to...Giza." Marc blinked. "That sounded much less wooden in my head. Oh, well...you had to meet the mistress, sooner or later."

I didn't know why, at the time, but the way he said it sent a shiver down my spine.

***

Marc insisted we pour some wine before setting off, so that the libation would bring us fortune on our journey. As the most senior Romanian Crypt agent-well, he hadn't actually been born there, but he'd died there before being brought back by the Shattering-he normally didn't leave the country, as our colleagues grumbled while we passed by them through the halls. But a few quick mentions of 'Giza', 'the mistress', and 'Szabo' brought nods and 'ah's, grins and grimaces, respectively.

I wasn't sure which I liked the least.

"How are your powers developing, Silva!?" The legionary hollered as we flew up to the opening at the top of the base. "I could've just passed through the rock if I was alone, you know! Can you do that yet!?"

"I'm not sure I can do it at all!" I replied, having to scream to be heard over the rushing wind.

"Ha! Not with that attitude, friend!"

We were out and away in moments. At the time, my speeder/flying licence only allowed me to move at superhuman speeds and in Romanian airspace-I was still a junior agent-but Marcus' would cover for us both, while our ARC legitimations doubled as passports.

Szabo had covered for my flight to Siberia, before I got his call, but I wasn't about to thank him, given the freakshow he'd turned the mission into.

You had to be careful about such things. Take the time my friends tried to stop my withering, for example. If Mihai hadn't been licenced to practice magic 'as long as no sapients were permanently harmed', that stunt with the moon would have caused us both a headache worse than the way my head had literally split. The mage had rewound time around the crater that night, but it still had caused a few very pointed questions, and a fine on his part.

I had been deemed insane at the time, thus unable to answer for my actions or those of others that I got bloodily involved in.

Maybe, one day, when I had time, I'd write down the little happenstances between world-shaking events.

"No passing through things! No making pests speak and spy for you! No raising and binding the dead by word and grave! Gods...are you at least able to tell the names of the dead just by looking at them?"

I frowned. Actually, I hadn't thought about that in years...nor had I been able to use that seemingly passive ability since learning of it. While meeting Marcus, coincidentally. "Now that you mention it...was it a one time thing, perhaps?"

The legionary waved me off as we flew over Egypt, the light changing from the difference between time zones. "It comes and goes, then. You're still developing."

A bearded, grinning face flashed into my mind, and I gnashed my fangs. Develop...how long had he been a strigoi, I wondered?

As we touched down in front of headquarters, nestled beneath the sand halfway between the Great Pyramid and Giza, I focused my dead eyes on the city. No fires...no intentionally-started ones, at least. The Shattering had brought Egypt's old gods back into the world, and tensions between their worshippers and the Muslim population sometimes escalated quite a bit beyond spirited debates.

No, I do not worship them. I do not pray to them. I'm not sure what to call them, but 'gods', is shorter than 'theomorphic entities', and I'll do penance if a grammar nazi priest disagrees.

My strigoi side felt kind of disappointed at the fact there were no shabti/djinn fights ripping up city blocks, though. Even I had to admit those had been kind of cool.

At the entrance we had chosen, Marc stopped to mutter a quiet oath, and press two denarii to his eyes. There was no Charon to take him across the Styx, but the rite had to be observed.

My admittance was infinitely less dignified.

So, one of the ways to hold off strigoi, evil spirits and so on is to scatter piles of small things before us. Dust and sand works sometimes, but rice is the most commonly used. I was used to the white grains by now, having to go through this whenever I returned to the Omu base, to prove I was still thinking straight, rather than ranting and raving after getting my blood up in the field.

The rice shot from a small hatch in the bank vault-like door and into the air, then scattered, mixing with the sand-and why not? Silva could have it easy otherwise, God forbid that-and I crouched down to count the grains. Oh, I knew how many there were from glance(three thousand, two hundred forty seven) but my nature compelled me to scrabble through the sand for each, the pile them up in a neat little mound, being careful not to damage any. My strigoi side wouldn't have been able to stand it.

"You're doing Ceres' work, Silva. We'll make a farmer out of you ye-"

That was when Marc learned that, while God had asked men not to kill, He hadn't said anything about kneecaps.

Rubbing his knee with an annoyed grin, the legionary nodded, then gestured for me to enter first. "Good to see you're keeping that temper leashed..."

Headquarters' halls twisted and turned as we walked, and that wasn't a figure on speech. The hieroglyphs carved into the white marble signified confusion and hesitance, change and inconstancy. Far closer to Isfet than Ma'at, which our, and I quote, mistress was the champion of.

But, while ARC was many things, afraid of using its enemies weapons wasn't one of them.

After what might have been a second or a weak, we arrived at a set of marble doors, with the hieroglyphs for 'closed' blazing over them. The guard shabti, falcon-headed, khopesh-wielding men on sphinxes glanced at us for a moment with unblinking, blind eyes that saw more than any human's. I could see the webs of power weaving in and out of them, and the symbols for clarity carved around their eyes.

Then, they nodded stiffly, stone grinding on stone, and stepped to the side. The hieroglyphs over the doors changed to 'open', then 'enter'.

Install a bell? Why, do you think we hate being dramatic?

The office of the Crypt division's Head was just as strangely-angled as the base's corridors. My eyes crossed trying to make sense of where everything was(the hieroglyphs blazing with the power of every god from Ra to Thoth to Bes' nephew's cousin twice removed), but I finally saw something that looked sane and stable.

I was beginning to think whether every damn piece of furniture in the Crypt's headquarters was marble when I caught sight of the desk's owner and her fiendishly deadly guests. Somehow, the desk was shaped so I could see all three's faces at the same time, despite the fact two of them had their backs to me.

Szabo was slouching, the amused, close-mouthed grin on his face wholly at odds with the warning glare in his eyes. The strigoi looked like he'd been enjoying a joke which was now getting taken too far.

The Crypt's Head wore a black sleeveless jacket, the Crypt shield above a headstone enter appearing in white several times, over her bandaged form, slim arms closed. Her headdress swayed slightly as she nodded and me and smiled slightly at Marc, who nodded back rapidly.

I was surprised at the exuberance...then saw-really saw-her face.

Some people just naturally project authority. Others are so beautiful, or charismatic, you just want to listen to them.

The mummy's dark features may have been full once, but the years and return from the grave had weathered them. Her lips were scarred, her eyes surrounded by bags I would later learn had nothing to do with physical exhaustion. She was still beautiful, but like a statue that had been left in the rain too long.

My dumb brain didn't give a damn about that, though, because I felt a sudden urge to stand at attention and ask for orders. The power of Ma'at clad in dead, embalmed flesh. My strigoi side balked at the thought of being placed within a hierarchy, and the holy power backing the impulse to obey wasn't helping its mood.

The room's third occupant worried me the most, and the fact they weren't from ARC was only one of the reasons.

Atlantis may or may have not existed and sunk, millennia ago. Maybe the Shattering created it from whole cloth, or rewrote the past, but we were still finding new ruins every day, and the Watcher Over Horror stood guard over each.

At the same time.

We didn't know what had happened to Atlantis, but the aura of dread surrounding the ruins was enough to send most supernaturals running, whether they had been spawned in the depths or on the surface. The Watcher certainly did their part in keeping people away, though.

Over thrice my height, the Watcher was humanoid in body, their-what little I could see of it- figure androgynous, and clad in silver, lobstered armour covered in fishlike scales. Subtle, I know. The last Atlantean-one of the few claims, or statements, period, it had made- wielded a shield that changed shape every moment, from buckler to kite to tower, every moment, and a shapeshifting weapon in the other. The harpoon-like spear became a trident as its featureless helmet turned fractionally in our direction.

"Agent Silva." The boss started in a warm, smoky voice, still smiling, and I tried to catch my jaw. Alright, the desire to obey was something, but what..."Agent Szabo was just being reprimanded for overzealousness in pursuit of duty when you and agent Marcus entered. 'Dogfood', indeed." She held up a wrinkled report, which she'd clearly been perusing, and not gently, for some time. "You do not lie in official documents, Loric."

"No lie!" The strigoi held up both hands, smiling innocently. It was then that I noticed the hieroglyph for 'truth' that had been burned into his tongue. "Ma'am."

"For the third time, you cannot expect me to believe that girl was possessed by a sudden desire to eat her pet."

"She was hungry." The hieroglyph didn't burn. Did that mean Szabo believed it was true? Was the magic objective, or subjective? "But insane! As I wrote-"

"Yes, you claimed she was insane, Loric. And then told me you fed it to her, by hand. I received several statements that corroborated that, along with complaints, from the Strangeguard."

"I helped her eat, yes, but who told the girl to swallow? Honestly..." Szabo chuckled. "What kind of heartless, unhinged child would eat a dog? I am grateful that my actions helped set little Sofia back on track-"

"To an asylum."

"-and will assure that Russia's therapists have an understanding, pliable subject. No need to thank me."

"...No, you are right. No need."

New hieroglyphs burned into the strigoi's flesh, and he pulverised his marble chair as he fell to the floor, thrashing and writhing. The mummy looked straight ahead as she spoke, ignoring him. "You are removed from field duty, for the time being. Director Kovacs will email you your patrol routes through Hungary. Be sure to give her my regards."

A gaping, glowing pit appeared in the floor under him next, and Szabo managed a hateful parting glare before he fell.

Sighing, shoulders falling, the boss nodded apologetically to the Watcher, who tilted their head to the side. She then turned back to Marcus and I, smiling again.

Bet she had all the boys calling her 'mummy'.

"Agent Silva...I have called you here because your training has become a significant interest to me, several of my colleagues, and some of my subordinates. I think we have kept you on the reserve bench long enough, yes? The pantheons are making waves-"

"Atrocious." The Watcher said, running an armoured finger along the edge of a serrated blade. "You do not have to deal with every sea god, nymph and spirit who thinks the ocean is a bathtub. Distractions, all of them."

"That was not meant to be a pun." The mummy said smoothly. "But I apologise, nonetheless. I know how demanding your duty is. On behalf of ARC, and the world, you have our thanks for keeping the old madness buried."

"...Hmph."

"The gods are becoming bolder." She continued, golden eyes boring into mine. I'd say I didn't gawk back like an idiot, but I try not to lie. "Mine are urging me to take a side. Odin's handling of his own possessions is a sign of laxity, disinterest, weakness. He has let things wander off the path of fate. Nidhogg should not have died. Mimir's head should be theirs. They will guard the knowledge, make good use of it." Another sigh. "And so on. Agent Silva, Agent Marcus, we have several predictions for when, where, how and why this godly staring contest will become a skirmish, then a war. You must make sure these possibilities do not become reality. Your next assignments are..."

Dead Head, Chapter 5

***
"...I think I'm a creep, man."

Lucian didn't look up from his bucket-the alleged mug. He just chuckled under his muostache. "You know...if you insult yourself, you're doing half my job. Though at least my insults actually make sense." The zmeu lightly shook the glass in one hand, and its contents changed from clear to red, plum to grape. "What'd you do this time? Or-dare I presume?- is it 'who'?"

I was only hanging out with him at his palace and wasting my time on this jealous nonsense because my current mission was to hurry up and wait. The only gods in our country, besides God, obviously, were the Dacian ones, and we barely knew more than their names. If they manifested at all, they would be very weak, probably confused to boot. And, after scouring the country from Teleorman to Suceava and from Timiș to Galați, Marcus had told me to take a break from the stake out slash hunt slash god watching, or whatever we'd file it as.

If we survived. The filing cabinets definitely would; they were as impossible to get rid of as the cockroaches who'd probably inherit them, one day.

So, I'd made up some lame excuse about searching zmeu country in case there were any spiteful deities hidden here, and Marcus had pretended to agree and be concerned at the 'possibility'. In truth, my only other alternative was going home(and my carpets had formed an union to sue me after all the holes I'd paced into them) or lurking around the Omu Peak base like Orlok's Romanian cousin.

Lucian was home that day, luckily. And, among my social circle, he was the best suited to help me deal with whatever was going through my smooth brain.

I took a moment to contemplate going to talk about women with Alex's disembodied, single arse(just as single as mine, in fact) or with pops, who dabbled in romance the same way I washed with incense.

Mihai had advised me to 'take thing slow' after a few questions I'd have liked to consider oblique, citing his decade-long courting of Adriana and the domestic bliss that had resulted from it.

'Dude.' I had texted. 'I don't even know how or if I really feel anything, alright? I'm not asking for anyone's hand.'

'Really ?' Had been his reply. 'So you haven't gotten tired of yours yet? Damn, Adi will hate losing that bet...'

Then, after half a minute. 'I'm just shooting the shit, David. I can only tell you what I'd do in your place, but maybe I'm overly cautious. Your choice.'

So, Lucian. Who was still guffawing as I finished my retelling of my little fit of jealousy, or protectiveness, however you want to see it.

"Aaaaaahh~" He stopped to draw his tongue over his teeth, with a sound like knives rasping on stone. "A pipe? Were you imagining crushing something else, perhaps?"

"Not my fault." I shrugged, trying to appear less irritated than I was. "That guy thought he was a hoot."

And the guffaws returned. "Fine, fine, but...look." He put the glass down on the gold table, drawing himself up with a surprisingly clear look in his eyes. I wasn't surprised that he wasn't drunk, or even buzzed-even the weediest zmeu could knock back the world's booze supply without any reaction; they needed special brews to feel anything. I was surprised he was serious. "David. This isn't dumb lust, if that what you're scared of. Dumb lust is what you'd find next to a picture of me, if you looked it up in the dictionary." Luci smiled self-deprecatingly, finger-long fangs barred. "You know my kind are beholden to passions. That's a polite way of saying we're looking to get our rocks off all day, every day." He held up a clawed finger in warning. "I've hung out with Mia before, you know. At Lucas' shop. Only damn interesting thing there...anyway, she's not any different. If you do get together, don't fool yourself into thinking it will last forever. Yes, you're both unaging. But zmei aren't made for settling down. Sheer monotony and lust will steer us towards a different partner, after a century, or ten, or a hundred."

I slouched in my chair as he turned his wine into a tar-thick, purple substance. Distilled from the grass around his palace, by smell. The vapours alone would have killed a man twenty times over.

"It's not that." I said after he drained half of his glass, which refilled itself. "I mean...it's...it's that too. But, it's the age gap I'm really worried about. And...the power dynamic. Former power dynamic." I corrected myself as he raised a thick, bristling black eyebrow, seemingly waiting for me to go on. "Look, Luci, I'm twenty-six years older than Mia, alright? Old enough to be her father."

"Well, that will make coming up with pet names easier." He grinned at my annoyed look, and waved me off with his free hand. "Lots of supernaturals are older than their partners! Just ask, ah, almost every vamp who ever put it out. Those who stick it in the food, anyway." He shook his head, still grinning. "Age gap? David, you know I'm in my mid-sixties, right? Closer to your pops than you. Just 'cause I don't celebrate every birthday doesn't mean they don't exist. And, wanna know a fun fact? Some of my flings could call me grandpa, though most stick to daddy. They could call me father, too." Another laugh, this one shaking the mountain-sized palace. "As for the, whatchacallit...so you're her former teacher? So what? That's good, means you know each other already. Not like you started hitting on her in high school or something." He rolled his yellow, black-slitted eyes at my doubtful expression. "Mia likes you. Yes, she likes almost everything with a pulse. Lots of things without one. Maybe it's just a phase. You've been to college, she's in it. Experiment."

"Maybe I will." Haven't been looking for my spine so hard since my fight with the Unscarred. "We, uh, we talked after my tantrum. She kind of made the same offer you did-"

"Woah! Offer? Easy there, buster. I don't swing both ways, unlike your other scaly friend."

"Fine, hypothesis. Whatever you want to call it." I steepled my fingers in front of me, staring down at them, looking like the world's most senile mastermind, I was sure. "You say you meet at the Raised Scale? Regularly?"

"Yeah. Gotta make sure my little big bro hasn't switched his glue with blunts and started eating them."

Smirking a little guiltily(Lucas deserved all the praise for growing up with Luci as a younger brother and surviving with apparent sanity), I leaned forward. "Well...please keep an eye on Mia, Luci. Tell her to focus on college. Won't be long before those art classes enter arcane symbology, and it wouldn't do if she was distracted from that by a dusty old man."

"Sure." He held up a fist, and we bumped. "Any...particular reason?"

"I was there when she almost went crazy. Could only wring my hands like a moron and pray I wouldn't have to kill her. At least you had your brother."

"Hell of a consolation prize, Lucas is." He sneered, but fondness was palpable under the derision. "So you still feel the need to protect her? You know she can walk straight through magic and punch mountains to pieces, right?"

"Right. Just...keep her on the straight and narrow, please. For her sake."

***

Constantin was alone with Him again.

They were never apart, not truly, but human perception still hobbled him.

This wasn't his long dead father, but his Father, after all.

Constantin stood in the Garden, on the mountain-the mountain where the Tablets of Law were sent down, and the one where a father almost sacrificed his son in the folly of blind faith, before the Lord Himself stopped him, and declared no such sacrifices will ever be made in His name.

He stood on the hill where the Son of Man had bled, and at the foot of His Throne as Revelation was prepared.

Perception.

"Forgive me, Father," He began, hands clasped, head bowed. The floor-the thorns, the rocks, the blades shining with golden flames that swallowed light- tore through his habit and cut his knees.

But Constantin had never been afraid of pain.

"For I have failed in the duty and office You entrusted me. I..." He grasped for words. The Lord was silent, for turning His face alone unmade mountains, and His Voice...His Voice..."The beings some call gods. I know not whether You made them, or whether they are divine-"

"BECAUSE THAT IS NOT YOUR PURPOSE, CONSTANTIN SILVA." The Lord-Maker, Watcher, Redeemer, Three-In-One and One-Through-Three- speaks. "YOU TEND TO YOUR FLOCK. THE LAMB THAT WAS CAST ASIDE AND YOU SHEPHERDED, THOUGH HE PASSED THROUGH THE GATES OF DEATH TWICE. THAT IS ENOUGH."

"Father!" He could not believe this. "They...they are planning a war! On Earth! Your flock will die, whether targeted or not. Even those who have turned away from You, or have never kept You..." He lowered his head until his brow met the harrowing floor and split shallowly. Maybe this would open his mind. "I should have turned them from this course by advice or promise of violence. I...I  have failed You."

"WE SHALL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT." The Lord, who was not pretending to be One at the moment, sounded faintly amused. "YOU WOULD RUN YOURSELF RAGGED, CONSTANTIN, TRYING TO HELP EVERYONE, EVEN THOSE WHO DO NOT ASK FOR OR DESIRE YOUR HELP. THAT IS CONTEMPT FOR THE BODY WE HAVE WROUGHT FROM CLAY. THAT IS ABUSE OF YOUR JUDGEMENT. THAT IS NOT WHY WE GAVE YOU FREE WILL."

Constantin crossed himself, grimacing at his presumption. Of course-why had he believed he knew the Lord's mind? "How will I know what to do, Father? I must-I  will- defend my world."

"WE ARE THE LIGHT AND THE WAY. FOLLOW THE TRUTH OF OUR WORDS, NOT WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE THEIR MEANING."

And then, the church doors opened.

***

Pops was prostrating himself before the altar when I entered, and rose to his feet clumsily, blinking bleary eyes. I help up my hands apologetically. "Trance?"

"Indeed, my son. But, do not worry. I am fine. Why..." He trailed off as his deep brown eyes took in what I was wearing. Or, rather, what I wasn't. "Your scarf. Did you lose it?"

"Tossed it myself." I said quietly, tracing a finger that burned along the icons as I walked to him, the other caressing my noose marks lightly. "There is a war coming, pops." His nod, rather than determined or dismayed, was resigned. I pursed my lips. Whatever he had been been shown had clearly been no joyous revelation. "The Dagda started this, and I doubt he will just stand by and watch. He is not thinking straight anymore, or else Nidhogg would be alive."

"Are you expecting to fight what some call a god, David? Did you come to me for advice?" Constantin tilted his head, tone slightly droll. "I would offer some on why you shouldn't, if you would listen."

"Come on, pops. Do you really think I'd kill myself twice? You know I'm always on the lookout for new experiences." My bleak grin quickly faded. "The Fae. They will sally out of Britain and Ireland, whether because of the gods there or despite them. And I...have no way to truly, permanently harm them, if we clash."

And I explained why I had come. Constantin nodded along, face growing more and more concerned as I spoke.

"That will put you in constant pain, David. Your flesh will sting and burn, and never heal. You have only felt pain briefly, rarely, in the last eight years. Do you even remember what it's like?"

"Unpleasant, I think." I said with forced levity. "I need this, pops. Iron, and silver too. The shape will be my weapon against my kind, and any other who fear it."

"...As you wish, my son. It will be ready in seven days, for such things drawn auspicious numbers to them." Pops clasped his hands in front of himself, mouthing a prayer. "And then, it will be your cross to bear."

Dead Head, Chapter 6

***
You know how, in the stories, when the hero needs this weapon to slay that monster, it's never finished or there before he fights the monster? Either it comes for him earlier than he expected, or he sets on his journey and forgets the weapon, or loses it, or it breaks.

Luckily, it didn't seem like I would need my bladed cross for the next mission. ARC would have preferred being able to make their own holy weapons, but the world's various Churches had a monopoly on that, and anyone who knew how to make what I'd asked pops to forge was already in the clergy. So, outsourcing is only fine by necessity, though it makes them grind their teeth.

At least Constantin was known and respected, even as an outsider. Fifty years of service and protection freely given will do that, even if it will also make your brothers in faith question why you are so tolerant of the pagans and the unbelievers.

Not to mention the monsters, in appearance if not essence.

"The Sognefjord." Marcus' translucent finger hovered over the map of Norway, so that it seemed to actually be touching the King of Fjords. "We are...surprised, the Aesir are only making their move now."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Rivka Peretz's fangs made her sound like she was always holding in a growl. That, and her permanent shark grin, clashed with the long, dark braids and watery grey eyes, which did little to make her look friendlier.

But you could have worse problems, as a ghoul.

Rivka's family had come to Romania after the Revolution, when we were still politely debating whether the Party should be replaced with a democracy, a meritocracy, or if we should just go 'fuck it' and throw ourselves at the mercy of the nicest supernaturals.

And, as Romanians are wont to do in the rare occasions we don't have a yoke around our collective neck, we tried all three and managed none. The Meritocratic Mage Party was still getting hyped up these days, as far as I could tell whenever I hated myself enough to watch politics. Let the most skilled, competent and powerful rise to power, and maybe if they're nice too, we won't end up in a magical oligarchy.

The fact most of them looked human probably didn't hurt, either. Maybe I should run for President sometime in the future, to balance this anthropocentrism.

The Peretz family had traveled to Romania because the patriarch had been a pretty big fanboy of Benjamin Fondane-Barbu Fundoianu, if you'll forgive me for not using the Frenchsona-and his wife hadn't trusted him to watch himself out of Israel, however short his stay was. But one thing turned into another, then they had a girl, and by then, they really weren't in a hurry to go back home.

I didn't know how Rivka had become a ghoul. I wasn't sure what the process in general was, or if there even was one, and it would have been rude to try and guess.

I had once barred my swollen, veiny neck to her, to show I wasn't shy about the way I'd died, but she'd just told me some undead liked to keep their former lives to themselves.

"Well," I had said. "At least you're not the shapeshifting desert demon version, then. What do those turn into again? Hyenas?"

"Think I'd turn into an animal for you, Silva?" She'd laughed, and-

"Yes?" Marcus cut into my microsecond-long musing.

"Are we really supposed to believe the Norse gods, being the Norse gods, have been sitting all quiet and nice for three years without their favourite talking head?" She took Marcus' frown as an encouragement to go on. "I know agents are like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed sh-"

"Yes, beautiful analogy, agent Peretz." The Legionary held up a warning hand at her widening grin. "This might surprise you, but one of the Aesir's two best planners is a paranoid, shapeshifting consummate liar, and the other is Loki. They're not all screaming morons, jumping headfirst into impossible fights." 'All the time' went unspoken. "If you believe ARC has been fighting a shadow war without your knowledge because we do not value your opinion, I am happy to let you down. When we don't tell you about shadow wars, it's for completely different reasons." Marc smirked as the other Crypt agents in the meeting room-all ghosts-muttered in agreement about compartmentalisation and need to know bases. "You might have noticed we have been advertising our presence, in every country, like the worst cheap movie billboard these last three years? To let the pantheons know the Earth is held by men, for men, and they can't just waltz in and walk all over us."

Marc was putting on a brave face for us, acting all impartial, because he had to give an example. He had confessed to me that he feared being denied entry to Pluto's realm for not aiding him or his family.

"ARC is calling all hands not dealing with the chaos caused by Chernobog's manifestation." This was new to me, at least, and I stood up straighter in my chair. "When it's not his worshippers showing their devotion through chaos, it's people fighting against them, or using him as an excuse for doing whatever they like. The Black God walks the world! This was never foretold! The end of days is coming!" The ghost didn't roll his eyes, but only just. "Perhaps I am poor at reading, but my goat entrails have been showing no apocalypse any time soon. Anyway...we have been lending a hand to most national supernatural law enforcement agencies-FREAKSHOW, Strannyy Okhrannik, Dingdan Baochi, O Circulo Bizarro-who have been doing likewise to us, and their smaller counterparts."

I was about to call Marc out for showing off his 'multilingualism'(he'd never been the same since possessing that dictionary) when he tapped an unseen button with his left hand, and a section of the whiteboard behind him projected a life-sized, holographic rendition of the events at Sognefjord.

Oh, gods.

***

I had nothing to gear up with, a thought that had me bitterly swearing at the lack of a cross in case we bumped into some Unseelie Fae on the way to Norway, but my colleagues did. To have a way to truly interact with the world, the ghosts possessed the safesuits ARC had received from Yamada Inc, as a favour for us cleaning up Mars for mankind, but really because Kenji wanted to see his inventions tested by lab rats whose injuries and/or deaths he wouldn't have to answer for.

Each safesuit was simultaneously tougher tougher than a mountain and more flexible than silk. Painted black with white trimming, with non-reflective black visors, each safesuit could take the punch I'd used to first pulverise that mountain golem in Siberia with only a cracked visor, and that was their weakest point. The fact they were this durable meant the ghost could move them as hard and fast as they wanted, giving us thousand of fighters physically on par with me.

Rivka put on a safesuit too, because, as a ghoul, she was the squishiest member of our impromptu regiment. She could slap rounds back at a railgun, take tank shells with a bruise and break a speeding train with a tackle, but none of that was worth squat when dealing with even Einherjii, let alone Thor and his sons. The safesuit's toughness, backed up by her ghoulish ferocity and knack for violence, would still make her a valuable asset on the field.

We left Omu base with Marc leading us in a safesuit customised to look like a centurion('Because I always wanted to be on', but also because its appearance would help us distinguish him if his voice was drowned out in a hypothetical fight). Rivka tried to hoof it first, running down the mountain fast enough to melt the stone, but one of the ghosts, Albert, picked her up as he realised her plan. Yes, she was more than fast enough to run on water and leave steam in her wake, but we didn't need to charbroil everything between us and Sognefjord, and only she seemed to want to.

The ghoul had grumbled and invented several curses by the time we had reached Norway, with Albert stolidly taking everything in stride.

"Look." She told him after stopping to think up new words, and not because she needed to breathe; an ability all ghouls agreed was wonderful when swallowing, and even when eating. "I'm not-I'm really grateful I flew with Albert Airlines for free, but this is demeaning. Can't we..."

"I might have an alternative." I suggested after she trailed off. Rivka turned to me, and I could see her curious expression through glass that would have been opaque to humans. "Leap of faith?"

Shrugging-even if she fell, from orbit, she'd heal- she muttered to Albert to let her go, and her boots hit nothing but air...which became solid when shaped by my will. I didn't solidify all the air I could perceive-that would have been both excessive and dangerous to the environment in ways I wasn't qualified to analyse-only the sections she needed to run on. With a whoop and a thumbs up, she started running on the invisible bridge, so fast a sphere of flames formed around her.

It was like this that we made our way to Sognefjord.

***

Heimdall, as Thor patiently explained to us, grinning cheerfully like we were all out for a beer, couldn't find Mimir's head with his farseeing gaze. As neither Odin's runes, nor his ravens, could find the head, either, the Allfather had ordered his greatest son and warriors to scour the Earth until they found the head, or never return.

With a world-shaking laugh at this newest challenge, Thor had called upon his own sons, Magni and Modi, and servants, Pjalfi and Roskva. They had mounted his chariot, drawn by Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr, at the head of ten thousand Einherjii.

Yes, I can into Wikipedia. I can even write down long Norse names. Everything, for a lollipop.

As Marcus tried to argue that Aesir presence on Earth was distruptive, riling up both their worshippers and the rest of the world, the Thunderer just smiled and nodded along, like my math teachers whenever I was called to the board.

We could all tell how likely he was to agree by the end.

"We share your concern too!" Marcus said, holding out a hand. "The weft of fate should not have been able to be severed, let alone like this. We will help you find Mimir's head and set things right, but I beg of you...return to Asgard. The world is already chafing under the presence of the Black God. It cannot take more-"

Thor cracked his back and neck, sighing into his long, wild red beard. Rolling his broad shoulders, the god gestured at himself. "Unarmed. Beltless. No gauntlets. I come in peace, revenants." Funny. I didn't know Sif went by 'peace'. "You," He told Rivka, winking. "Are the first woman to see me not gripping my hammer." His electric blue eyes then turned serious. "But if you seek to turn us from our course, and bar us from taking back what is rightfully ours...you shall die again, and truly. So swears Thor."

And the clear sky flashed with lightning, before the frozen fjord cracked open from the teeth-rattling thunder.

Because, when gods speak, the world listens.

As I stepped forward, to say my piece, I could only think this hadn't been how I'd expected to spend my November.

The Einherjii, who had ditched their Iron Age armour for golden, rune-covered plate that left nothing uncovered, stiffened at my approach. One of them, leaning against a round boulder six meters tall and three wide, lightly struck the stone with one elbow, turning it to dust. His way of getting his fellows' attention, which worked better than expected.

Magni and Modi, standing at their father's sides, stepped out of the chariot to intercept me. The former had his mother's golden hair and father's long beard, the latter Thor's shoulder-length red hair, though he was clean-shaven. They were both so tall I only came up to the base of their bull-like necks, and their arms were thicker around than my thighs. I help up my hands to show I wasn't going to do anything stupid, but they stood their ground.

That was when Hex made himself known.

The second most powerful member of ARC's Salem division, the watchers over magic, Hex had been in the Thule Society in his youth, and had then become one of ARC's founders. He didn't hold a candle to his superior, or so the rumours went, but he had still been skilled enough to conceal himself from my strigoi senses.

The black mass that streamed out of his white longcoat, from under his slouch hat, made me want to gag in a way even meeting Fixer for the first time hadn't. It grinned as it shaped itself into weapons, the infinitely-sharp blades cutting rents into reality that were sealed shut by Hex's power.

"They have told you to leave. The ghost has begged. That is unworthy of him, and unworthy of ARC." The old mage didn't move his stitched lips, and my ears registered no sound, but we all heard his voice in our minds. "We will not ask again."

"Making threats, sorcerer?" Moody Modi sneered, drawing a two-headed axe, covered in runes of destruction, from thin air.

"Only promises." Was the last thing Hex said before he was sent flying.

The Einherjar who had snuck in behind him, impossibly fast and quiet, had produced a mallet, then slammed it between the mage's legs, sending him out of even my sight.

His armour scattered like old toys thrown by a disappointed child as he flexed, revealing a long-haired, muscled redhead. I only had time to frown like a moron at his mischievous grin, then he was suddenly in front of me, scarred hand on my throat.

And then, I saw stars.

***
Loki smiled as he let the glamour fall away, being sure to pet the goats for bearing his presence for so long. Looking like their master hadn't helped. If anything, it had made things worse, more confusing, and the poor things already had tooth problems.

They still bleated in relief when he hopped out of the chariot to stand on water. Bastards.

"The first undead to reach Alpha Centauri without a spaceship..." The Trickster mused, twinkling eyes easily tracking the Christian strigoi-sounded like a paradox he would devise-far longer than this drab's universe's laws should have allowed. "And that patchwork dabbler is gone, too. I didn't like his parasite much, either."

"Not as much as you still love your voice, obviously." Thor scoffed, shaping lighting into a cage to hold ARC's members. Neither their armours nor undead natures would save them if they attempted to cross, but he didn't want to kill them if he didn't have to. Yet. They were all protectors of man, dammit. "Me wearing footsoldier's armour was the only worthwhile idea you had today."

"Well, if you didn't want to cross-dress again..." Loki shrugged, smiling.

"It didn't have to end like this." The ghosts' headman, wearing Rome's history like a king's rags, called. Then, he reached for an unseen device on the armour, and all Hel broke loose.

When ARC evicted the reptilians from Mars, the aliens didn't ask for recompense for their dead. After all, they were all genetically-engineered and modified, and could build an infinity of reptilians if they wanted.

Instead, they had been thankful for being stopped before relations between the Collective and mankind could deteriorate beyond mending.

The loss of their quantum experiment at Liam Lloyd's hands had stung, but only spurred their scientists on. And their remaining star experiment-the extreme labour/combat unit designated 'Unscarred' for its extreme physical endurance- had been improved as a result.

Drained of lifeforce, the mindless albino was now moved solely by yoctomachines, controlled by the gestalt consciousness that would have been known as the Shaper, if it had ever deigned to name itself to mankind.

And now, as the Collective looked to rebuild their image in the eyes of the surface world, its master cried havoc, and let slip the dog of war.

The Unscarred teleported right atop Loki, landing a lazy backhand on the Jotunn that smashed him through the water, and then the fjord's bottom. He did not stop there. The Trickster would later be found in China, nursing a numb nose in a mountain-sized, steaming crater.

Magni and Modi were the next it struck. The gods raised their weapons so fast light and space bent around them, and Norway was rocked by the explosion that vapourised Sognefjord and blinded people as far as Denmark.

But they were not fast enough. When Heimdall looked for them, he was surprised to learn you could swear in the sun's core, if you were angry enough.

The Einherjii cracked their armour and broke their feet and fists, shattered their mountain-splitting blades and island-sinking bludgeons, on its pale, scaled hide. The Unscarred walked through them, turning them to red mist and chunks of golden plate.

Thor grinned.

"A worthy opponent! Our battle will be lege-" He braced himself with one hand as he landed on the moon, pulverising a crater the size of Russia. The reptilian teleported above him an instant later. "What are you, DreamWorks' lawyer-?"

Thor did not feel its next punch either, laughing in the vacuum as the moon shattered like an egg under him. Mani would have a cow over this later, as would the other moon gods, but...oh, well. Even the god of fertility couldn't please everyone.

Thor leaned aside from a red-glowing punch as he closed his left hand around its tail. Black spikes sparked against Jarngreipr when he stopped the tail whip.

"Aberrant!" A rasping voice screamed, and the Thunderer laughed as the incongruence between its thinness and the lizard's body. Then, he realised it wasn't coming from its trunk-like throat or barrel chest. "You recklessly damage this system's astrography and assault its foremost law enforcement agents-"

Ah. Its master, speaking through its toys? Thor could see the infinitesimal machines with his godly sight-little puppets, moving a bigger one. All at a coward's fingertips.

"If you spent half as much time helping us as you did yapping," He growled. "Everything would be fine now!"

A gauntleted backhand smashed the albino through Mars, splitting it in half harder than Ares' spine did when confronted by a real enemy. The Unscarred jumped out of the exposed core, shattering half of the red planet into fist-sized chunks.

That was when Thor began worrying.

This construct wasn't evil, nor was its master. But they were stupid and blind, for all their skill in craftsmanship. They couldn't see they were ruining things even further than that moron from the Emerald Isle had.

As such, he had no reason to kill it. Furthermore, he was defender of mankind, and, it seemed, so was it.

So, Thor pulled Mjolnir free of Meginjord, creating a hurricane between the humans' world and the destroyed celestial bodies. Wind screamed into the cold void around the moon and Mars, holding them in place, preventing meteors while he thought of other possible dangers.

The big bastard's scales sported only a tiny hairline crack after he broke Mars in half with its face. These reptilians built well. Maybe he could have them meet the dwarfs, and teach them not to be so damn stolid? A little ale never hurt...

As the Unscarred hammered his face with punches that would have shattered planets and kicks that would have shaken stars, Thor sought a way to end this pointless, if entertaining, distraction of a brawl.

Then, he saw where they were.

"Stupid drake! You've given THOR the greatest storm under the sun!"

Hoping to his ancestors that Odin would find a way to fix this-lately, he'd only been worried about getting head from that beheaded old man, despite being married, but he was still the greatest runecaster he knew-Thor tapped into his power, and wrapped Jupiter around Mjolnir, condensing it until it was barely larger than its head.

And then, he brought the hammer down.

The Unscarred flew faster than most spaceships, turning Saturn into a thin cloud. Uranus and Neptune were barely even visible after it passed through them. As for Pluto...well, no one would be thinking about that as-

The Unscarred's head sported the most gorgeous goose egg Thor had ever beheld, white scales split open to reveal bruised, leathery skin. Its eyes-placid pink at the start of the fight-were now red as blood, and its muzzle was set in a -ha!- thunderous scowl.

It didn't compare to the coterie of angry gods floating behind it, though. Zeus, Poseidon, Hades-and not beating each other bloody, progress!-, Artemis, Mani...and more moon gods than he knew, or could count.

That wasn't the worst part, though.

"Thor." Odin's brow was so furrowed, it was threatening to turn into a trench. "What in Surtr's flaming bowels are you even doing!?"

Dead Head, Chapter 7

***
I didn't know where the hell I was, apart from far, far away from Earth.

Maybe even long, long ago?

I'd never really been into astronomy, so I couldn't name the stars around me, at least off the top of my head. Instead, I spun around in the void, trying to fix my superhuman sight on something, anything I could use as a...spacemark? To get back to Earth.

I was thousands of times faster than sound, could reach the moon in minutes, but deep space doesn't care about that sort of speed. So, unless I happened across something I could drain of lifeforce to boost myself, without being crushed under guilt, it looked like it would be a long way home.

That was when I spotted them.

Hex looked about as well as anyone could after a nutshot from Mjolnir. The old mage's white coat and ARC uniform were tattered and covered in soot, likely from the speed he had traveled at, and his slouch hat had been lost somewhere along the way, revealing close-cropped, chalk-white hair and equally pale, bland features.

Except the stitches, of course.

Nacht, darkness itself, roiled and spun around its partner-master?-like the universe's scariest concerned dog. It sensed my approach, as the dark images flashing across it were replaced by a face made out of stormclouds, with fangs of lightning.

"Silva. You should not be here. No matter." Something like jealousy, maybe even concern, enered its screeching voice. "Hex is hurt. You cannot see me healing him. I will send you to Earth, then follow, once he is safe. Did Thor hurt you, too?"

I blinked at the question, then considered.

Thor, like some supernaturals, had such control over his strength that physics obeyed it, rather than the other way around. I had once mentioned supernaturals trying to stop vehicles and being sent flying because they were light. The ones who do that are rookies, amateurs. Experienced ones can do things like lift mountains, or hurt beings tougher than them without affecting the environment. This extended to speed and durability too, allowing them to move faster than lightning without creating sonic booms or setting things on fire, as well as taking immense hits without being sent flying, despite the force.

I wasn't on that level yet. Not that it would have helped, against the Norse god of strength. But...hurt?

I rubbed my neck where Thor had gripped me. It had burned, yes, but he was a god, so of course his touch was harmful to strigoi. But, besides that? Thor had thrown me to another star system without breaking the Earth, or me, as a side-effect. If he had hit me, let alone with Mjolnir, I would have been truly dead now, as he had promised.

"I don't think so." I replied. "But...I can fly, you know. Unless you have a way to speed me along?"

Nacht scoffed, and explained how it was all forms of darkness, allowing people and objects to travel between shadows. "But before you leave, Silva...you saw what those brutes did, just to get back what they lost out of negligence. They cannot be allowed to have Mimir's head back. Even if they don't use his knowledge for revenge against ARC for trying to stop them, they are clearly not fit to watch over it."

I honestly wasn't sure about that. Was Nacht, despite its love of destruction, going to propose that ARC should, what, confiscate a pantheon's possession and keep it because they were incompetent? The suggestion alone would insult the Aesir, never mind doing it. "I'm not sure I like where you're going."

"Don't be a fool, strigoi! We must find Mimir's head and guard it until someone who can and should have it comes along. I know you and Hex have never worked together, but we must help each other in this crisis. If you find the head, or even learn of its location, you must share it with us."

I thought of Szabo, and how ARC had never mentioned him until I had met him. Were they really in a position to ask me not to keep secrets?

No. This was stupid. Nacht was a monster, but bound to Hex's will. They'd been defending the world since before pops had been born.

So, as I approached Nacht's form, which had shaped itself to show a shadow leading into the Sognefjord, I gave it my answer. "I promise I'll help you find the head."

***

As the strigoi left, Nacht straightened up, grinning. Antlers grew out of its head as its silhouette was reshaped, becoming humanoid.

"A promise...it's lovely, when you receive things you didn't even ask for, on top of what you want." Chernobog mused to himself, clasping his hands and making Hex dissolve, the bait fading into mana and stardust. "So obliging, today's youth!"

***

The Aesir had returned to Asgard by the time I returned from Alpha Centauri, Odin restoring the damage done by his son in his fight with the cyborg revenant that was the Unscarred. The Shaper, as the yoctomachine controller called itself, greeted me as 'aberrant Silva' and promised the Collective would not cease its efforts to restore logic to the world.

While Odin went to eat crow before the other pantheon leaders for his son's rashness, my colleagues and I returned to headquarters, where our Head, Aya Reem, congratulated us for the attempt to resolve things peacefully, while doubtlessly cursing the Aesir in her head.

We were given leave, to a degree, allowed free time and traveling were we wanted as long as we kept an eye out for rumours of Mimir's head or other godly incursions.

That was why, when Szabo came at me like the world's ugliest comet, I was in the Raised Scale, chatting with Mia. Lucas was at an art gallery in Bulgaria, so she was holding down the fort.

The strigoi slammed his hand through my skull up to the wrist as he dragged me out of the shop, Bucharest amd onto the stretch of road between the capital and Urziceni.

I didn't even have time to ask what the fuck was wrong with him, besides everything, when he slammed me down and began tearing me to shreds-you say?-while calling me every synonym of 'idiot'.

"I thought you were only blind when it came to your nature, David," He sneered, my blood and flesh slashing up on his ARC shirt and flayed skin jacket. "But you are truly blind. Speaking as you wish when you're a civilian is one, but when you're ARC? Compromising us?"

Mia flew at him from behind, so fast the ground turned to steam beneath her. Szabo didn't even look as he backhanded her away, the zmeu's landing creating a mountain-sized, steaming crater. Even from where I was, I could see her jaw hanging by a strand as she ceadled it with one hand, glaring daggers at Szabo while it healed.

I saw red. I prepared to drain every fucking blade of grass of lifeforce, and give Szabo a taste of his own medicine, but Lucas did it first.

The zmeu was wearing a pair of dark blue sweatpants with white lines running up the sides and a white sleeveless shirt whose back was narrow so it could fit between his wings.

He was also wearing Szabo as a glove.

Lucas' clawed hand was buried deep into the strigoi's chest, wrapped around his spine as he held Szabo four metres off the ground.

"You are assaulting an agent." Szabo hissed. "This is official ARC business-"

"If every bloodthirsty bitch could throw on an ARC uniform and be an agent, the world would be up shit creek without a boat." Lucas said calmly. "I could hear your shrill rant from the next country over. Leave Silva alone. And..." Two pairs of blue eyes left Szabo to take in Mia, still healing, yellowish skin forming over torn muscles. Those eyes were shining with blue flames when they returned to the strigoi. "Her?"

"She was aiding a rogue element within ARC-"

"She's goddamn harmless." I didn't have the heart to call out Lucas for blaspheming. "So is Silva. I don't know what he does at work, but if you tried to kill him, then hurt my employee, when she jumped in to help him-" He was barring his fangs now. "You know what would have happened if you hadn't pulled that slap?"

Lucas drew back his own hand, to demonstrate. When the bloody mist coalesced back into Szabo, he didn't look too pleased.

"Fucking...I need a smoke." Lucas grumbled, taking a blunt the size of a cat out of his pocket. Then, putting it in his middle head's mouth, he gripped Szabo's jaw with his free hand and tugged lightly.

Lucas drew the strigoi's fangs over his neck's scales, sparks jumping. He smiled when a fat white one caught the end of his cigar, lighting it. "Ahh...much better." He blew out a ring of smoke into Szabo's already-healed, bloody face. "Forgot my lighter in your mother's cunt when I left to drill your sister. Want this back?" He waved the mangled jaw in the strigoi's face, who bared his fangs, saying nothing. Lucas shrugged, crushing it into paste with a twitch of his trashcan lid-sized hand. "Weird. Judging by your getup, I'd have thought you were into recycling."

"I think he got the message, little brother." Aaron rumbled, suddenly standing above Lucas, Szabo now in his hand. The nine-headed zmeu looked like he'd found a slug in his salad. "Didn't I promise I'd kill you if you came to Romania?"

"Know him?" Lucas grumbled around his blunt.

"Oh, yes. From back when our countries were comrades. Still remember that gruesome 'cravat' of his..." Aaron trailed off as Szabo opened his mouth, glaring. "Yes, I was retired. On retainer, actually. Ready to re-enter service, if needed. And they called me back. I was in Constanța before I smelled your foul carcass."

Aaron's building-sized body was clad in a Navy Admiral's uniform covered in so many medals, I was sure they'd have crushed a human. At his joints, bands of bronze, linked by nigh-invisible wires, gleamed. His war-harness, able to shapeshift, enhance his body and create any tool and weapon he could need.

I dearly wished he'd put a cross through Szabo's skull.

"I doubt your superior likes you crossing borders to assault colleagues, Loric. Should I throw you to Giza, to have a talk?"

...Alright. Enough of watching the byplay like a slack-jawed moron. "What the fuck is going on here!?"

Aaron gave me a series of avuncular smiles, with all heads. "You should check your aura, Silva. Darker than I-or you, I think- believe you're used to. But besides that...Romania's legends are being called to war, lest the gods break the world. Have you ever wanted to meet your heroes?"

Dead Head, Chapter 8

***
"If you give in to that darkness," Szabo sneered, pointing a clawed finger at me. Aaron had released him from his grip. "And slaughter the world, I'll never forgive you for stealing my spotlight!"

I tried to scowl furiously, but incredulity stopped me. Though, perhaps, I shouldn't have been surprised. This guy had killed himself using one of the most ridiculous methods I had ever heard of, simply because his human life had been unremarkable. And, considering his theatrics in the field...of course he was obsessed with leaving his mark on history.

But I wasn't.

"Thanks for the warning." I said coldly. "But, unlike some people, I'm not ruled by my strigoi impulses. I've been holding them at bay for years, and I won't lose now."

Szabo slowly, hesitantly lowered his arm, like I'd just argued how the sky was obviously green. He moved his incredulous eyes from me to Aaron, brow furrowed. "Is he the only one here who can't see...?"

"It's faint to me." Lucas grumbled, stubbing out his purple-glowing blunt agains a scaled palm. "But...it's there. And it's new. Your spiritual self has never been this dark, Silva. Aari?"

The older zmeu shrugged. "I suppose his true sight isn't at its best yet." Then, apparently having gotten bored of talking about me like I wasn't there, he studied me with nine pairs of crimson eyes. "Have you been anywhere spiritually-toxic lately, Silva? Or met anything or anyone...twisted?"

Was Nacht's nature really so pervasive and...contagious? Was my soul tainted merely from interacting with it? If yes, I couldn't imagine what Hex's looked like, if he even still had one. I hadn't looked.

Come to think of that, I hadn't looked at mine lately, either. At least, not since meeting it in Alpha Centauri.

My arcane sense slid over my sight, and I turned it inward, but my soul looked the same as always: ragged and grey, and wrapped around and through my body and mind infinitely tighter than any human's. Dark flecks drifted in and out of it, but they always did-my strigoi instincts, coming and going. There was no surrounding darkness, whatever these three were seeing.

Although...they all had more experience and sharper senses than me. Or was I merely blinded to whatever was wrong with my soul? Nacht was the darkness inside men, and would never miss a chance to twist or break unless stopped by Hex...who had been unconscious during our meeting.

But even so, Nacht shouldn't have been able to affect or corrupt me by esoteric means. It was not a deity. It didn't have holy powers.

"Return to Giza, Loric." Aaron was now looking down at the strigoi, thoughtful frowns on his faces. "Or wherever you came from. Silva, I'd advise you to call your Head. Romania's Crypt agents are gathering in Constanța, as are a few people I'm sure you've read about-"

"Why not one of our bases?"

"Joint op." Aaron's frowns deepened at my interruption. He was slipping back into the officer's mindset, thought it was highly debatable if he had ever left it. "You think Greuceanu or Iovan Iorgovan would trust an organisation with allegiance to no nation over the descendants of their fellow countrymen?"

I tried to suppress the dumb smile that threatened to split my face at the mention of my childhood heroes. Judging by Aaron's soft-barely louder than most gunshots-snort, I was only partly succesful, if at all.

But before that...

"Szabo." I tried to ignore the strigoi's nakedness as he spun around to look at me, and prayed he'd stop to buy some clothes before flying to Egypt. "Why take care not to wreck Bucharest while you beat me? You even dragged me out of the city. And...Mia?" I grit my teeth as I glanced at the zmeu who was shakily getting to her feet in the crater, still glaring at Szabo. "Why not just kill her, rather than slap her away?"

Szabo's incredulous look briefly returned, then left as quickly as it had come, replaced by a broad, fanged grin. "You know nothing, David Silva~" He quoted, scratching inside the hole in his chest with one hand. "Any murderer can drown a city in blood-who'll remember that!? And killing a woman out of callousness? Cliched." He spat the word like it was the vilest insult he could imagine. "Loric Szabo kills killers and torments monsters until they break! That is how the world will think of me as it wails my name, eons from now!"

And with that little dramatic proclamation, he was gone, faster than I could see.

Aaron snorted again, this time much louder, eyes fixed on something I couldn't see. "Still obsessed with his legacy...you'd think a family would be enough for that." He shook his heads, leaving the air rippling with heat. "Come on, Silva."

***

[REDACTED] ARC Facility, Greenland, 2030

Aya Reem felt bone-weary as she sat down in her chair, and the meeting hadn't even started.

It had been a pain to even get there effectively: Geb and Nut, contemptuous of her neutrality in the pantheons' struggle, had refused to help her travel by land or sky. She also had the vague feeling they were having a lovers' spat.

It had been Thoth, who claimed to have forgotten more than Mimir who ever learned, who had helped her tread Duat to arrive safely.

"Of course, child." He had laughed, beak somehow twisted into a smile. "I'm happy you're such a simple girl. Lets the sages show why they are sages."

And she had smiled back, and bowed, because eating shit from the gods was what being their champion meant.

"Smile more, babe." A voice alternating between a growl and a lilt spoke. Aya looked up to see Samuel Shiftskin drop from the ceiling with a grin, somehow landing in a slouch in his chair at the round table.

The wendigo's body, nearly three metres tall, was barely visible under the skins he wore to shapeshift into humans. His magic took care of everything else.

"You will deepen those bags around your pretty eyes~" The former skinwalker crooned, face rippling in the shadows of his leather hood, from human to deer to hawk, but always fanged. "And...I think I've reached my daily quota of misoginy."

"Harassment, too." She said primly. Then, to keep the tradition alive..."Who are you wearing?"

Sam grinned like the world's most bloodthirsty child, grabbing and lifting his patchwork cloak. 'Charlie M.', 'Son of Sam'-'for the irony, natch'- and dozens more names were formed by yellowed teeth stitched into the leather. His face was covered by a stretched, scarred mask that had been hideous long before Sam had torn it off its former owner, on that fateful night in Springwood. "Why are you sad? Really. Tell me, and I'll go shopping again."

The Head of the Salem division doing that for her was not exactly on Aya's bucket list. But..."Loric."

"You can't have an attack bitch and whine when he bites, mummy."

"Not my bitch." Aya sighed, wishing their colleagues would come faster. "Cut the mummy jokes out. I just wish he wasn't so impulsive..."

"Did he turn that city into collateral?"

That brought a dry smile to her lips."You know he doesn't do that. Every monster can, and he wants to be special, remembered."

"I think his grandkids remember him, out of self-defense if nothing else. And their kids...do they know him? I forget."

"That's because you're always thinking who to mangle next, Shifty!" A bass voice harrumphed as Leon Gilles entered. The Luna division's Head was in his hybrid form, his golden gryphon eyes taking in the room in an instant, looking at the corners for bugs and wards. He tried to smile amicably at Aya, who, at one metre seventy, was less than half his height, but the blood on his beak ruined the image. "Coyote made a fake moon over Toronto, and everyone in headquarters busted out the fur, feathers and scales! Some chitin, too. Felt like Benedict from Captain at Fifteen handlin' 'em." The weregryph shook his head, folding his wings as he took his seat. "Sorry I'm late. Just flew in from Canada-"

"And boy, are your arms tired!" Sam grinned-his petty revenge for the 'shifty' comment. Then, his face turned more serious, and was replaced by an ox's dully-glaring visage. "What's your treasure at the moment?"

"Myself. That way, I'm untouchable long as I'm safe." And due to his nature, no one could harm Leo while he was defending himself. "In case ya were thinkin' what to break."

"And why'd I be thinkin' aboot that, ya hoser?"

"Are they courting each other again?" Ying Lung snickered, slipping through a wall like light through a window. The celestial dragon's intestines hung from his slim, split ivory belly like lank scarves, and he spent a few moments wrapping them around himself, to prevent distraction."Ne Zha's way of asking why a child of Heaven would put earthly matters over his home's interests. You should've seen my answer..." Another snicker, wiskers twitching. "And don't get me started on the headaches in Drake. They brought up family loyalty, too."

Ying shot Aya a meaningful look, pulling his ivory pipe from an aetheric pocket and his gourd from another. He rolled his white, black-slit eyes at her disapproving glance, coiling up like the world's most satisfied snake. "It's  tea, my lotus flower. The only things I drink on the job are my enemies' tears."

"Careful with the flattery. Sam will feel you're muscling in on his turf."

"No! How could he compliment you in front of Gilles!?"

The banter and bad jokes continued, the Heads trying to ignore their anxiousness as the rest arrived. Tamar Thousandhands, burned, hairless flesh barely visible under Kabbalistic patterns and pentagrams. Israel to Greenland was just a step, from his and his legion of demons' perspective.

Elsbeth Crane, today a glowing, antlered silhouette. The Scion Head had asked her power how to best battle the Black God, and it had turned her into Belobog, or at least something with his power.

Amara al-Hazred, as grim as her ancestor and twice as mad-or Mad, depending whom you asked. Her colourless robes concealed a belly bearing the stretch marks of spawn she had never asked for-a gift from the human side of her family, trying to push the limits of mankind's tolerance to being loved. The serene cast of her olive features showed little of a madness so sharp, it had reforged itself into focus in Miskatonic's halls, remaking the Head of the division also bearing that name.

Gerald Reyes, of Camelot, was the last to arrive, though not the last of their number. The English mage muttered a 'this room shall be imperceivable', then sat down, the law active. Running a hand through his close-cropped grey hair, he adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles with the other, before clasping his hands in his lap. Smiling slighty at the absence of his usual pain in the neck, he nevertheless gave Aya, the first to arrive, a curious look. "Where's Johnny?"

Leo and Sam both opened their mouths, causing Ying to rap his pipe on the table. "Don't," He told Gerald with a distressed grimace. "Give them material."

"Gaol John is treading the paths of the dead." Amara whispered, lips unmoving. "All his selves are looking for traitors and moles within ARC. Internal Affairs are running themselves ragged looking for religious zealots and pantheon-supporters. As are External Affairs, regarding our alleged allies and informers." She preempted his next question.

Gerald nodded, preparing his announcement. "My esteemed colleagues-"

"Skip," Sam yawned, crocodile jaws cracking. "Gerry Mander."

If Gerald could kill with a glance-at the moment- the wendigo would have had a hole burned through his head after this breach in protocol. But the mage had always been able to put rules aside, when necessary. Regaining his poise, he sat up straighter. "After long, if not patient, deliberation, the pantheons have agreed descending to Earth as they want, ignoring their rivals' wishes, is counterproductive to the maintenance and future positive development of the Syncretic Treaty."

Silence. "The  Dagda said that?" It was Leon who broke the ice.

"I'm paraphrasing!"

"Ya know, paraphrasin' is supposed to make things shorter...just sayin'!" He added at Gerald's look.

"As I was saying," Gerald bit out. "They have agreed to work together, if only because they still want worship, even if they'd rather break and remake Earth than be careful. So, they've agreed to send champions in their names. They are gathering at the following spots..." After he rattled off the list, Gerald glanced around the table, looking each fellow Head in the eyes. "Liaison proposals?"

Interlude: ARC at war

***
Toronto, Canada, 2030

As his silver gauntlet came down on the werebeetle's head, Leon Gilles sighed.

Not because this was tiring or boring, but because he had to beat his subordinates.

With eyes that could count the hairs on a fly on the horizon, Leo looked up at the moon that was not a moon.

Coyote, like many of his counterparts, often flouted the Syncretic Treaty to stay off Earth, as tricksters were wont to do. However, he, usually, didn't come this far north, preferring to skulk and lurk in the States, looking for evil to punish and fools to mock, in painfully ironic ways.

It was only the trickster's power that helped prevent a worldwide, and worse, catastrophe, for the moon he had created out of nothing was just as large and heavy as the real one.

It was also his power that somehow kept it in the confines of the city's airspace, despite the fact that it was the size of the bloody moon.

Coyote had cited 'some bet with a Raven' as the reason for his arrival, but he hadn't yet explained what the bloody hell he was trying to do-

"Lion-bird!" The trickster called down to Leo, standing on air as he spun the moon on a clawed finger. The weregryph didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if the thing obeyed physics. "A wager-if you can stop the moon, I'll tell you why I maddened your pack! Deal?"

'Stopping the moon' was probably going to be one of those stupid metaphors whose meaning he only realised after the story was over. Leon flashed back to his nana, shivering. But...

Weres lost it under the full moon, their human side overcome by animalistic instincts. Only the most disciplined, a category he would place himself in, at the risk of puffing himself up, managed to keep calm(and carry on) long enough to isolate themselves until they wrestled their wits back from their beasts. Just to be sure, though, he had used his gift to fully shield himself from any influence.

Gryphons were often thought of as guardians of treasures, and, for some reason, Leo could designate a being, object, place or even concept as his treasure, and become invulnerable while defending it, untouchable to even silver, the moon's touch, or a god's wiles. It didn't enhance his strength, not really. At most, he could exert his body to the max without hurting himself. But he didn't need more power. He was strong enough.

"Deal." He muttered, bracing, and Coyote grinned, lifting the moon overhead like he was preparing to spike a ball. Over seventy-three sextillion kilograms of rock came down at Leon at nine-tenths of lightspeed, and he knew that, for all the laws of science were crying in the corner at the moment due to Coyote bullying them, the planet would be obliterated by such an impact.

That was why, Leon decided, it would never land.

With a wingbeat that shattered glass across Toronto, Leon rose to meet the moon that was glowing red from the speed, and, drawing his head back, smacked it a good one.

His headbutt sent the satellite flying upwards even faster than it had come down, and Coyote laughed, stopping it easily with a finger, like they were playing volleyball.

"The wager was to stop the moon, lion-bird, not push it back! I should teach you to watch a trickster's words, but...bah. You're good for a laugh. Almost like that werephant who tried to cool Africa down!" The lunatic had tried to drag the continent to the North Pole after tying huge chunks of it to himself with his own tendons. It would have broken under his reckless strength if not for...well. That was a story for another day. "Here is today's wisdom: only the stoutest children of the moon can keep their minds while their mother shines full. Know whose will is feeble, Leon Gilles."

Then, with a thought, Coyote erased the fake moon from existence. Humming thoughtfully, he glanced at the real moon, raising two fingers so that he looked like he was pinching it between them. Still humming, he spun the moon, until it became a crescent. "Aren't you glad Geirtir brough the heavens back after his son broke them with the drake's head? Now, I'm sorry to say I must leave. Got a world to save, and a war to prevent!"

"As do I." Leon mutters, watching the trickster skip away on moon beams. "As do I..."

***

[Redacted] jungle, Honduras, 2030

Camazotz had never been a beloved god. He had never cared much for humanity, either, not since those twins had blundered into his realm with their ridiculous antics.

But that didn't mean he'd leave this world defenseless, if it was imperiled.

Take the old monster before him, for instance. There were some among mankind, bless their little beating hearts, not that he ever would, who truly believed their Shattering had only changed the future, but Camazotz saw time from both sides, with a god's eyes.

The past had been remade, so that it had always been. If one were to return to the peak of the Maya, they would find the monsters in their stories treading the mountains and jungles, for all that such beings had only come inexistence during the Second World War.

(An absurd name, if Camazotz had ever heard one. Like there hadn't been so many before it...)

So it was that vampires had always existed. The monster who looked like a man-a tiny, hunched, chinless, hairy, blocky-faced man, but a man nonetheless-was their father.

Primus, so named by others, because names, or words, hadn't been a thing during his youth, had been cursed after drinking dry the daughter that had been meant to be blessed by all the gods and ancestors their tribe had worshipped in primal, grunting rites. Cursed to always thirst, Primus' desire to lead and protect his people had been twisted into the urge to rule and crush his thralls, just as many of them were twisted into his first 'childlings'.

Primus, in the rare occasions he became dimly aware of his spawn, viewed them as a scorpion would: small, weak, annoying emergency food.

Or maybe a hamster was a batter analogy, given his looks, Camazotz mused as he tackled the first vampire out of Honduras-he usually didn't come this far south, preferring to unknowingly play Chupacabra in Mexico- and into the sun. It wouldn't turn him to ash, as the bastard was too tough for that, and sunlight didn't kill vampires, anyway. It merely locked away their esoteric powers, and that was what Camazotz sought.

They landed in the sun's core, raining blows upon each other that shook the star, making its surface ripple like a puddle in a monsoon. Camazotz's touch, holy for all it was dark, couldn't slay the vampire. He was still weak to blessed things, as all his kind were, but far, far mightier than any descendant of his. It was the reason the pantheons had preferred to let him be, as long as his predations were kept modest.

Primus pushed him away, a coarse curse on his lips that was silenced by the airless, crackling roar of the sun's core. Camazotz grinned mirthlessly into that pinched, beady-eyed face, creating bats around himself like a mortal might wrap a cloak around his body. They spun and spun as they gathered, forming silently-shrieking spheres larger and heavier than all the worlds around this star combined; grasping them with his will like a warrior would a spear, Camazotz threw them at the grimacing vampire, while taking a deep breath.

Plasma filled his godly chest, blazing harmlessly, and Camazotz exhaled darkness. It rushed out faster than the light whose absence it was, for darkness was always there first when light arrived, and erased a chunk of the sun out of existence, leaving a screaming gap that could swallow worlds.

Primus huffed in confused annoyance as the darkness surrounded him, but his vampiric nature made his existence a fact of reality. He wouldn't be erased, but that was just fine; Camazotz merely sought to dull his senses while his bats, guided and protected by his power and will, flew through the void to tear at him.

Let Primus be eaten alive for once. See how he-

A languid swipe turned the bat spheres into clouds of gory mist, and Camazotz scowled in annoyance. The old freak had hoped to use the confusion caused by this-no pun intended- head hunt to sate his thirst with a continent or five, maybe turn the survivors into slaves. And the bat god would have none of that. Maybe he could finally gain some worshippers who weren't just edgy manchildren...?

Musing over enlightened self-interest, Camazotz nevertheless kept an eye on Primus as he rocketed out of the void, space bending around him while light was left behind. It was only Camazotz's divine senses that let him perceive-

Nothing.

The bat god blinked as he willed himself back into existence. His mind had been erased too, but that was not an obstacle for a god like him. A quick look told him Primus had suffered the exact same fate, judging by his bemused frown, but the first vampire was nearly as hard to put down.

But who...

"Please cease this conflict, or I will have to take serious action." The newcomer's voice was velvet-soft, thin, androgynous: a scholar in a library, afraid to disturb the peace, or an ingenue at her first ball.

The ARC uniform did not help with identifying the speaker's gender, nor, to his confusion, did Camazotz's senses. They were tall and slim, with dark skin, curly raven hair and features that could have belonged to either a man or a woman. Primus stared at them like a jaguar that had stopped to drink, only to see a crocodile snap out at it. The Nightraiser smiled back, meaninglessly.

"The pantheons are calling for a ceasefire, old bat. Go, and choose your champion, if you would have one in the struggle to come."

***

Noite Tranquila clinic, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1973

The child does not remember its name. It does not remember its gender, either: partly because it has willed itself to forget, after the latest time its mother had loved it, partly because it has cut out anything that could help anyone identify it as a boy or a girl.

The child hopes it will not be punished for that, but knows it is a vain hope. After its father died-complications from too many donated organs, greed for money and favors masked in altruism-its mother has made sure to love it, every night. It is the only family she has left in the world.

The child remembers its mother's hands, and mouth. They are the only things it can remember here, down in the darkness.

It is not aware that no child should ever have to know such things, before they have even learned what lust is.

If it were able to exit the basement, ascend the stairs and see its home, it would learn its mother is seen as a cheerful, respectable doctor in the city, never letting herself be distracted from her purposes of helping those who cannot help themselves.

That night, the child stares into the darkness, waiting for its mother to come, wondering she will do when she see it has removed the parts she loved he most(what were they? What had it been?).

And the Darkness stares back.

The Darkness is nothing, and less than nothing. Indeed, it is the gaps in the dreams of creation, the uncertain shadows at the edges of its maker's sight. Years later, the child will meet a colleague bound to a laughing, joyfully malicious, infinitesimal facet of the Darkness.

As its mother comes down the stairs and flicks on the light, gasping at the wounds before beginning to rant in outrage, the child closes its eyes. It is so, so tired...

The woman is erased from existence, so thoroughly only a few select beings will be able to remember she ever existed. So is everything in the child's line of sight, once its eyes are closed.

The house collapses, but the child is not harmed. For the Darkness has touched it, and everything it is not aware of is erased. The debris is unmade just as thoroughly as the mother who has never been as it falls towards the child.

Later, the being who would become known as the Fixer, but is currently known as the Handyman, leans over the confused survivor of this strange disaster. Hands on hips, or as close as such a being can come, sees the yawning void that has crawled inside it, binding itself to the child's perception.

The Handyman scratches at his centre with a shapeless appendage. This child is the carrier, maybe enforcer of the absence that is, if not the enemy of the All-In-One, then certainly its opposite...

"What did you do, little one?" He asks softly, hoping not to frighten it any more than it has already, lamentably, been. The child looks up at the being that is not yet-as much as such things can apply to his ilk- the Fixer yet, with black-on-black eyes.

"I blinked." The Nightraiser answers.

***
Deep space, 2030

Gharghalos, briefly and fearfully known as the Forgetful in the languages of many former civilisations it had incorporated into itself, starting with its native one, was not a cruel being.

It was created with the purpose of remembering, for its makers had been beings of flesh and blood, prone to growing old and senile with the passing of time. The machine that stood at the centre of its core had been created to memorise, to record, to store, and given enough intelligence and free will to decide for itself what things were worth remembering.

So, it had ate its world, and its creators. Their knowledge was sometimes available to it, but it kept slipping out of its mental grasp.

Travelling the cosmos, Gharghalos had come into contact with an anomalous entity that could only be described as a void in the fabric of spacetime. Possessed of a rudimentary sentience, the being had felt something akin to constant hunger, or greed. The need to take more and more into itself.

Gharghalos had consumed it, and so had the being, in turn. They had become one, but the emptiness of the being, for all the power it had given it, had made fulfilling Gharghalos' original purpose all but impossible. That insatiable greed tore at its memory, at its cogitators and organic brains, so that memories and records slipped in and out of its mind, vexing it to no end. Worse, Gharghalos had also gained the being's appetite, and now always vied for more.

Viewed from afar, Gharghalos would have looked like an enormous, amorphous, multi-coloured cloud of flesh and metal and light, the size and weight of a thousand myriad galaxies.

Gharghalos is too large to perceive the Milky Way with its optical receptors. Instead, it senses, on a small world in one of the galaxy's spiral arms, an anomaly, much like the being it had once encountered, but worse.

Gharghalos does not know this, but Atlantis died on Earth, and its death, for all that it is kept at bay by its Watcher, scares even the oceans' greatest abominations.

But the Forgetful feels only the fascinating imprint of the disaster, and the knowledge contained in the ruins. It desires them for itself-

One of Gharghalos' eyes trembles and shakes as a projectile pierces halfway through it. Such weapons would usually be laughably outdated, were this projectile not a former galaxy, remade to be denser than neutronium, and hold itself together while moving close to lightspeed.

The Watcher Over Horror tilts their head to one side, thoughtful as they examine the newest would-be plunderer of their lost home. The giant undead knows everything pertaining to their charge, and is present wherever they must be to defend it. Their throw should have been enough to get the monster's attention...ah.

A raised gauntlet stops a tentacle that can only be likened to a solid galaxy cluster, and the universe trembles. The Watcher pushes back, and Gharghalos rockets to the edge of observable space, and beyond, the Watcher leisurely keeping pace. It raises its weapon, preparing to deal Gharghalos a death blow, when the ARC agents butt in.

As they always do.

Equilibrium has cultivated enough that she can now perfectly balance anything. For example, giving herself strength and stature equal to the Watcher, so that they are balanced in status. An open palm strike splits Gharghalos in half, making space bend. Li Xiu, growing up surrounded by opium addicts, watching all her children and grandchildren die as the First and Second World Wars came to feed them to the furnace of death, has never been able to find peace in the material world. Even so, the cultivator would not have looked out of place in any town of her homeland: the small, plump woman, white hair arranged into buns, only stood out due to her ARC tracksuit.

Ying Lung, drawing upon the powers of Heaven to enhance his size, if not his power, comes at the monster from beneath with a roar of 'Milky Way flowing!' as he devours Gharghaloth as a shark would a minnow. The celestial dragon gives the Watcher a jaunty wave as he pats his belly, shaking the universe from here to Earth. The Milky Way has traditionally been seen as a river, and Ying Lung has traditionally been seen watching too much sentai while shaping his fighting style.

And the Argument Engine, created to reason and having evolved far beyond that-to most beings, the acausal machine has created itself, by talking the multiverse into believing that it has always been, but the Watcher knows and sees better- can talk almost anything into anything.

"No one has observed our confrontation with the creature," It begins, Turing's placid tones somehow echoing in the vacuum. Its creator(it has never been created, for such a marvelous machine would never fail to stop its father from killing himself, no; it has always been) has made it to be charismatic and articulate, things he had never seen himself as being. "As such, no one can say it happened, for they have no proof. Therefore, it did not happen."

And reality remakes itself, convinced by the Engine's reasoning. There is no damage left-no disturbed superclusters, no gravitational anomalies, no tears in spacetime- from the fight that has never happened.

"If a monster dies in space," Ying snickers at the Engine, blowing a grinning steam dragon out of his pipe while returning to his normal stature. "And there's no one to hear it scream, does it truly die?"

The Engine looks like a featureless, polished chrome sphere surrounded by a myriagon. Even so, its frown is palpable. "That is one of the stupidest thought exercises I have ever heard. If I didn't know better, I'd say you came up with it. Sir."

The Engine was not placed in Internal Affairs for its charm or respect for superiors, but for its power and suspicion(not to mention abysmally low opinion)of everyone besides itself.

"Now, now, Engie, honoured Lung." Equilibrium smiles, wagging a finger, as the Engine starts ranting that they don't even know if Gharghalos could communicate verbally, let alone in vacuum, so the thought exercise is thrice as dumb as the one with the tree. "Discord among the ranks is like worms in apples. It might make things meatier, but not better. Sun Tzu."

"Sun Tzu never said-" The Engine would shake its head if it had one. "You're starting to sound like the dragon, old hag."

"This banter is hilarious." The Watcher lies. "But, may we ask why two thirds of ARC's shock squad and the Head of the Drake division have decided to drop in, uninvited, into a a fight we had under control?"

"We know it is your purpose to defend Atlantis." Equilibrium says, clasping her hands and bowing. "And we-"

"Yes, Aya Reem thanked us for that. That was not our question."

The cultivator looks pained at their brusqueness. Good. They hadn't asked to be helped during a bloody warmup.

"The answer to your question, you tunnel-visioned monomaniacal asshat," The Engine replies. "Is that we helped-it's a favour, try looking it up, if you can, with that bucket on your head-so that you would listen to us: the gods are ceasing hostilities, and we do not need you tossing sea gods or their representatives out of the ocean because you believe they might be dangerous to that ghastly shit-hovel-"

"What Engie means." Equilibrium cuts in, eyes annoyed to match her twitching smile. "Is that you have been thorough enough in removing possible dangers to Atlantis, whether they intended harm or not. But things have calmed down now. You can stop. As for why we are here...Engie and the Nightraiser will likely be part of the taskforce sent to scout Yggdrassil for Mimir's head. The Aesir have failed to find anything, but perhaps outside perspectives will help. The rest of the 'shock squad'-goodness, are people really calling us that? We're considered special for our powers and skills, but we're not a team, let alone a named one- are too busy too attend. The Fourfold is hunting, we're still looking for Hex, and Fixer..." Equilibrium's tone as she trails off makes it clear she is trying to appear unsure whether she should reveal his location, even to an old ally.

She does not succeed. She sounds terrified.

"Fixer is directing a flute performance at the blind care centre." The Engine says, not quite managing to hide the horror beneath its sarcasm. If the Dream is so close to fraying that Fixer had to go before the Black Throne and help the players go on...

The Watcher understands. But, when they return to Atlantis, it is with more questions and fears than they would have liked.

Dead Head, Chapter 9

***
I almost nodded at Aaron's words, then remembered I couldn't leave just yet.

"Wait." I held up a hand, and the zmeu's tense wings, relaxed infinitesimally. His faces did not; at least, not the four that turned to glance down at me with a mix of disbelief and exasperation. 'Is this how ARC prepares its agents? Getting caught with their pants down just when we should get into gear?' must have been his thoughts, or something along those lines.

Yeah, well, sorry, old man. We haven't all spent decades on the Black Sea's shores or a warship's deck, ready to blast Turkey to superheated steam with a breath if they made one shady move. Still wondered if his tail was split during one of those staring contests.

And I wasn't at my -horrendously low bar incoming-mental best. Szabo's gentle treatment of me hadn't been the problem(though the fact it hadn't been was probably a problem in of itself. My strigoi side, less of an alternate personality and more of a really loud subconscious, relished violence and mayhem, which meant events that would have left my human side either screaming or staring off into the distance, were just things that happened) as much as his reason for it, vague as it was, if he even had one.

He'd rambled about me saying things I shouldn't as an ARC agent, but what had he meant? And what was that darkness him and the older zmeu brothers had seen?

My pop culture sense tingled, mildly notifying me that this had every chance to turn into some beautiful soap opera misunderstanding, subtype: tragic, if I didn't ask what the hell had everyone so clenched.

"I should have spoken to Szabo before he left," Can't believe my words, either. "But I guess I was too stupid to remember until after. Going by his words, and yours, do you think I'm...possessed, or something? I can't tell." I couldn't keep the worry out of my voice, but at least I didn't stutter.

All of Aaron's faces turned to me, a few blinking slowly, eyes closing sideways, as they only did when he was thoughtful, from what Luci had told me. Lucas was fingering his pockets for another blunt, two of his heads looking up at his older brother, one biting its lip. His middle head turned to glance at Mia in worry. Zmei never really bonded with their children as humans do, or at least should, but Lucas had never mated. I guess he had adopted her, in a way.

"I think you are still yourself, David." The Bronze Boyar said carefully, and I almost gawked. This was the first time he had used my name. "Whatever that shade around you is, it's not corrosive or cloying, like the possessions I'm used to. It would take a god to possess a strigoi, anyway..." Three heads shook, and I found myself nodding. The only gods I'd ever met were Thor and his sons, and they weren't known for staining people's souls. "As for why we can see it, but you can't? It's either wrought so it's hidden from your sight, or our senses are simply keener than yours. But, if you want a fourth opinion," Aaron's tone lightened almost imperceptibly as he jerked his head at something behind me. "I think there's one incoming."

Mia's jaw still looked raw when she touched down behind me, yellow flesh covered in angry purple bruises that were slowly being hidden by patches of yellow-orange flesh. It didn't stop her from grinning toothily at me, though her eyes were concerned as they roamed over me. Then, her gaze moved from me, to her boss, to his older brother, and she chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"Am I even allowed to hear whatever secret shit you're gossiping about?" She rasped. "Without getting silenced later, I mean."

"Perhaps not all of it, hatchling." Aaron said in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Mr. Silva-I think you are acquaintances, if I remember correctly?-has hit a rough patch at work, and it's left its mark on him. We were wondering if he seemed...different, to you?"

Mia's attention returned to me, and her eyes changed shade slightly, from gleaming scarlet to a deeper red, like old blood. "Nah, he still looks good enough to eat." Her tone was droll, but I could still feel her spiritual eyes moving over my soul. "About as ragged and grey as he imagines he is, but...whatever is that shitty ink blot? And why is it shaped like that?"

"Yes, I wondered that too." Lucas chimed in, apparently having chosen not to smoke. "Denser, for lack of a better term, around the head. Hmm..."

"This can't be a possession, then." I said, annoyed at standing around like an idiot while I was examined. "No demon, or god, or whatever, would leave such obvious evidence that even Mia could see it."

"Ouch, teach!" Her right hand closed over her heart, index finger tapping her flat chest. "You'll have to make up for that later..."

"I meant that you haven't exactly been training your arcane sense to spot spiritual traces." I said placatingly, before my voice became firmer. "As much of a rotten shit Szabo is, he was right: even if he didn't fought back and hurt you, you'd still be guilty of assaulting an ARC agent. What the hell made you jump in?"

"Helping you." She shot back, clenching her jaw. The action drew a pained whine from her, and I winced in sympathy. "Busting into the Raised Scale like that without a warrant? Assaulting an off-duty colleague? And besides, what the fuck did you expect me to do, stand aside while he ripped you apart?"

"You-" No, Mia hadn't seen Szabo in action. But, dammit, even bullrushing me like should have been evidence that..."He's much stronger than me. You couldn't have done anything to him."

Mia's expression turned wry, like a child with a secret. I saw the magical power inherent to zmei well up inside her, concentrating into her right hand, which splayed, drawing a glowing cross on thin air. My eyes burned at the sight. "You might be surprised. Luci told me you brought up my Symbology classes. We don't only paint and talk during those, you know?" Mia grasped the cross like it wasn't made of light, gently tapping it against my chest, over my heart. I cursed at the slight burn, taking a step back. "Should have put this through his skull. I just didn't expect him to be that damn fast..." Mia shook her head, the cross dispersing, and looked at Lucas. "What about you, boss? Expecting problems for fucking up an ARC agent?"

"I reiterate my point about the uniform." Lucas said, slightly more relaxed now that his employee was recovering. "Should have told Silva to come with him for disciplinary action, or whatever he felt was the problem."

'Disciplinary action' reminded me that Szabo had been confined to predetermined patrol routes through Hungary. Had that changed? Had he disobeyed orders just to come at me for...

I suppressed an involuntary shiver-of pleasure. My strigoi side crooned at the thought of that old monster putting himself in danger just to hurt us. Images of me shoving pops' iron-silver cross through his exposed brain flashed through my mind.

"Was that all, Silva?" Looked like it was back to the usual with Aaron.

"No, sorry. There's something I must really get from my father." I began explaining, but he waved me off halfway through.

"Better to have it and not need it than the reverse. I'm faster than you. Where did you say you live?" I gave him my address, and the giant zmeu was out of my sight and over the horizon faster than I could see.

***

"...your son insisted, Father Silva." Aaron finished, squatting down in front of the Our Redeemer Christ church. It had been built on the space where the old church had stood before the town's devastation decades earlier, and designed to accomodate larger supernaturals. But, as both Aaron's former lovers said and his younger brothers joked, he was larger than expected. "I presume he expects to meet Old Scratch as he scales Yggdrasil, but, as I told him..."

Constantin nodded, not looking up from the altar he had repurposed as a forge. The Lord had given him the flames and heat to work the metal without any tools, but he still harboured some doubts. David had never been eager to hurt himself, not before...well.

That had been a failure on both their parts. Far more on his for not foreseeing and preventing it, Constantin believed.

"Of course, Admiral." Constantin agreed as he added the white-glowing chain to the cross. "You also said something about a darkness around him?"

"Indeed. I believe David was touched by a corrupting being or place, though he does not seem to remember anything unusual. Or, if he does, he is a very good dissembler."

"Actually, he couldn't lie to save his life-so to speak." Constantin held up the cross before his face, took a deep breath, and blew, turning the metal cold as death. Only fitting.

DAVID'S MIND IS HIS OWN AND ONLY HIS OWN-THOUGH HIS EYES AND AND EARS AND THOUGHTS ARE NOT, the Lord spoke into Constantin's mind. BUT DO NOT DESPAIR. I SHALL BE AT YOUR SON'S SIDE, AS I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. LET THE BLACK GOD BELIEVE HE IS THE ONLY ONE WATCHING THROUGH HIM.

Constantin drew a sharp breath at the declaration. As he passed Aaron the cross and watched him fly away, he wondered how much the old zmeu really knew and saw.

Father? Constantin thought. Why would he leave such an obvious mark of his passing that the zmeu could see it? Surely he is not that amateurish?

AN AMATEUR WOULDN'T MAKE SURE EVERYTHING DAVID DOES AND SEES IS LITERALLY SHROUDED IN DARKNESS. HIS FELLOWS WILL SEE THE SHADOW, TOO, AND HARBOUR DOUBT. HOW MUCH IS THE STRIGOI CHOOSING TO DO, AND HOW MUCH IS HE MADE TO DO? DOES HE TRULY NOT SEE THE MONSTER BEHIND HIM? HAS HE BEEN SENT BY CHERNOBOG TO SABOTAGE, OR SPY, OR DESTROY? PERHAPS ARC IS AWARE AND DOES NOT DO ANYTHING, BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL CORRUPT.

Are they?

THEY ARE INDEED AWARE, CONSTANTIN. LORIC SZABO'S EYES SEE THE SHAPE OF THE MARKING, NOT JUST THE RESULT, FOR HE IS CLOSER TO DARKNESS THAN YOUR SON. BUT HE IS RECKLESS, AND BELIEVES HE SEES THE CLEAREST. HE DOES NOT. AYA REEM SEES THE ADVERSARY GRINNING ACROSS THE BOAR, NOT JUST HIS UNWITTING PAWN, AND MAKES HER MOVE. AND THERE ARE OTHERS, WHO WILL EITHER BE TOLD BY HER OR SEE THEMSELVES. THE REMAKER, FOR ONE. HE TOOK YOUR SON TO THE PLACE WHERE HE BEGAN TO FORGE HIMSELF INTO THE DEFENDER HE WILL BECOME, AND HAS A KEEN INTEREST IN GUIDING HIM TO THE END OF THAT PATH.

***
After Aaron came back with my cross-ordinary but for two details: its end was sharp, for stabbing, and its edges were bladed; and it was so heavy the weight would have torn off a human's head, to prevent mundane thieves-we said goodbye to Mia and Lucas, we flew to Constanța, two hundred or thereabouts kilometres covered like a walk to the corner store. I, let alone Aaron, could have made it there in a moment, but I didn't have enough control over my speed not to mess up a lot of the country by flying that fast, while Aaron could tell the laws of physics to go fuck themselves, and they'd ask how hard.

The resorts had been emptied, the staff sent home to make way for the Army, Navy and Air Force people who had moved in from bases around the country, as well as those close to our borders.

Vamps, weres, and even a few strigoi-no human soldiers; the mages hung back, ready to play artillery, but weren't on site in case Chernobog or any of his merry counterparts from other pantheons dropped in. This was all heavies-though they stood aside, milled about on the beach. Above, zmei in Air Force uniforms mingled with their Bulgarian zmey counterparts, who had used their powers over weather to bring about some sunlight and warmth, not that it helped anyone's mood.

While Aaron met with his opposite numbers to coordinate, I spotted Flavius Marcus gesturing at me to come to him. He was standing apart from the soldiers, though not alone.

I recognised the people around him from my story books. Iovan Iorgovan with his mace, Prîslea with his bow and wry grin, Greuceanu with the scimitar that held his power. Other heroes too, from other countries. Marko Mjnarcevic, attended by a grinning, hairless man with skin like rock, who was so tall the Bulgarian hero barely came up to his ankles. Marko nodded earnestly at my approach, lamb-sized black moustache fluttering. I would have said his dark eyes looked cunning and shrewd, if his wolfskin cap didn't keep falling over them.

The ispolin chuckled gravelly at Prince Marko's enthusiasm, body naked but for a loincloth and sleeveless vest made from blackberry bushes.

"Yes." The ispolin rumbled at my questioning frown. "The weakness of my kind. Had an elder brother once who tripped and fell over a blackberry bush. Bled out until he was white."

"What a horrible way to die." I replied, thinking of something less bland to say.

"Oh, certainly. The poor bastard was lucky the axe in his skull had already killed him." The giant chuckled to himself, not noticing or caring about my expression, Iovan's disgusted scowl-the Bludgeon-Armed hero had almost unknowingly married his sister, and so despised mockery of family-and Marko's roared pleas not to be macabre. "But, see, if an enemy sees me like this, they'll think I've grown past my weakness, or I'm insane and, as such, too dangerous to fight." The ispolin concluded, tapping his head.

"Please, cousin giant," Prîslea began in a way that suggested he'd have liked to hear the giant talk some more, going by the amused gleam in his green eyes. "Your family is fascinating, but mayhaps our newest comrade ought to learn why we have been gathered here, at the edge of the fruitless sea?"

"Thank you, Brave one." Marc said, his white, transparent form shimmering in relief. "There are heroes gathering at agreed-upon points in Hungary, Ukraine and all over the world. The nations' armies will remain to guard their lands, while their heroes, aided by ARC, will search for what the Aesir have failed to find."

"I get you being here, then," I said, trying to hide my enthusiasm at meeting my childhood heroes. "But me? I've only been in ARC for three years, and I'm convinced you're only keeping me around for my power, unless someone has their eye on me."

"Yes, unless." A corner of Marc's mouth twitched upwards, then he was back to his stoic expression. "Maybe you should work more on sensing emotions, David. It is your least used ability. Anyway...you and I will be ARC's liaisons to the pantheons' chosen. Well, to our third of the taskforce, that is. Nightraiser and the Argument Engine will liaise with the other thirds."

He said those names like they were supposed to mean something to me, but I could only stare blankly. Probably senior ARC agents, whose existence was revealed on a need to know basis, then.

"Heimdall should drop the bridge for us any-" Rainbow light. A sensation of falling upwards, of standing still as the world sped away from you. Darkness so bright it blinded, and silence that deafened. "Moment." The Legionary's sigh told me exactly where he believed the god should shove his dramatic timing.

Uroarbrunnr was not a large well, but the sight of its waters still made me weep thick, cold blood. It was nothing compared to the three old women sitting around it, though.

The Norns took one look at me and my teammates, pursed their lips in resignation, and turned to the wolfishly-grinning, raven-haired, scarred god standing a little ways from them, leaning against Yggdrasil's root with his arms crossed.

Tyr nodded appreciatively at Greuceanu, and winked the giant, causing Marko's head to swivel between them, the Prince sputtering as he tried to keep his cap in place.

"Welcome, brave heroes," He began. "And everyone else. I am here to guide you along the most blessed furnace-fodder there is, and make sure you do not die accidentally. My brothers are, in theory, going to do the same for the other teams. If you need a hand, please, tell me, for I share your problem. We can look for handouts together."

Oh, yes. We were going to get along like worms on a corpse.

"Now, while we wait for the last of our number to arrive, feel free to think of names for our little group. Every gathering of heroes needs one! We will be like those other fellows, ah, what were they called...the Band of the Band?"

"The Fellowship of the R-"

"Thank you, dead man. Speaking of dead men, did you know this cosmic circus will only end when Mimir's head will be touched by death? So the honoured ones have told me." Tyr tilted his head in the direction of the silent Norns, who still eyed us curiously. It was Verdandi, though I only learned her name later(and couldn't tell them apart at the moment) who broke the silence.

"He is here."

The adamantine-booted feet shook the well, and all of Yggdrasil and its worlds, when they slammed into the rune-covered rock platform.

Clad in gleaming white plate that showed no joints or openings, the newcomer towered head and shoulders above me, and was over twice as broad. In fists that could and had turned worlds to dust, he held an adamantine mace that would never break, and an ivory greatsword that could cut anything, leaving wounds that would never heal-Fragarach's Olympian mirror, forged to slay Titans.

The skin of a lion, indestructible to everything save the beast's claws and teeth, which had been fashioned into a dagger that hung at the giant's hip, without any support, was wrapped around his shoulders, the head covering his helmet like a cowl. And on his back, he bore a bow and quiver, filled with arrows so vile their smell alone would heave a human thrashing in pain.

The newcomer put his sword on his hip, where it remained as if stuck. A gauntleted hand flipped up the visor-I only realised there was one then, but couldn't see any hinges or mechanisms to move it- revealing an olive-skinned, dark-bearded face, deep blue eyes shining with resolve.

"Fear not." Heracles beamed at us. "This strife ends now. Take me to the guilty."

Dead Head, Chapter 10

***
Heracles' roving gaze took us all in, the god of strength's brow furrowing at me; he also shot Marcus a scrutinising look, as if unsure whether he had seen him before. Finally, his blue eyes settled on Iovan.

"Do I know you?" The demigod rumbled, his smile returning, though it was now tinged with a wary curiosity. Like when you see a mirror in a haunted house, and are unsure whether it's a real mirror, or the distorted reflection is a monster waiting to jump you.

God, sometimes I wish I was a vampire. That way, I'd turn off my reflection and, and never have to waste precious microseconds judging whether I'm looking at myself or not when rooting out shapeshifters.

"I know you." Iovan hefted his namesake bludgeon over his broad shoulder. Aside from physique, height and choice in weapons, they appeared quite different. Heracles was clad like he was going to the Gigantomachy again, while Iovan looked like a shepherd, or an outlaw: loose white shirt and tight breeches, with dark green, scaled boots, and a wide-brimmed black hat, half-hiding his face in its shadows, so that only his bristly black moustache, and the fierce gleam in his dark eyes were seen. A thick woolen coat hung around his shoulders, supported b nothing, Maybe it just thought it looked too cool to fall off. "They tell me my legend was shaped by yours. Reshaped Cerna and the mountains 'round it smashing the Corcoaia." He smiled at Hercacles' questioning look. "You might have called it a hydra, at a guess. Beat the damned thing until it got tired of growing new heads, then killed it."

"Huh." Heracles looked thoughtful. "I should have tried that with mine. Maybe it would have worked. Or it might have grown so many heads, it would have become unable to lift its necks! Ah, how easy to slay it would have been then..."

"Sadly, you can't kill the monsters you've already killed."

"Truer words have never been spoken, my friend..."

I could tell these two were going to get along famously. Judging by Tyr's amused look, he shared my thoughts. And, judging by Greuceanu's pursed lips as he ran a hand through his long, straight black hair, and Prîslea's twitchy smile as he shook his head, blond curls swaying, they also agreed. To their regret.

"But 'tis not the time to swap stories!" Heracles suddenly cried out, receiving a determined nod from Iovan. "Nay, 'tis the time to make stories-history, in fact!" The god leapt to the top of Yggdrasil's root, landing easily several metres above Tyr, hefting his club. "Know three hosts of heroes set out this day, but only one shall return victorious-us!" He stomped forward, leaning to look down at us-or, well, in the ispolin's eyes-mace also on his hip now, a hand on his knee. "The first host is led by none other than the Third Lotus Prince! Odin is likely feasting Ne Zha and his companions in Asgard's golden halls right now, for that is where their search begins-aye, each host shall scour three worlds of the nine Odin and his brothers wrought. And, like those brothers three carved the giant's corpse into realms for life to flower or wither in, so we shall carve open this shadow of confusion that lies over everything. I said this strife ends now, and Heracles never lies. Let this be my thirteenth labour!"

As great as it was to get a pep speech from my favourite Greek hero, there was something to consider...

"Excuse me?" As lame as I sounded, at least I didn't raise my hand like I was in the class, and not the classes I used to teach, either. Heracles jerked his chin towards me, so I forged on. "I assumed you are to be the leader of our...host, then?"

"Assuming makes an ass out of you and me, revenant-but not this time! Aye, lead you Heracles shall, for he was once mightiest among men, and is now mighty among gods as well."

As boastful as that sounded, I couldn't find a reason to contradict him, even if I had wanted to. He had accomplished the most, and most impressive, feats of anyone here. The experience alone...

"Then may I ask which realms we are to search?"

"You may." Heracles stood up straight, stretching his arms behind him as he adopted a more relaxed posture. "Ne Zha leads heroes from his homeland to the Island of Tin-their host is largest, and guided by the Thunderer, though greatness is a matter of judgement." Heracles smiled to himself, before his eyes briefly darkened and he sighed. "So many I would have liked to meet again...but, nay. May the fates be so that we can reunite in better, happier days. As friends, not suspicious rivals."

He shook his head, and he momentary gloom that had come upon him as well. "They shall search Asgard, Vanaheim and Alfheim, then return to the the golden kingdom if they are successful. Or, if they are not, wait there until we or the others need their help." The fact Odin was kissing up to most of the other pantheons by giving their champions the easiest task was not spoken, but we all heard. Though, gods being gods, it was equally likely one of them would feel slighted at this underestimation of their chosen's ability and start Ragnarok earlier than expected, not that the Norns held much sway now.

"The Jaguar Twins lead the second host, and Baldr guides them." He had started going exclusively by that after all the 'balder than whom?' jokes. The jokers had stopped after realising mocking Thor's nearly as strong, nigh-invulnerable brothers was bad for your health. "I have heard rumours Camazotz pushed them forward so that they may be destroyed in this quest, but that is foolish talk! A god like him would never try to indirectly kill anyone." Another shake of his head, and a laugh at the idea of that charming rascal Camazotz indirectly killing anyone. "They are not mighty in power, compared to us-but they needn't be. They are to search bitter Niflheim, mountainous Jotunheim and teeming Midgard, and these tasks call for stealth and cunning, not might." I suppressed a wistful sigh at the revelation we would not be going to Midgard. Life in the pantheons' Clusters fascinated the researchers of our 'neutral' world, for only their worshippers left Earth for its counterparts under the gods. Was Midgard flat, as it has been depicted a few times? Or was it round, with the same continents as our world? The gods guarded such details jealously.

"And us? We, my friends, have received the greatest honour Odin could provide! We shall prowl sunless Nidavellir, fiery Muspelheim, then dive into Hel itself in search of Mimir's head!"

Note to self: ancient heroes have different ideas of what 'fun' and 'being honoured' means, compared to sane people.

***

"If I may speak..." I had the sensation Marcus was trying to scream over the wind lashing Nidavellir-Svartalheim, Sturlusson had called it-but his ghostly, always-echoing voice reached my ears as a whisper. Impossibly, it could still be heard, despite the wind and distance between us. "Is our band of the band," Yes, Marc, keep feeding Tyr, I can practically hear him grinning. "Not a little, how do the youths say...top-heavy?"

"It's my chest, isn't it? I said in my best bitchy girl voice, then flitted over to Marc, trusting my arcane sense where my eyes, which could see through any shadow on Earth but were completely useless here, failed me. "Are my tits too big for you, Flavius? Are you jealous? How could you call me 'top-heavy' here, in front of everyone!?"

"Ignore him." The Roman hissed. "He's insane."

"No, I'm David!"

"David is right!" Heracles' booming bass almost sounded like an indoor voice in the choking darkness. "You are all too focused on your chests and arms! Why, a true warrior knows to value and trust every part of his body: his legs, his buttocks-"

"Sage advice, mighty one!" Marc said reverently, clearly as eager not to get into the buttocks-heh-as I was. "But I meant more in the terms of our illustrious presence. Do you not outmatch everyone else here, even if we were to pool our might?"

"His arse doesn't hurt. You can stop kissing it." Tyr muttered. If Heracles heard, or was offended, he did not give any sign. Instead, he answered the Legionary.

"You might think so, and rightly! The truth is, besides myself and honoured Tyr, none of you are beloved or valuable enough to the world that your losses would be mourned. Hence the most dangerous worlds being given to us."

And, with that cheerfully grim pronouncement, we reached the cave entrance Greuceanu had argued must be somewhere on the mountain, unless the dwarfs swam through stone like fish through a river. Heracles was the first to enter.

We quickly discovered that, being sized for dwarfs, the mineshaft was short, tight and narrow, like the women who often walked it. So, as we worked the shaft, we bumped out heads dozens of times, and swore hundreds more at the critters that assaulted us. The dwarfs, or black elves, knew we were coming, but hadn't bothered to arrange a welcoming committee, a red carpet, or even a damn row of torches.

The ispolin had flipped head over heels thrice, and turned into a little man, small enough to ride in Prince Marko's cap. Even being covered by it, though, was not enough to silence him.

"I don't trust this place, your highness." The little giant said. "Why keep it dark all the time? They are blacksmiths, they must work with light and heat."

"That they do, my friend!" Even in the dark, I could picture Marko's fierce eyes darting wildly, looking for enemies when he couldn't even see his nose. "They must be planning to waylay us, and take everything of worth-mark my words!"

"Heaven above." Greuceanu muttered. "They are not going to rob you just because they are black-" The sound of something small and furry hitting flesh, shrieking, and being slapped away. "Elves. Lord take these bats..."

"I concur." Prîslea's careful steps were supernaturally light. Even I could barely hear them. "They might ask for hefty payments for their work, but it is always worthy."

The shaft got smoother and smoother as we came to the end, growing larger and opening into a round, brightly-lit forge with no visible ceiling, only smoke in all colours of the rainbow that swirled and spun to form a kaleidoscopic cloud over our heads. The dwarfs barely glanced up from their work, but that was understandable. When I get all (metaphorically) sweaty handling my hammer, I can't be bothered with people either. One of them, working what looked like the bastard lovechild of an anvil and a 3D printer, moulding a lump of twisting metal that seemed to devour light, looked at us over his shoulder, then at his project in disappointment, and put it aside.

Sindri smacked hands like baseball gloves together as he came forward to greet us, the top of his balding head barely reaching my waist, but his arms alone packing more muscle than I had in my whole body.

"Yes, I know," He gestured at each of us, then at the room itself, and beyond. "And I know. Let's get to work."

***

Despite the dwarfs' senses being accustomed to their impossibly-dark home, they did not find any trace of Mimir's head, nor did us, even when I tapped into my arcane sense, expecting to spot what should have been an aetheric supernova.

I got the feeling Sindri believed we had crimped his people's style, as he glanced askance at us whenever he felt we weren't looking. We were back in the forge, and, despite it being as bright as you could get in this world, I felt just as blind as outside.

So did the others. Unsurprisingly, it was Prîslea and Marko who came up with an idea to-feel free to groan-lighten the atmosphere. To thank our hosts for the help, futile as it had been.

The hero launched into an enthusiastic account of his search for the golden apples, his claim to fame. About halfway through, at his fights with the zmei, though, he realised that, first, the dwarves were used to this kind of talk from their neighbours, so they saw it as boasting, and second, they weren't interested in the subject itself, either.

"Well." He said, hands on his hips. "I did say I'd brighten your day, didn't I?" And he flipped thrice, turning into a roaring flame, as he had during his fight with the fiercest zmeu brother, when they had fought as fires. The dwarfs stared blankly at him for a few seconds. Then, their stony facades cracked, lips twitching and eyes narrowing and brightening.

Seizing the chance like he seized his wolfskin cap every time it threatened to slip off, much to the protests of its newest occupant, Prince Marko leapt into the middle of the room, not even bothered by the fire pit that could turn steel into smoke. "That he did! We said we would brighten your day, and for that, we must make light!"

And he launched into an account of his battles against the Turks, completely uncaring of whether or not it would be well received.

Shaking his head in amusement, Sindri turned to Heracles. "Leave these jesters two here, would you? We would thank them for the farce...we are a grim people, as you might have noticed. And...we have a device in mind, that might help with your quest. But it will take time to make, and it will need to be tested once it is done. Surely they can remain for that?"

I wasn't sure I liked splitting up the gang, even for a good cause. "So you're saying you'll need to test its mettle?"

Sindri's bemused smile reversed quicker than any boomerang. "Get out."

And with that gently-worded request, we left Nidavellir, heading for Muspellheim.

Dead Head, Chapter 11

***
We left Nidavellir as we had arrived: in a shower of rainbow light. It was obvious to any hidden enemies, and its divine nature made my eyes water, but...at least we travelled light, eh?

As we were whisked away to the realm of fire, I couldn't help but wonder about the nature of our transportation.

"Isn't the Bifrost meant to be a rainbow  bridge?" I called to Tyr over a sound like diamond blades scraping against each other.

"Aye, and it usually is!" The one-handed god called back. "But Heimdall can shape it to fit his whims, see?"

"Ah! And this is faster than the bridge form?"

"Nay! He just watches too much sci-fi with beamers."

...Maybe Heimdall and I could sit down to talk about series we liked, after this was over, but Tyr was shattering my mental image of the Aesir.

Muspellheim looked like the angriest raw wound you could imagine: viewed from afar, it was like a bowl of fire rising out of Ginnungagap, burning without fuel and without even singing Yggdrasil.

The latter, I realised as the Bifrost deposited us onto a sea of glowing lava(safest place we could land) was more due to the World Tree's sturdiness than lack of heat on the flames' part.

Greuceanu and Iovan's clothes turned to superheated steam in less than a microsecond after we arrived, leaving the two heroes naked, red-faced(though more from outrage than the temperature) and standing barefooted on lava, as the molten rock was too dense for them to sink into.

Heracles and Tyr sank to their waists in the lava, the latter's gunmetal gray suit of plate armour somehow retaining the blood spatters that looked suspiciously like handprints. Heracles laughed, taking in the inferno with an appreciative grin.

"Reminds me of the time I went down to Hades! Much more lively, though-look! They've come to welcome us!"

The god of strength's eyes clearly saw farther than mine, but, before I could ask who 'they' were, my line of sight was filled with dancing, crackling fire.

I clapped my hands with a sound like clashing mountains, dispersing the blaze and staggering the giantess that had risen from the flaming sea. She was broad, with thick limbs, clad in obsidian armour covered in white-hot cracks, and tall enough to wrestle the mountain golem Sofia had made in Siberia, before it had been reshaped into a mirror of the Unscarred.

The giantess looked down at me like she had swatted a fly and it had unexpectedly punched back. I grinned back and up at her. "Girl like you, I bet you're used to size being everything, eh? Both ways-"

Before I could finish my taunt, Marcus blurred into existence at my side, face set in a mask of determination, eyes unblinking, glowing with cold light like graveyard lanterns. His glare turned the giantess' armour grey and brittle, covered in crack-riven frost. She spat a booming curse, alongside a glob of lava that could have drowned city blocks, and reached behind her back, raising a two-headed obsidian axe overhead.

The heads were shaped like gaping dragons, and actually roared as she brought it down, billions of tons of sharp, enchanted rock moving faster than lightning. Marc calmly drew his gladius, swinging it up to meet the axe. It would have looked absurd, if the Roman's blade had not lengthened until it would have reached the horizon if Marc had set it down on the lava sea.

The insubstantial blade went through the axe like a knife through mist, splitting it as neatly as if it had been cut with a laser. It didn't stop there.

The giantess was bisected neatly from armoured crotch to dreadlocked head, her savage features locked into a silent roar. Her rictus was only visible to me for an instant, though, as Marc decided he wasn't done.

Gladius back to normal size, the Legionary grinned wolfishly and disappeared from my sight. Then, I saw a pale blur pass through the giantess' halves at the waist, sending them flying. The quarters were split into eights in a flash, the ghost hacking and slashing faster and faster. By the time he cut her into dust, I couldn't see Marc at all anymore.

He coalesced back at my side to watch the dust fall, though. "Been a while since I've put my back into it..." Marc muttered thoughtfully, before looking at me. "Just in case you had been wondering what I want to do to you and your quirky colleagues all day, every day, David."

"You couldn't even scratch me."

"That's exactly why I'm so damned pent up-"

Before Marc could finish confessing to his murderous urges, we learned that the giantess had not been a guard dog. She had been bait, to make us show off our abilities. The real guardians came at us from below, and I only noticed them when one was throwing my spine away like yesterday's garbage, its fangless jaws snapping close over my unbeating heart.

The drake was a crimson flame shaped like a wingless dragon, its 'eyes' diamond-shaped black-slits. It was only the size of a large wolf, maybe a horse, but it was still doing much better against me than monsters thousands of time its size had managed.

It was ripping me apart, in fact, its claws tearing at my torso every time it healed. But, since it's easier than the average zmeu to be brave when you regenerate and can't feel pain(look at me, playing hero), I decided to taunt it.

"Oohh~" I grabbed its jaws, straining my arms until my bones turned to gravel from the pressure, healing constantly to let me hold its maw open. "Be gentle," I breathed, batting my eyes. "You're the first bad dragon I've had inside me-"

The dragon was so flattered by my request that it gave me a kiss. I could tell it was putting its heart into it, and mine somewhere between my shoulder blades, but enthusiasm couldn't hide its inexperience. It was all tongue and jaws, and some flames too.

By the time we were done sucking face, my head turned to steam, but healed instantly, in time for me to headbutt the drake as it drew its head back. Normal matter would have just passed through it, but my strigoi nature allowed me to wrestle the fire monster as if it was flesh and blood.

I didn't have to do it for much longer, though, as Greuceanu decided to cut the fight short. The drake, too. The hero was covered in minuscule scratches, and his black mane was slightly singed, but he was otherwise fine. His scimitar cut the drake in half lengthwise, and the flames dispersed lifelessly, blending into the environment.

"I don't trust you, strigoi." The crackle of fire punctuated each word of his warning-threat? "Fighting against your nature is admirable, as hard as it is to believe it. But don't think I can't see the other shadow inside you."

"Yes, well," I sneered, slapping his hand aside and raising to my feet myself. "Everyone is tripping over themselves to tell me it exists, but nobody seems able to even guess what the fuck it is."

"And you think I know, and am hiding the secret from you? To what purpose?" His deep brown eyes stared unwaveringly into my ink-black orbs. "I once brought back the sun and moon when the zmei stole them, to spare our people from eternal night. You think I wouldn't chase away the darkness in your soul, if I could?"

...And there I went again, being a jackass.

Before I could apologise, though, Greuceanu shook his head, pointing at the rest of our group, who were finishing off their drakes. Marc and Iovan stood side by side, bringing their weapons down onto a flickering drake, turning it into a shower of sparks. Tyr yanked a wicked-looking broadsword out of a fallen drake, and the blade glowed red, drawing the monster inside itself. It briefly glowed with inner light, and I caught a glimpse of countless other creatures, twisting past their death throes inside the weapon.

I...didn't remember that from the Sagas.

And Heracles simply drew an arrow from its quiver, holding it over the drake thrashing in his other hand. Thick, steaming green blood gathered at the tip. A drop, just a drop, fell on the drake.

It didn't turn to steam, as I had expected. Instead, the flames became pale green and sickly, sputtering into nothing, while something like a shrill scream, strangled by pain, ripped through my arcane sense.

Then, the hydra's last gift went back to its holding place.

***

The guardians, Surtr claimed, had been meant to test our prowess and resolve: for, if we could not best them, or hesitated, or turned away, why were we even on his quest?

The fire giant was so tall Olympus Mons would have barely come up to his ankles. Even seated on a throne that looked like it had been carved from a country, he would have dwarfed any structure on Earth, save for the reptilians' hypertech spires.

"Your presence is amusing, but superfluous." Surtr explained, mouth barely moving under a beard that, if dyed green, could pass for a jungle. "I know every nook and cranny of my realm, and what you seek is not here-unless you seek your doom."

He was on his feet, sword going from resting on his knees to his right hand, so fast I didn't see anything, despite his enormity. Muspellheim shook, and a tiny corner of my mind whispered that all of Yggdrasil had. The blade hungered for the death of worlds, and was no longer coal-black, like it had been at the start of our meeting. Now, it glowed brighter than the stars it would one day burn away, and burned hotter than all of them together. It was only Surtr's will that kept most of us from being turned to nothing by his sword's heat, but even so, my flesh steamed.

"Fate is gone." The giant's smile was disturbingly human and joyful, like he had woken up to see his best dreams had come true overnight. "The bitches three can spin their stories, but they decree no more. Why should I wait until Ragnarok to burn that damnable twig and the worms squirming inside it? Why should they keep me confined to my realm, waiting and sharpening my weapon until the end coming because it must?"

I only realised he had swung at us-laughable, really, the sword was far too large for beings our size-after Heracles blocked it in a clash that spun the planet-sized flame that was Musspellheim into a frenzy. The Olympian grinned fiercely, Marmyadose raised overhead to hold the end of days at bay. Surtr scoffed, and Heracles barked a harsh laugh, pushing him back.

"Go!" The hero roared at Tyr, who was already dragging me and Marc away, drawing his club from his waist with his free hand. "We will hold them!"

"Them-" For the second time time that day, my dumb surprise turned to dismay. Flames leapt from Surtr's black-on-black eyes, forming into drakes that leapt at the god of strength, or skittered down their creator's body to surround Iovan and Greuceanu, who were trying to topple Surtr by striking at his feet. Their efforts were yet to result in anything more than bruises on the giant's grey skin.

"But-they- fucking damn you, Tyr!" I snarled, ignoring trying to push away, but Tyr already had us under his arms, and was leaping into the air for the rainbow beam to catch us. The Aesir glared balefully at me, but I only growled at the slap that left my ears ringing and my head spinning.

"Leave them," The war god whispered harshly. "Dying against a monster to save your comrades, and buy all life a chance? That is all a man could ask for."

Marcus nodded solemnly, staring through the past at something I had never been able to understand. The rest of the journey was silent until we arrived on the grim, frozen plains of Hel.

"Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise." Tyr said quietly, letting go of us. "Two dead men, and their Aesir guide. Mayhaps the others...wouldn't have been welcomed here."

Dead Head, Epilogue

***
Oh, yes, Tyr. A blessing in disguise. Hel was such a nice place, I bet people were dying to get there. Just the kind of place I'd like to be in after losing our heaviest hitter.

"Marc." A quick side glance of acknowledgement. "Do you feel as strange as I do?"

"I don't know exactly how you feel, David." Well, that only made sense. We were both guys. "But...this place is for those who die shamefully, as the Norse understood it. I died in battle, so I am unwelcome here, as far as the realm is concerned." You, on the other hand, should feel right at home was left unsaid. My lips twisted into a sardonic smile at what the Norse would have thought of my death. Oh, look at Silva, never hving to kill and fight to survive, whining because people don't read his rags. Getting a rope tie because strangers won't acknowledge him.

Laughable...

"Come, you two." Tyr's ravenous sword was now sheathed across his back. "We must reach the gates."

Much like the forest near Urziceni, time and distance in Hel seemed dictated by drama, as opposed to logic. We were moving, as far as my senses could tell, but the landscape, dead grass covering dry, grey hills like funeral shrouds over corpses, didn't change.

Marc tried to scout ahead of us a few times, claiming he'd been dead far longer than me, and Tyr was too valuable to lose, but his ghostly speed, unbound by the laws of reality, didn't get him anywhere. Each time, he stumbled back at out sides, looking for all the world like a bird that had smacked headfirst into a window. I hope Hel found it hilarious, because he definitely didn't.

Frustrated by the bleak, unchanginc environment, and Marc's pointless attempts to help us in any way, I decided to badger my other companion.

"Say...which of your hands did that wolf bite off? I forget." I smiled at Marc's warning look. What the hell was Tyr going to do, kill me? Good job losing potential help. I'd have thought it would burn bridges with ARC too, but I doubted anyone in the organisation gave enough of a damn about me to ask for recompense from the Aesir.

"Remember the one I smacked you with? The other one."

"Ah, I see. I'm glad you're all right now."

Tyr smirked. "You have no idea how much we have mellowed out in this day and age, strigoi. In another time, I would have bitten your head off for that."

"Sorry, not into that." I faked a long yawn. "You know how some strigoi return from death because they still wanted to live?"

"Are you one of them?"

"No, I did the hemp pirouette of my own accord. But you should reallly bring those threats of yours when I show you the field in which I grow my fucks."

Marcus stepped in between we could start trading more than words. "Lord Tyr, are we any closer to the gates?"

"Yeah, are we there yet?" I barred my fangs at Tyr's irritated snirk. "Because I'm  this close to draining that overgrown worm-fodder of life and sending handyman back home to daddy in screaming pieces."

The god shook his head, chuckling. "Why are you even so angry at me, Silva? Is it because I honoured Heracles' request to leave them behind? Or are you just shaken because I hit you and you felt it?"

I forced myself to laugh. "That's it? You think I've forgotten what pain is like? Or did you just cream yourself at the fact you're no longer fated to become dogfood, and your brain got rattled-"

Tyr's hand was suddenly crushing my neck, but I wheezed straight into his face. "Kill me now, or eat you, right after a snack."

"You are right, strigoi." Tyr said thoughtfully, ignoring my offer. "I am indeed no longer fated to die to Garmr. Maybe I should take a leaf from Surtr's book, and rewrite my destiny."

I bet Surtr read as much as Tyr wrote, but I was too busy landing on my feet after he dropped me to point that out.

"You asked why I'm so angry at you?" I called after the war god, who was purposefully stalking ahead. "Maybe it's the fact your pops dragged everyone into this shitfest because he couldn't keep track of his stuff. Or maybe it's the fact you abandoned those three to die, despite the fact I'm fucking unkillable to whatever that walking coal mine can do! I should have stayed to hold Surtr off! Why the fuck did you listen to Heracles?"

"Why doesn't your god snap his fingers and make everything alright?" He replied without turning. "Why is he doing nothing to stop this crisis?"

"How should I know His ways-"

"Think, Silva. Why have none of the gods mightier than my father done anything to end this strife? Free will. Why is your god acting through you rather than intervening himself? Free will. Why did I honour a friend's request?" His gimlet stare pierced my soul as he looked over his shoulder. "Free will. One day, you may learn we can only accept what others want."

It was a quiet walk to Hel's gates after that.

They appeared out of mist that was nowhere near enough to hide them. I supposed it was because we'd all poured our hearts out and were now best friends forever.

The slabs of black iron were almost as tall and broad as the mountainside they were set in, carved to look like-no. Not carved. The skeletons that stood out in relief were real bone, melted together and covered by iron.

They were nowhere near as grim as the thing guarding them, though. Garmr didn't look like much, physically, though Cujo would have felt insecure next to him. But metaphysically, he was dripping with the thick, cold blood of every dead man who had tried to get past him, and was wearing their gore like armour.

The hound raised his head at Tyr's approach, fur bristling in wariness. The war god hummed, tapping his fingers on his hip.

"Go ahead, you two. He'll let you in, and I'm sure his mistress will welcome you. I want to try something."

***

"I am glad the giant told you. I will not reiterate the facts." I thought Hel's living half was beaming, though it was hard to tell with the dead one's permanent rictus meeting it halfway through. The goddess was half beautiful, fair-skinned and fair-haired, and half hideous, with paper-think skin than clung to prominent bones where it didn't sag, or hang like ragged curtains to reveal shriveled organs.

She stood on a throne of yellowed bone, surrounded by every coward and wretch who had ever died believing in the Norse gods.

But those things, we had expected. They weren't what concerned us.

One of the problems was her big brother, prowling around her throne with his fangs barred, looking quite prepared to huff and puff, and blow Odin's house down.

The other problem was her even bigger brother, who had slunk away from Midgard after deciding he wanted to and could. I wasn't sure how Jormungandr was positioned around and through Hel, but his head was definitely beneath us, given the scaled, shifting floor.

"I do not know where the head is, either. But fear not." That phrase always calmed people down. "If one of you gives all he is to me, I will be able to achieve the clarity needed to help you find it."

Before I could tell her to wait just a damn moment, or at least go over her offer with Marc, I realised I was alone. The Legionary was now standing on the steps of Hel's throne. The goddess' hand, gaving parted his ghostly plate, was now gripping his heart.

Marcus turned to look at me, a shaky smile on his face, which was becoming vaguer and vaguer while his body came apart. "Told you...lived long enough, played at it...far too long. See this through to the end, David. That's...an order..."

Not trusting my damned mouth, I leapt forward, barreling straight through the ghosts trying to stop me. My friend tried to push me away, still smiling, while Hel lay back in her throne, eyes rolled into the back of her head. I gripped Marcus's arms, as if I could pll him back together and put myself in his place.

"You damned fool," I hissed, pointlessly directing my will at his unravelling self, trying to heal the spiritual rips, push my lifeforce into Marcus' form. "N-Not...not even asking for my fucking opinion, eh? Just went ahead and sacrificed yourself?"

"If I didn't do this," Marcus rasped. "I'd be telling you that...instead..."

I was never able to tell him he had been right.

Marcus was only the first to go. Hel's ghosts were drawn to their goddess like iron filongs to a magnet, and she shuddered as she consumed them, smoke rising from her flesh where bones broke through it. Hel spoke in tongues, in a language I didn't understand but which made my ears bleed. I tried to keep my footing as the throneroom shook in the throes of the goddess' oracular trance...and in the end, it was all for nothing.

The last thing I heard before my ears began ringing was that, despite the ritual that had burned up so many millions of ghosts, including one of my few friends, as fuel, she had been unable to see Mimir's head.

Then, I saw black.

***
My first thought after I came to was that, damn, Thor looked really angry gripping Mjolnir like that as he stood above me.

My second thought was, when the hell had he gotten there? How long had I been out?

"...to answer your question," The god ground out. Damn, I didn't remember asking anything, but that wasn't a reason to get mad. "With one of my own, strigoi: how could you do this?"

I looked down at his gesture, at Fenrir's dismembered carcass scattered over Jormungandr's cracked-open skull. At Hel's corpse, split in half at the chest, which I was standing in.

I stumbled and fell on what had once been a paw, scrabbling against cracked scales to avoid landing on my face.

H-How...when...?

Thor...Thor had always hated the snake and wolf. I doubted there had been any love lost between him and Hel, either, but...f-fuck. Was...was I trying to justify this? They had not done anything, except... except-

...

My focus returned to the thunder god's rambling.

"I don't mean, how could you have the gumption to do this, Silva. I mean, you literally should not have been able to." He shook his head. "We knew the Black God would use you to do something reckless, but...we did not expect this."

"No, you did not." I agreed, letting the glamour over my hand fall away, revealing claws that dripped venom-Jormungandr's first and last gift to me.

My hand plunged through the gullible moron's chest and heart before he could even think to dodge or block. I laughed in his rapidly-paling face, leaping away to see him stagger.

He dropped the hammer first-expected. Then, he managed stumbled towards me, before falling at my feet.

Where they would all end up, one day.

"Nine paces, Thunderer," I crooned. "It seems that, in the end, you didn't have the heart to defy destiny. Just like poor Tyr...who never had a hand in his fate. Did you see him and the dog when you arrived? Don't worry. You'll meet them soon." I promised, patting my belly with one hand, while raising the corpse to my widening maw with the other.

Now...it was about time little David got to see his handiwork. Unlike other gods, I never claimed the credit for my servants' accomplishments, be they unwitting or willing.

***
The divine remains still possessed enough distinguishing features to make me dry-heave when I finished retching. My throat burned from the god flesh that had passed through it, and felt raw even before I began spitting blood, trying to make sense of...of...

I ate people, a small corner of my mind whispered distantly. Like a strigoi would.

That small corner of my mind-which, in truth, was my truest self, and had never been small; in fact, it had been growing smarter and larger since my undeath-twisted my face into a broken grin. I began chuckling as tears ran down from my wide eyes, running down to mix with the blood, mine and theirs, spattering my chin.

My laugh, like jagged shards of glass rasping against each other, was answered by a joyous, booming, equally-twisted one.

Then Chernobog was looming above me, and everything became clear.

"Killing gods of other faiths without mercy or thought...a true man of Christ, David." Chernobog grasped my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His other hand lightly touched my iron-silver cross, turning it to a cloud of metallic dust. "He suspected, you know?" The Black God nudged half of Thor's face with a clawed foot. The thunder god's glassy, storm-grey eye was still narrowed in angry defiance. "They all did. Let me coil up inside you, like a wasp larva in a caterpillar. Watched while I raped your mind..." His featureless face split to reveal ivory teeth, bared in honest amusement. "They knew I would reach out through you, and did nothing. Too concerned with peace and balance, the cowards will whine. Or they wanted me to strike down their rivals, or act as their proxy, others will admit. But...does that truly matter to you, David? I had you for so, so long...owned your body more completely than any woman ever did."

He didn't let me spit, either blood or insults, instead lifting me to his eye level with a clawed and around my abused throat. "Should I tell you what madness possessed the Dagda to kill the dragon? To drive the cold ones mad, and push everything into motion? He has always been a lover of nature and innocence. It was all he could do once he passed by those who had been maimed by Nidhogg, in revenge and the name of justice...just, don't tell him the dragon never left Ygdrassil's roots, let alone harmed anyone. It might drive him mad permanently, this time." He whispered, dropping me a heavy wink.

"Y-You-" I managed to choke out before he shook me.

"No, David. I am just the lead of this play, not the playwright. I was the one who stole the head while everyone was losing theirs over the Dagda's deed, though."

"Then why!? If you've known where it was this whole time, why-" His slap knocked two front fangs lose. I would never regrow them.

"Because the Aesir would never allow me, in person, to even come close to their tree. You and the other expendables, though? I must thank you for carving my path. And, you want to know the best thing?" Chernobog leaned forward, wide mouth next to my bleeding ear. "I just dropped it back in its well."

And then he tossed me over Hel's edge, never stopping from talking. "The knowledge contained within its waters blinded them, for it was brighter in the aether than the one who once drank from them. Food for thought, David! You have all eternity to mull it over! Wouldn't want you to get bored in Ginnungagap!"

After the echoes of Chernobog's last taunt faded, I fell for what felt like days, but I knew I couldn't trust my senses in this not-place. There was nothing but shadows and silence, for as far as I could see. I couldn't fly, though I didn't know why. It was like a dream of falling, except this nightmare would never end.

***
Having drained the knowledge contained in the old god's head, Chernobog decided to head to Earth, while everyone else were still wrapping their heads around it. He didn't know if Thor had come to Hel based on a hunch, or if he had been the first sent and the others were coming; and, truly, he couldn't pretend to care, either.

Even if they all dogpiled and killed him, he might as well give their beloved neutral world something to remember him by. Starting with that city David loved so much...

To Chernobog's shock and disappointment, the first sight to greet him as he arrived in Bucharest were not screaming mortals, but his old, nearly-forgotten rival, blade raised to strike him down.

Chernobog blocked Belobog's sword of light with a blade of shadow, putting Mimir's drained head on his hip, letting it hang there from a knot of solid darkness. This cost him a dozen wounds, glowing tears in his black hide that light streamed from.

"Elsbeth Crane?" He guessed. It was just like Zeus' latest whelp to always expect the worst...spineless bitch. "Is this how your power told you was the best way to fight me!?"

With a grunt, he broke through the sword, expecting the Belobog facsimile to fall apart under his strength, and reveal Crane. Maybe her rapist father and slut mother would want her back in pieces?

The White God fell apart, indeed, but there was nothing beneath the bright facade.

Because there had been no facade.

Chernobog glared up, and Nacht beamed down at him, laughing in the voice of a content murdered flaying a newborn at midnight. Hex stood on air, his partner's dark form passing through and out of him. His stitches had been torn apart, and Night, in its purest form, filled his joints. Wide, black eyes twinkled with amusement, while a toothless, tongueless mouth spread wide, dripping darkness.

"Forgive the cliche," The Black God began. "But this is impossible. I destroyed your human bitch while you were still reeling from Thor's strike, in the void. Without him as your link, you cannot manifest in the universe."

"Indeed! You left me alone with naught but my fears and hatred, Chernobog...cruel, cruel soul that you are. But I am the darkness in men, not just the absence of light. Fear, hatred, greed...and so, so much more. I can bring them all out, but I never truly tried it on myself until you left me...indisposed. I must thank you for that!" Hex clapped slowly, sarcastically. "I have never loathed or loved a man as much as I do Hex, you know? He is...the darkness inside me. It was the easiest thing for me to reach for what darkened my heart, and bring him back from oblivion. With him returned, I was free to act again!"

"If you're done gargling your own cock," Chernobog tilted his head. "I have a question. Two, actually. Are you controlling him now? Have you switched the literal strings for metaphorical ones? And...Belobog. Did you search for the darkness in my heart, and brough forth the object of my loathing?"

"Those were three questions, Black God~" Hex grabbed his white longcoat, opening wide to reveal darkness no light could ever pierce. A white head, featureless but for a pair of antlers, emerged from it, followed by Belobog's body and sword. Chernobog scoffed. If all they could do was bring back his rival whenever he was destroyed, he-

Another White God strode out of the darkness, crossing his sword over the first one's. Then, two more. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two.

Chernobog backed away, cursing, spinning in place to keep track of the thousands and thousands of White Gods Nacht had spun from his fears, each as powerful as the last.

"I would question your bad luck, Chernobog, but...you should have never harmed Emil." Nacht leered, moving Hex's right hand down his side, to his hip, then lower. "He is my chain and cell and jailor, and I will break him one day. But he is mine." The leer dropped off Hex's face, the impossibly wide smile returning. "But enough about fear! What if the possibility you hate the most came true?"

"Do it, bastard." Chernobog breathed, fending off half a dozen Belobog clones as they circled him. Power that would have turned stars to nothing was shackled by their godly wills, so that even this dingy side alley was left untouched. "Bring the pantheons here. They will trample you to nothing fighting over what I bear."

Nacht laughed. "It seems you are dimmer than I remember. Or...not? Hmm...more short-sighted, perhaps. I am talking about David Silva, Black God~ or, rather, what he will become." Hex leaned forward, hands on his knees. "You saw the shadow of his destiny, and tried to snuff it out? A god, of all things, should know that never works. Should I reach forward through time, and bring him here and now? No...I think I shall not. Wouldn't want the Fixer feeling I am threatening his protege..."

***

I fell through a shadow, and down onto Bucharest's streets. I didn't know which area, exactly, but I knew the city's smell. Before I could get my bearings, though, Chernobog was on me.

"Damn you." He snarled. "That thing and its puppets will kill me, but before...before..." A mad grin split his face as he raised a shrunken head with his free hand. Despite the grey skin and blank eyes, I recognised the face of the godd of memory. But before I could speak, Chernobog pressed its forehead against mine.

"You should have died. You will regret living. If I am to pass tonight, I shall happily do so, knowing every god and man will hunt you for what you are." The head began cracking in his grip. "I took away what it knew, not what it does. It cannot think anymore, for it is dead, but it knows everything about everything it sees. I wonder if seeing the world like that will drive you mad before the gods cut you apart for your knowledge."

And Mimir's head shattered, its godly perception flowing from its eyes into mine, showing me the truenamesofeverythingpastpresentfuturewhatcouldbewhatshouldneverhavebeenSTOPSTOPSTOPTHISISNOTASTHINGSSHOULDBE .

***

Lucas put a comforting hand on his apprentice's shoulders. Zmei never felt cold, so any shudders from them were usually theatrical, but...he had the feeling Mia was not fooling around.

"Someone just walked over my grave." She hissed, fangs clenched. "I m-must..." Mia was out of the shop before she finished her sentence. Cursing, Lucas bounded after her.

***
"He passed Mimir's sight along." Hex mused, kicking Chernobog's remains aside to squat over the wild-eyed, babbling strigoi. "Nacht...Silva was a gullible fool, but he does not deserve this. Do you have a way to cure this...madness?"

"Not I, Hex. But she might."

Normally, Hex was loath to involve civilians in what they did. But when the zmeu girl, claiming to have felt 'something wrong' in their current location, began making crosses out of thin air, he decided to make an exception.

Now, if only she could stop crying enough to do whatever she believed would save her friend...

Turned out, Silva was more loved than Emil, or even the strigoi himself, perhaps, knew.

A bigger, three-headed blue zmeu touched down a few metres from the female, two heads taking in the scene. The middle one raised a questioning eyebrow.

For the first time in his life, Hex did not know what to do.

***
There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. Only darkness, and two figures, both painfully bright, both vaguely humanlike, floating in the void.

I knew what this was, without needing to be told. Though I hadn't been judged like this after my first death. But they knew everything there was to know about me, without needing to ask anything.

"TAKE MY HAND, DAVID." The first figure said. "YOU WILL GO WHERE YOU HAVE ALWAYS BELONGED, AND KNOW NOTHING MORE OF THIS WORLD AND ITS STRIFE. I ASK ONLY THAT YOU FIND PEACE."

"TAKE MY HAND, DAVID." The second figure said. "YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO LIFE, FREE TO SHAPE THE WORLD AND THE LIVES OF ITS PEOPLE. I WILL RESHAPE YOUR MIND TO FIT CHERNOBOG'S UNASKED-FOR BOON, AND MADNESS WILL LEAVE YOU. BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE, FOR MAN AND GOD ALIKE WILL HUNT YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE AND KNOW. YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE AFTERLIFE. BUT YOU WILL SEE AS MIMIR SAY, AND POSSESS KNOWLEDGE AS NO MAN EVER HAS. I ASK ONLY THAT YOU LET ME WATCH EVENTS UNFOLD."

After that, it was obvious-both my choice, and the identity of the beings. I took the second figure's hand, turning to scowl at the first. "That shining disguise cannot hide what you are." I said warningly.

"INDEED, DECEIVER." The second figure told the first. "YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TOO ENAMOURED OF YOUR MASKS AND PAWNS, PEOPLE WHOSE HEARTS YOU DO NOT TRULY KNOW. TAKE THIS ONE, FOR EXAMPLE. YOU TOLD ME HE BELONGED TO YOU."

"ALL MEN HOLD YOU IN THEIR HEARTS. THE GREAT ONES FIRST AMONG THEM."

The second figure shook its head, amused, then leaned forward, letting me see its horns. "I LOVE YOU HUMANS." He said with a crooked smile, morningstar-bright eyes shining. "YOU NEVER REFUSE KNOWLEDGE!"

And then, there was light.

***
Mia's worried face, scales gleaming with tears, greeted me after I...after I came back to life. The second time. She held a needle and thread of golden light in her claws, praying to whatever gods listened to let it work, dammit, while she stitched my head back onto my body. Her eyes weren't the usual red, but a white so bright it hurt. The first figure reaching down into the world, for His opposite already had. The guiding light left her eyes only after the stitches circled my neck. They burned briefly, before fading into my pale flesh.

I rubbed my neck, feeling the old, reassuring texture of my noose marks, before taking in the devastated sight that spanned city blocks around us. It looked like a mage army had gotten high, then tried to LARP while using the Necronomicon as a guidebook. Nonsensical colours, impossible shapes and tears in spacetime, leading to places man had never been meant to see, for hundreds of metres around, despite the ARC agents hard at work cleaning up the new eldritch landmarks. The result of me speaking, with Mimir's inherited perception telling me the true name of everything I saw, and making me speak it without thought, for my mind hadn't been able to deal with it.

I turned to Mia, determined to avoid starting my new life-dealt with the Devil, my strigoi side snickered in my mind, sounding clearer than ever-with a lame line.

"Crying doesn't suit you." I rasped, forcing myself to sit up, bones cracking. Clearly, Mimir hadn't been a god of knowledge pertaining to being a ladies' man.

But she hugged me, and, when she told me to shut up and preserve my face, they still weren't sure whatever had happened to me, she didn't sound exasperated.

Look at me, so much game I'm a...a...

Blackness, again.

***
"I can't believe you killed me." I told Mia for the third time, staring at the whitewashed ceiling of the ARC infirmary as I lay back in bed. Her provisional uniform-killing an agent, even for his own good, not to mention getting involved into the the Headhunt mess, as it was called now, from her own volition, meant she either had to work with us for a time, until she was proven trustworthy, or accept a silencing enchantment being placed on her- wrinkled from all the times she'd fussed over me, not to mention the numerous occasions she'd fidgeted with it when I didn't need anything.

"I know, right? That wasn't how I imagined taking your head." Her smile didn't reach her eyes, which were darting over the room for something, anything she could use to help me recover from my skull-splitting headache, or the numbness that spanned my whole body. "But at least I learned to add bladed edges to my constructs. Only way to keep you down, really, until..."

"Necessity is the mother of invention." I agreed. "Never cross me again, though. Please."

Mia growled to mask her snicker. "The fact you're abed is the only reason I'm not folding you in half for that pun."

"You'll have plenty of time for that later." I joked. "Let's stick to kissing for now, alright?"

"Implying we've started." She scoffed, before her eyes softened. "David...I don't want you to feel you 'have' to be with me because I helped you, or something. Or..." Mia snorted, laughing at herself. "The fuck am I even saying? You're barely able to think straight again, and here I am with this bullshit. Like my teasing isn't enough."

"I don't mind that." I blurted out, unknowingly sealing my fate. "And...it's not because of that. I am grateful, yes, but...I think we should give it a chance. Being grateful is as good a basis as any."

"You asked for it." She said in mock warning, sitting down on the edge of my bed. My room-cell, really-was covered in crosses, metal, carved and painted alike, in case the strigoi went crazy again and ARC had to keep me contained before they out me down.

They were far more busy fending off the pantheons these days, though, when they weren't working together to heal Yggdrasil. Several gods wanted me dead(and Loki hadn't gotten over his children's deaths at my-Chernobog's-hands, not that I could blame him; I should've never been so damned stupid as to be made into that bastard's sockpuppet) so working for them, and I'd even gotten some marriage threats-er, offers. Odin had proposed having me on loan, as an advisor and liaison between Asgard and ARC. The division Heads, and the Directorial Council, the faceless black suits overseeing each country of the Global Gathering ARC operated in, were still discussing that idea. But, before that...

"So," Mia smiled, pushing my covers aside with one hand, the other grabbing my hair as she leaned forward so she could look into my eyes-scarlet with black slits, boring into my once-black, now blank, ivory orbs. "Kissing?"

"It's a start."

***
Why did Chernobog ask for help to find Mimir's head if he hid it in the first place?

Despite his boast of hiding it in the perfect location to David, the well's nature also prevented him from remotely checking if it was still there or if someone else had found or moved it(his suspects were eliminated after confirming they did not). The fuss caused by the Headhunt gave him some freedom of movement to check in person, though. The Black God may have outsmarted himself twice, once by hiding the head, once by giving part of its power to David.

Also, watching the strigoi run around and puppeting his body was too much fun to miss. I suppose he outsmarted himself thrice.

But he wasn't selected for this plan for his intelligence. The lead, not the playwright, as he said.

Sidestory: Fae Play

***
AN: This details Bianca's trip to Britain, which has been referenced before. It takes place a month before the events of Shallow Grave.

***
At first, I needed to pass through Ireland. The Fae have always been uneasy around outsiders, even if those outsiders are guests they invited themselves. Perhaps especially then. And if the guest is similar enough to the Fair Folk to invoke familiarity, but strange enough to to make them uneasy? Even worse.
I have been told that, from their perspective, iele are like peacocks with no feathers, trying to sing like people.
I was extremely flattered at the comparison.

As such, the Fae couldn't accept one such as me entering their territory directly. Luckily, the Emerald Isle was neutral ground, at least when it came to supernatural politics. Purely because the locals hated their neighbours so much they couldn't go to war, or everyone would lose.

"Are we there yet?" I asked, not looking at my guide.

The barghest growled. When I'd first heard who would be guiding me, I'd expected an oversized, monstrous dog, not...this. But the word 'barghest' supposedly formed as a combination of 'burh' and 'ghest'. So, town-ghost.

The translucent, stocky man floating ahead of me seemed to be in a perpetual bad mood. But, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. He was British, after all. And dead.

"You feel like we're there?" He asked in a gravelly voice. First time he'd talked since my arrival.

"Well, no. Not really..."

"Then we ain't."

I swallowed a cutting retort. No need to waste my voice on this grump. I needed it at its best for my upcoming performance.

The Fae were holding a celebration, though you would be hard-pressed to get an answer if you asked why. Personally, I think they're grateful the Royal Army hasn't sprayed all of their holdings with iron dust. And this time, they wanted a foreign element, someone with a new talent, a new perspective.

The Fae also had singers who could jerk emotions around like puppets on strings, so that wasn't why they asked for me.

After the Shattering, their realm, Faerie or Elfhame, was one of the first to solidify into being, because the legends about them were so old and widespread. It sent the Brits running from the mainland back to their island. You can't help beat the Nazis down when the Wild Hunt is tearing up your backyard.

Heavens, I hoped the Hunters wouldn't be present too. The Hunt's leader was always a vile bastard, whoever held the mantle at the moment, be it Odin, Gwyp ap Nudd or the Devil. At least Herne and the Erlking were getting brushed aside more often nowadays.

If you thought personality disorders were a pain, you should see that mantle getting jerked around.

The barghest plodded through the wet, misty moor, while I floated alongside him, my human mask discarded for the time being. Perhaps after this was done, I could pretend to be a lost woman. Then, when some monstrous creep came for me, I could turn the tables on him.

There were far too many of those in Northern Europe.

Eventually, we reached the Lughstone. When the Romans had come to Britannia, the Tin Isle, they had interpreted the local gods, as they were wont to do. And so, Lugh was associated with Mercury, and people started seeing him as a god of travelling. The stone, placed by Lugh himself, could grant quick passage to any realm the god knew of, if your will was strong enough.

He found the whole thing pretty amusing. Whenever he came out of the Eioch Cluster, to walk the Earth, Lugh claimed that there were worse things to be associated with than travel and Mercury.

He also claimed the Romans had been smart not to equate him with Apollo, or worse, Jupiter.

The Shattering had changed the fabric of reality, just when Einstein was starting to understand it, and teach people about it. And so it was that, besides the mundane universe we lived in, there were also an infinity of alternate realities, as well as higher dimensions, with each transcending the one beneath it like a human is beyond a drawing on paper.

And then there were the dimensionless things beyond that, born of Lovecraft's mad genius. Thankfully, most of them were too vast to perceive dimensioned space.

There were also the Clusters, macrocosmic structures that reflected the beliefs of theists. Creation could not contain so many conflicting cosmologies and supreme beings inside a single realm, so it split itself apart.

You would be surprised how many ancient people believed the world was a flat expanse of land surrounded by ocean. Though, I suppose they did not, could not, know better back then. But the old stories remained, so the Clusters formed. Named after their creator deity or force, they existed alongside our universe, linked but separate. The Kaos Cluster, the Odin Cluster, the Ra Cluster...

I had asked David, once, if he would like to visit the Yahweh Cluster. He'd claimed he was unworthy.

Still, it made one think about coincidences. About patterns and the collective unconscious. Why an underworld, middle world and world above, in so many cultures? Why so many world trees and pillars and turtles and elephants? How could ancient civilizations that had never met one another think so alike?

Perhaps there was something behind the scenes, guiding and shaping mankind's thoughts. Maybe Constantin's theory, of a multi-faceted supreme being, was not just a theory.

The Lughstone was a representation of Lugh in his triple aspect: three faces, three manhoods. There was a reason he was such a popular god.

Or, rather, several reasons.

"Well?" The barghest asked gruffly. "Grab it."

"Of course." I turned to him with a sarcastic smile. "Is there a certain part I should grab, or..."

"If ye wanna shag stone, be my guest. But do it on yer own time. I'm supposed t' drag yer arse to the Fair Folk, and I'm gonna do it."

I touched one of Lugh's faces, and it seemed to me like it smiled. The Lughstone began to shine like the Sun, and we were gone.

Faerie was just not as I'd expected. It was greater, in every detail. The air was sweeter, the grass greener, the sun brighter, the people happier.

Because not all Fae are cold monsters obsessed with mischief and mayhem. The common people are similar enough to mankind, with much of the same fears and joys, hopes and worries, for all that they are immortal.

The Fae peasants nodded and smiled at me as I walked through the city. Their rulers must have passed along the news, because no one stopped me to demand answers from the strange, floating woman. The barghest and I walked to the middle of the city, and through the garden leading to Oberon and Titania's castle. High in the sky above us, I could see the bottom of the Hill that rose above Faerie. Symbolism made fact.

"Here's where we part." The barghest said when we reached the unguarded, multi-coloured gate. It was so tall I couldn't see the top, even if I craned my head up, and the towers of the castle rose far higher, piercing the cloudless sky, and perhaps even the bottom of the Hill.

"I have not been in Faerie before." I said, trying not to sound nervous. "How am I supposed to find my way to the ballroom?"

"The monarchs will send someone fer you."

"You are wrong, frowning one." A new, amused voice cut in. "They already have."

We looked around for the source of the voice, until the clearing of a throat drew our eyes downwards.

Oh, Puck.

The little Fae, straight out of Shakespeare's play, as he liked to present himself. Oberon's informer and wetwork specialist, when he wasn't moonlighting as court jester.

Puck was looking up at me, eyes glinting with amusement, bearded face dominated by an earsplitting grin. I could not tell what he was wearing, except that it was sheer, and at times, he looked like he was naked.

"Come on now, lady mine. 'Tis coming, your time to shine." He said, turning around and walking towards the gate with a spring in his step. It opened by itself, because even doors knew better than to cross Puck.

"Since when do you talk in rhymes? You don't, in the stories." I said, pacing myself not to leave him behind, though I fully knew he could outrun me, short legs or not.

"Ah! 'Tis, how you say, a... fleeting passion. A trend! Yes, a trend. You see, I learned of this Gaiman fellow, who was writing comical books about gods. I do not understand the term, since they were more grim than comical, but you know how humans are...anyway, this lad's works introduced me to the world of comical books! There's this one about a demon who talks in rhymes, and is appreciated by few, though he does good work. It resonated with me..."

As we travelled twisting, shimmering corridors, Puck regaled me with tales of his favourite comics, and asked if I wanted to see his Etrigan collection. I told him that maybe I would, after the ball.

The ballroom seemed to appear out of thin air as we turned a corner. The floor and ceiling looked like they were made of a myriad of giant butterfly wings, which beat when you looked at them from the corner of your eye. Fae lords and ladies gathered in cliques, taking food and drink from silver trays born by pixies who were visibly straining under the weight. Sometimes, they took the pixies themselves, and ate them alive, smiling as they screamed. The remaining pixies were then chastised for letting trays drop and dirty the floor.

My lip curled. None of this was new to me-you cannot live with my sisters and remain thin-skinned-but that didn't make it easier to stand. Maybe my songs could touch their hearts, and help them become better.

I turned to look down at Puck, but he had already left my side, moving through the crowd and mingling with everyone.

Like a shark among minnows.

I realized the ball itself hadn't started, because the Monarchs weren't present. Neither was Mab, or the Cat Sith, or any god.

Or any Hunter, thank the heavens.

I looked around, unsure where to go, who to talk to, when a raised stage flashed into being in the middle of the room. Oberon and Titania were standing on it, smiling, in all their finery. They were both tall and lean, pale and fair, and there was nothing human in their faces.

Oberon had curly, short dark hair, and looked like he was laughing at a joke only he understood. Titania had long, straight, copper-coloured hair, and was looking at her subjects with a mix of affection and pity.

"My friends!" Oberon began. "Tonight, we have a iela among us. Coming from the wilds of Dacia, we hope her voice will bring a short succour in our long lives. After all, what is immortality, save endless time to contemplate boredom?" Dacia? He knew very well no one used that name anymore.

The crowd laughed, toasting their King, eating a few more pixies. Oberon's smile then thinned, and he spoke in a voice affecting regret.

"Sadly, the brightest stars of our court will not be attending..."

"Mab is walking mankind's dreamscape, all over Britannia." Titania said. "The midwife is performing her duty, helping give birth to man's dreams. It is said," Titania leaned forward, conspirationally. "That she has grown tired of her kin, and now finds comfort amongst humanity..."

The crowd shrieked in outrage at that, screaming accusations, tearing at each other with nails and teeth, with cutlery and shards of broken glass. They cursed their fellows for driving Mab out with their foolish antics, with their boorish behaviour. By the time they were done, only half the crowd was standing, and none of them was unwounded. The monarchs lookep upon their work, and found it good.

I find it necessary to mention that these were the Seelie Fae: the champions of good, mankind's allies in the fight against the Unseelie and the monsters in the dark beyond the fires. But, while the Seelie could be kind enough to men, their bottled up viciousness had to be unleashed somewhere. And why not other Fae?

Without another word, the Fae rulers, floated off the stage, and I reluctantly took their place. Dammmit. The ball was just starting, and I was already shaken. But I couldn't show weakness. I couldn't bleed in the water with so many sharks around.

I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind, and began singing.

Not human songs-they had not called me here for that. For all that the Fae acted like we were still living in the Iron Age, they fully understood electronics. If they'd wanted human music, they'd just have looked up something on YouTube and put it on loop.

More channels than you might expect are Fae fronts, and more internet trolls actual trolls.

I sang to touch their ears and minds, because I did not have souls to work it. I sang of good and kindness, courage and charity, but they just nodded and hummed along. They were Seelie, and they understood such things, when they needed to. They wanted something more...lurid.

Oberon and Titania brought forth a child, barely a teen, in a white dress and red slippers. My heart sank at the sight of them. I knew what they meant.

This child had been stolen from a dangerous household, they said, and a changeling left behind to torment the callous parents. She was much happier here, for how could she not be?

They asked for lurid songs, and promised child would dance to them.

And I sang. I sang of war at home and abroad, of the Ottoman yoke and the Impaler's cold justice. And the Fae tore at each other, while the child danced and danced, until her feet bled, until they were redder than the slippers.

And they roarer, and urged me to go on.

I sang my throat hoarse, and the child danced and wept, until she could not stand anymore, could not catch her breath.

She fell to the floor, but still tried to dance.

When I could not sing anymore, I excused myself, blaming my raw throat, and the Fae lamented, but still applauded. With a shaky smile, I floated off the stage, and hurried out of the ballroom. The Fae cried out behind me, asking me to stay for the rest of the ball, or at least take Puck with me, if I wanted to leave. But nobody tried to stop me.

Somehow, I found my way out of the castle and into the garden. It was night, and the city was quiet as a tomb, with a cold mist hanging over it, filled with will o'wisps.

On one of the ornamental carved stones, the child sat and wept. She was not wearing the red slippers anymore, because her feet were gone.

I rushed to her, taking her hands into mine and asking what had happened, when had it happened, and why.

"Because I could not dance until the end." And she spoke no more. She did not seem to be bleeding, or in pain, but I could not leave her here. The Fae did not mutilate valued servants, so she might as well have had 'banished' written on her forehead.

I gathered her in my arms and rushed to the Lughstone, flying high over the city, riding the winds. I would find her a place in the human world, if it was the last thing I did.

We reached the Lughstone, and I grabbed one of the faces so hard it cracked. In moments, we were back on that misty Irish moor.

The child was laughing, and at first, I thought she was laughing in joy.

Then, I looked at her face, and saw the mad grin, the feverish eyes.

"Such a bleeding heart." She crooned in a broken voice that made my skin crawl. I tried to throw her away from me, but she clung to me like a spider. "You thought this dreary world held the key to my joy. You though you could take me, without my masters knowing and allowing your folly. Oh, you stupid girl..."

And she laughed and laughed, aging before my eyes, until I was holding a hideous, toothless crone.

"Faerie was the only thing keeping me alive." She hissed, sticking her wrinkled, gaunt face into mine. "I was taken seven of your decades ago, and kept young only by that realm's magics. Now, time has caught up with me. I hope you are happy, murderess."

And she laughed again, a sharp, mad sound, as she died in my arms, turning to dust, until I was holding a cracked, grinning skull.

Damn them.

Damn the Fae and their pointless, twisted games.

Sidestory: Of Events Past and Things to Come'

***
???

...And a good day to you, too, comrade General Secretary. But I can tell, by your eagerness, that you are far more interested in my file than my manners. Dare I do something outrage-

*recording faulty? Several crashes and indistinct sounds*

A-Apologies...f-for the joke in poor taste. P-Please call them o-off...

A-Ahem...

You might be unsurprised to learn that comrade Aaron comes from humble origins-as humble as possible for a creature like him. This might explain his lack of respect towards protocol, almost apolitical tendencies, and other traits that are barely compensated for by his competence and power. This...is what we managed to gather...

[Redacted] forest, Brașov, Romania, 194x[redacted by order of the General Secretary after perusal of the file]

The zmeu is hunting.

That is not a surprise. In all his years-the whole handful of them-he has never met one of his kind who was not a predator. Manipulation, extortion, maneating...then there are the ones who prefer to favour flesh in rather different ways.

He shares these urges, of course. However, he has not heeded them, so far. He does not know the others like him, here in the mountains, are pariahs, even among their newly-formed society, which is itself prone to extremes.

The zmeu is not a member of society, either of his kind or the greater Romanian one.

Nor does he know his parents. This is not unusual, either. His kind are not attached to their children. What is unusual, however, is the strength of his father, and the nature of his mother, who was a zmeu only long enough to bear him.

And the brothers he has not met yet.

The zmeu is not hunting out of hunger. He cannot starve to death, though hunger is annoying. He is hunting-animals-to prevent himself from doing something worse.

The bear has torn apart a young, overconfident hunter. A human unsettled by the changes brought by the Shattering, trying to calm himself down by killing something he knows, something that makes sense.

The hunter used to read while resting. As the zmeu tears the bear apart, he notices the book fallen on the grass, next to the hunter's corpse.

"A-Aron Pum-nul..." He speaks haltingly, parroting the big, bold letters on the cover. The stern, wise-looking human on the cover, he thinks, looks admirable.

So far, the zmeu has only heard human curses. He is still learning Romanian. He does not know this, but the man on the cover has helped bring the modern language into being, along with his students. His works will now help the zmeu master it.

***
[Redacted], Brașov, Romania, 196x

Aaron has met his parents once-entirely too many times, in his opinion.

His father spends his time in zmeu country, for his voice alone would shatter the Earth. The behemoth, with his myriad mountain-swallowing maws and rainbow scales, is everything they say about their kind.

If he came to sleep around the world, he'd sleep around the world, provided he did not pulverise it by twitching.

His mother is far, far worse. Aaron used to think his father a coward for having and abandoning him, but...

His eyes cross and bleed as he remembers a fraction of her form-all angles and no curves. Where did the old lizard find the insanity to...to...

Aaron shakes his head. One of his brothers is near, and the other not too far. He knows, as surely as he knows the fire in his blood and the fangs in his jaws.

His brothers hatching in his stomping grounds is pure, stupid coincidence. Perhaps the two old monsters have a favourite mating spot here, though it's hard to imagine his father-Maws, he decides; his whole name, really a description of his body, is a mouthful-shapeshifting to become small enough to fit anywhere on Earth, let alone mating without wiping out the sun and everything around it.

As he hunts, his instincts briefly hesitate. No, both brothers are near. And...

Aaron bursts through trees, breaking them into kindling, to see a little green zmeu-barely more than a hatchling, really, smaller than some human children-held in the three maws of a bigger, blue one.

Aaron tears his youngest brother away with one hand, backhanding the blue zmeu to the ground with the other.

"Why?" He demands in a growl, holding the mewling hatchling close to his chest. The bite wounds are already healing, but...

The zmeu who will become Lucas sneers. He does not know how to speak yet, but his growl says 'rival' as he glares at their younger brother with blue eyes.

What a family he has...well, he supposes his teens are not too early to raise children. It's not like he's their father...

The hatchling wraps around his hand, purring, while the blue one bares his fangs, crossing his arms in a huff as he stares up at him.

No. He is definitely their father, in all but fact.

***
New Centre, Bucharest, 1992

Lucian strokes his goatee as they walk into the club. It's his second time staying in Bucharest, and far happier than the first, at the moment. Miri would not have been found anywhere near a place like this before the Revolution-she is a vampire, and a woman of class besides-but, with the regime change, people are unsure, experimenting.

Lucian has been getting into vampires recently. He likes them, too, or so he tells himself.

Lucian was raised by a brother who repeatedly told and showed him zmei who give in to their impulses are executed. The images of preventive castration, in the cases of zmei with insatiable appetites, improper orientations, or just dubious personalities(they will have to come up with new terms, now that the reds are gone) were not really necessary to get the message across, but they helped. Aaron beat self-control into him, and he's thankful.

There's a iela singing tonight, and every night, the posters promise. Lucian takes one look at her, alone on the stage, and wearing a shift so sheer he's not sure it's there, and admonishes himself for his thoughts, then realises that's stupid. Thoughtcrime is not a thing anymore.

He'll still have to tell Miri, of course. For penance. The vampire tears open his neck(his kind cannot be turned, so there is no danger besides pain, and he regenerates in moments) for every improper thought and action. He tells himself she keeps him honest.

Soon, Lucian will look back on this relationship, and realise how unhealthy it was.

"I'm surprised you agreed to come." His wings rub against the holes in his leather jacket with a sound like knives on skin.

"Of course!" She favours him with a radiant smile. No teeth, of course. He knows it's fake. She's only happy when barring her fangs, and vice versa. "The owner is an old friend, you see..."

"Yeah?" He takes in the smoky room, and realises how bland it is, besides the posters about the iela. Are the walls even painted? They don't smell like it...and why are there only humans inside?

"Indeed. In fact, I believe he will soon become a friend of yours, too."

If the owner is a vamp, Lucian thinks it's extremely likely the only friendship struck tonight will be between his fist and the leech's face.

Then the iela begins to sing, and he realises what is wrong: everything.

Lucas, in-between his 'walks' and painting sessions, has taught him to hone his arcane sense. For survival, of course, though Lucian has mostly used it to play hide, seek and find with ghosts. But, for the first and last time in decades, he thanks his brother.

The iela's song is chaining the patrons to the club. Not physically, nothing so blunt. Rather, to the idea of it, and the suggestion that they like it. With the Security dismantled, ARC still setting up shop and no national agency at the moment, there is no one to notice such crimes, besides people like him.

But this is so obvious he's almost baffled. If he, with the arcane sight of a myopic rhino, can spot this, why the hell hasn't some supernatural with enough power and something vaguely resembling a moral compass closed this down?

Lucian narrows his eyes, and notices the iela is chained too, also to the idea of the club. Controlled, too? A puppeteer having her strings pulled?

The zmeu is eating concrete one moment later, Mirela straddling his back in a way more unpleasurable than even their usual, lamentable romps. Is she in on this shit, or being driven crazy(er), or what?

"We knew you'd be distracted, you bleeding heart." She croons, one clawed hand around his throat, the other over his heart. She's trying to tear through his scales, get at the blood.

The first option, then. He always picked 'a' on tests, anyway.

"But do not worry! We know you cannot be brought into the fold, by force or not. I have given you so many little deaths," Only about three real ones, but he's good at faking. "Let me give you the true one, too. You walk around here too often to be allowed to live."

As she taps into her inner gloater, the other vampire comes into the room out of a door behind the stage, running like a bat out of...heh.

Both of them are skilled enough to use their full strength without collateral damage. Good. He is, too, though he'd likely lose in close quarters to two peers unable to feel wounds or exhaustion.

Good thing he always has his mace. He's never unarmed, either.

Lucian summons his mace in hand as they drag him down, and realises its enchantment, wrought by the Mother of the Forest in exchange for his and his brothers' services(flames, his crotch still ached just thinking of that hag) will not be able to permanently destroy the vamps. He could reduce them to quantum foam, or nothing at all, and they'd heal instantly, because his weapon is not holy.

Then Lucian peers through the windows, and sees a church in the distance, far beyond where the patrons could see, even if their perceptions weren't addled. He glances at the iela, at the anger beneath her smiling mask, and sees the aetheric chains extending between the tall, stocky male vamp's eyes and her neck.

The zmeu resolves himself. Recently, he's been reading about some American batting sport, and looking for a chance to try it.

Well, Lucian thinks as he swings his mace through the vamps with the intent to destroy them, he might as well take them to church.

He and the iela do not become a couple. Neither of their species is built for constant relationships, and they do not have the temper for sharing themselves with anyone besides each other. She is only into men half of the time, anyway. But Bianca, a human name he suggests to her as the vamps are burned with holy fire and the thralls taken away for rehabilitation, is not deterred. As she explains that night while they explore each other, out of nothing but curiosity and lust, they tell themselves, they can still be friends.

Many years later, they will meet three young men: one gloomy and descending into despair, one still recovering from the demands of distant parents and looking to form his own family, and one who has been walking with death since birth, and will continue long after his death, which, as far as everyone will know for a long time, will be due to the asthma he had been born with.

They will also meet an old bear, who will be as much of a father to them as they will be older siblings or surrogate parents to their younger friends.

He will take a long time to be a father, rather than a parent, to his own blood, though.

***
Muspellheim, 2030

Odin does not arrive by means of the Bifrost. The runes are his to speak and carve, and the tree he has raised is his to walk.

As such, he simply moves, without moving, from his throne room to this blighted, stifling realm the moment his ravens, who have remembered they are supposed to be useful, inform him everything is going wrong.

His ragged travelling cloak has been discarded for armour as grey and weathered as he is. In one hand, he clutches Gungnir. In the other, he holds destruction, shaped into a glowing rune and ready to unleash at any moment. His ravens perch on his pauldrons, their eyes seeing even more than his can.

Not that he needs sharp sight to spot the fire giant, or the victims at his enormous feet.

The Romanians have been torn apart, and burned-he is not sure which is which, even their souls are charred. The Olympian brat has been cut to pieces, still snarling defiance at his opponent as Surtr sneers down at him.

"We should have ripped you apart, too!" Odin calls to get his attention, raising Gungnir. "Though I'm not sure even my brothers and I could make anything worthwhile from your carcass. At least that frozen moron was good building materials."

"Borson." Surtr rumbles in response, a grin shining through his jungle of a beard. "I did not know you were masochistic, or suicidal. Coming here?"

"Took the words right out of my mouth-as I'm sure nobody has ever told you." Odin smiles back. "Do you think yourself my better?"

"I think you are no longer fated to die in the wolf's jaws. There is no destiny anymore, One-Eye!"

The giants lunges, and Odin lets him swing, raising Gungnir like a quarterstaff to block.

It does not pierce the spear, as Surtr realises, despite the shockwaves and flames unleashed by the blow turning Yggdrassil, all the words on its roots, trunks and branches and the stars in its leaves to nothing.

Smile widening, Odin speaks the name of time backwards, and all is restored. Enforced by the Allfather's will, this will be unremembered by any walking or climbing the world ash. No one, but Surtr, for Odin intends to anger the giant, just as his nonsensical slaughter has angered him.

"No!" Surtr growls, pouring his will into his blade, stoking the flames until they are hotter than all the stars in the mundane universe put together. "You cannot bring it back! I have burned it!"

"I think you'll notice...I just have." Odin pushes the blade aside with one gauntleted hand, sending Surtr sprawling across his blazing domain. "Why so surprised, giant? You burn the tree to nothing, yes-in Ragnarok. But I have been told recently that...there is no destiny."

Surtr roars in rage, but only briefly, before Odin closes the distance, throttling him with one hand. "Be silent! I have lost face before the other pantheons twice-once when Thor lost his temper, once when I humbled myself by allowing the taskforces free reign to walk my Realms. And you strike them down because...what? It's the first time you feel unburdened? You have been polishing your sword so long it has become tedious, and you want to draw attention to yourself?"

Surtr cannot answer with the Allfather's hand crushing his throat. Odin does not want him to. Glancing at the burned corpses and Heracles' remains, everything is clear. He will send the former to their Lord, preachy hypocritical bastard that he is, and the latter to his perverse lout of a father. It would not do to deprive Olympus of another incestuous fool.

Surtr is far denser than any natural material on Earth, and heavier than any star. This does not stop Odin from throwing him out of Muspellheim, up Yggdrasil's trunk, past its branches and leaves, and past the eagle who now has no rival. Veorfolnir startles between his living perch's eyes as the Allfather and his foe pass by, far faster than light. Odin has outpaced Surtr's flight, floating on nothing above Yggdrasil's tip to catch Surtr as he reaches the apex of the throw. One of Odin's arms is wrapped tight around the giant's neck, the difference in size rendered meaningless by his powers, and the other around Surtr's wrist, holding his arm extended and his power shackled so that he cannot use his sword.

"Do you think Frey will be jealous?" Odin growls, teeth bared in a wolfish grin. "You even burned down the tree...he'll feel like I'm stealing his role!"

With a hateful roar and a burst of strength that shatters his body, Surtr frees himself, spinning to face Odin and bringing his sword down on the Allfather's head. Odin raises Gungnir, its tip clashing with the sword's flaming edge, and shattering it, the void shrieking as it closes for Surtr's grimacing face. It pierces his flesh and skull and brain, bursting out of the back of his head, but Odin is not unmarked. A shard, still flaming, leaps at his eye, burying itself deep within it.

Even as it burns, hotter than anything in the universe, Odin smiles, gripped by a rage fiercer than any since...ha. He cannot remember. He will have to ask Munin.

"You will die, Borson!" Surtr screams with the last of his strength as he falls down into Ginnungagap, steaming blood forming a curtain around and above him. "And when you choke on your ashen tears, you will wish you have died like your bitch of a son!"

Odin smirks, until the end of the taunt. With a thought command, his ravens blur over Yggdrasil. He not know how Surtr knew about Thor's fate-perhaps the Black God shared a plan with him, and he was merely expecting it-, but by the time Hugin croaks sadly in his ear, Thor is dead. Tyr, too, a braver warrior than he had ever had a right to ask for. And...his blood brother's little monsters, as well.

"No fate, indeed." Odin snarls, his godly sight searching Ginnungagap without the need for eyes. He is not sure if he could take the Black God-it has killed Fenrir, whether by surprise or fairly. Could Odin have done the same? Perhaps. He could have pushed himself far past his limits with his runes, but, during Ragnarok, fate would have done the same to the wolf, so he would still die.

But fate...is no more.

"I will not be the one choking on ashen tears." The Allfather muses to himself, a wisp of a smile twisting the corner of his scarred lips. He has found what he was looking for, far past his Realms. It is unsure and formless, without its anchor. Odin does not give that back to it-he does not want to be an accomplice to whatever it may do once returned-but he helps. Just a small flicker of runic light, a beacon, a lure, pointing towards the Black God who crippled it.

An old monster looks across endless darkness, and smiles. And, though it has no face, Nacht smiles back, and promises pain and horror, as it always has.

***
"Grandfather! Where are..." It is Magni who meets him as he strides back into Asgard, after this phase of the war(against what, Odin wonders? Perhaps chaos itself)ends, and a false peace descends. His grandson trails off at his eyeless face, but his expression, he knows, hurts far more.

As Modi and Vidar gather around him, and so many citizens watch from their windows and doorframes, Odin can only think how Freya will take the news. Sif, he knows, will be...

No matter. He has always been able to harden his heart.

"Split them however you wish." Odin says hollowly, putting Thor's panoply in Magni's hands and striding past him as Vidar calls for him to return, and Magni and Modi throw their heads back and wail-roar? He is tired, so tired...he cannot tell anymore-in grief and disbelief. Grasping his ravens in both hands, Odin tightens his grip, barks the harsh spell he has put together over the return trip, and snaps their necks.

Knowledge flows into his mind, no longer filtered and limited by the bond between master and familiars. Already, he knows the whereabouts of his sons' lingering souls, and how to make them coherent, so that their shades may return, at least in Asgard.

Fate is gone. The old ends are no more. And, Odin swears as his raven's eyes fill his sockets, and their insight and memories fill his mind, they will never be caught blind again.

Sidestory: Of Events Past and Things to Come'

***
???

...And a good day to you, too, comrade General Secretary. But I can tell, by your eagerness, that you are far more interested in my file than my manners. Dare I do something outrage-

*recording faulty? Several crashes and indistinct sounds*

A-Apologies...f-for the joke in poor taste. P-Please call them o-off...

A-Ahem...

You might be unsurprised to learn that comrade Aaron comes from humble origins-as humble as possible for a creature like him. This might explain his lack of respect towards protocol, almost apolitical tendencies, and other traits that are barely compensated for by his competence and power. This...is what we managed to gather...

[Redacted] forest, Brașov, Romania, 194x[redacted by order of the General Secretary after perusal of the file]

The zmeu is hunting.

That is not a surprise. In all his years-the whole handful of them-he has never met one of his kind who was not a predator. Manipulation, extortion, maneating...then there are the ones who prefer to favour flesh in rather different ways.

He shares these urges, of course. However, he has not heeded them, so far. He does not know the others like him, here in the mountains, are pariahs, even among their newly-formed society, which is itself prone to extremes.

The zmeu is not a member of society, either of his kind or the greater Romanian one.

Nor does he know his parents. This is not unusual, either. His kind are not attached to their children. What is unusual, however, is the strength of his father, and the nature of his mother, who was a zmeu only long enough to bear him.

And the brothers he has not met yet.

The zmeu is not hunting out of hunger. He cannot starve to death, though hunger is annoying. He is hunting-animals-to prevent himself from doing something worse.

The bear has torn apart a young, overconfident hunter. A human unsettled by the changes brought by the Shattering, trying to calm himself down by killing something he knows, something that makes sense.

The hunter used to read while resting. As the zmeu tears the bear apart, he notices the book fallen on the grass, next to the hunter's corpse.

"A-Aron Pum-nul..." He speaks haltingly, parroting the big, bold letters on the cover. The stern, wise-looking human on the cover, he thinks, looks admirable.

So far, the zmeu has only heard human curses. He is still learning Romanian. He does not know this, but the man on the cover has helped bring the modern language into being, along with his students. His works will now help the zmeu master it.

***
[Redacted], Brașov, Romania, 196x

Aaron has met his parents once-entirely too many times, in his opinion.

His father spends his time in zmeu country, for his voice alone would shatter the Earth. The behemoth, with his myriad mountain-swallowing maws and rainbow scales, is everything they say about their kind.

If he came to sleep around the world, he'd sleep around the world, provided he did not pulverise it by twitching.

His mother is far, far worse. Aaron used to think his father a coward for having and abandoning him, but...

His eyes cross and bleed as he remembers a fraction of her form-all angles and no curves. Where did the old lizard find the insanity to...to...

Aaron shakes his head. One of his brothers is near, and the other not too far. He knows, as surely as he knows the fire in his blood and the fangs in his jaws.

His brothers hatching in his stomping grounds is pure, stupid coincidence. Perhaps the two old monsters have a favourite mating spot here, though it's hard to imagine his father-Maws, he decides; his whole name, really a description of his body, is a mouthful-shapeshifting to become small enough to fit anywhere on Earth, let alone mating without wiping out the sun and everything around it.

As he hunts, his instincts briefly hesitate. No, both brothers are near. And...

Aaron bursts through trees, breaking them into kindling, to see a little green zmeu-barely more than a hatchling, really, smaller than some human children-held in the three maws of a bigger, blue one.

Aaron tears his youngest brother away with one hand, backhanding the blue zmeu to the ground with the other.

"Why?" He demands in a growl, holding the mewling hatchling close to his chest. The bite wounds are already healing, but...

The zmeu who will become Lucas sneers. He does not know how to speak yet, but his growl says 'rival' as he glares at their younger brother with blue eyes.

What a family he has...well, he supposes his teens are not too early to raise children. It's not like he's their father...

The hatchling wraps around his hand, purring, while the blue one bares his fangs, crossing his arms in a huff as he stares up at him.

No. He is definitely their father, in all but fact.

***
New Centre, Bucharest, 1992

Lucian strokes his goatee as they walk into the club. It's his second time staying in Bucharest, and far happier than the first, at the moment. Miri would not have been found anywhere near a place like this before the Revolution-she is a vampire, and a woman of class besides-but, with the regime change, people are unsure, experimenting.

Lucian has been getting into vampires recently. He likes them, too, or so he tells himself.

Lucian was raised by a brother who repeatedly told and showed him zmei who give in to their impulses are executed. The images of preventive castration, in the cases of zmei with insatiable appetites, improper orientations, or just dubious personalities(they will have to come up with new terms, now that the reds are gone) were not really necessary to get the message across, but they helped. Aaron beat self-control into him, and he's thankful.

There's a iela singing tonight, and every night, the posters promise. Lucian takes one look at her, alone on the stage, and wearing a shift so sheer he's not sure it's there, and admonishes himself for his thoughts, then realises that's stupid. Thoughtcrime is not a thing anymore.

He'll still have to tell Miri, of course. For penance. The vampire tears open his neck(his kind cannot be turned, so there is no danger besides pain, and he regenerates in moments) for every improper thought and action. He tells himself she keeps him honest.

Soon, Lucian will look back on this relationship, and realise how unhealthy it was.

"I'm surprised you agreed to come." His wings rub against the holes in his leather jacket with a sound like knives on skin.

"Of course!" She favours him with a radiant smile. No teeth, of course. He knows it's fake. She's only happy when baring her fangs, and vice versa. "The owner is an old friend, you see..."

"Yeah?" He takes in the smoky room, and realises how bland it is, besides the posters about the iela. Are the walls even painted? They don't smell like it...and why are there only humans inside?

"Indeed. In fact, I believe he will soon become a friend of yours, too."

If the owner is a vamp, Lucian thinks it's extremely likely the only friendship struck tonight will be between his fist and the leech's face.

Then the iela begins to sing, and he realises what is wrong: everything.

Lucas, in-between his 'walks' and painting sessions, has taught him to hone his arcane sense. For survival, of course, though Lucian has mostly used it to play hide, seek and find with ghosts. But, for the first and last time in decades, he thanks his brother.

The iela's song is chaining the patrons to the club. Not physically, nothing so blunt. Rather, to the idea of it, and the suggestion that they like it. With the Security dismantled, ARC still setting up shop and no national agency at the moment, there is no one to notice such crimes, besides people like him.

But this is so obvious he's almost baffled. If he, with the arcane sight of a myopic rhino, can spot this, why the hell hasn't some supernatural with enough power and something vaguely resembling a moral compass closed this down?

Lucian narrows his eyes, and notices the iela is chained too, also to the idea of the club. Controlled, too? A puppeteer having her strings pulled?

The zmeu is eating concrete one moment later, Mirela straddling his back in a way more unpleasurable than even their usual, lamentable romps. Is she in on this shit, or being driven crazy(er), or what?

"We knew you'd be distracted, you bleeding heart." She croons, one clawed hand around his throat, the other over his heart. She's trying to tear through his scales, get at the blood.

The first option, then. He always picked 'a' on tests, anyway.

"But do not worry! We know you cannot be brought into the fold, by force or not. I have given you so many little deaths," Only about three real ones, but he's good at faking. "Let me give you the true one, too. You walk around here too often to be allowed to live."

As she taps into her inner gloater, the other vampire comes into the room out of a door behind the stage, running like a bat out of...heh.

Both of them are skilled enough to use their full strength without collateral damage. Good. He is, too, though he'd likely lose in close quarters to two peers unable to feel wounds or exhaustion.

Good thing he always has his mace. He's never unarmed, either.

Lucian summons his mace in hand as they drag him down, and realises its enchantment, wrought by the Mother of the Forest in exchange for his and his brothers' services(flames, his crotch still ached just thinking of that hag) will not be able to permanently destroy the vamps. He could reduce them to quantum foam, or nothing at all, and they'd heal instantly, because his weapon is not holy.

Then Lucian peers through the windows, and sees a church in the distance, far beyond where the patrons could see, even if their perceptions weren't addled. He glances at the iela, at the anger beneath her smiling mask, and sees the aetheric chains extending between the tall, stocky male vamp's eyes and her neck.

The zmeu resolves himself. Recently, he's been reading about some American batting sport, and looking for a chance to try it.

Well, Lucian thinks as he swings his mace through the vamps with the intent to destroy them, he might as well take them to church.

He and the iela do not become a couple. Neither of their species is built for constant relationships, and they do not have the temper for sharing themselves with anyone besides each other. She is only into men half of the time, anyway. But Bianca, a human name he suggests to her as the vamps are burned with holy fire and the thralls taken away for rehabilitation, is not deterred. As she explains that night while they explore each other, out of nothing but curiosity and lust, they tell themselves, they can still be friends.

Many years later, they will meet three young men: one gloomy and descending into despair, one still recovering from the demands of distant parents and looking to form his own family, and one who has been walking with death since birth, and will continue long after his death, which, as far as everyone will know for a long time, will be due to the asthma he had been born with.

They will also meet an old bear, who will be as much of a father to them as they will be older siblings or surrogate parents to their younger friends.

He will take a long time to be a father, rather than a parent, to his own blood, though.

***
Muspellheim, 2030

Odin does not arrive by means of the Bifrost. The runes are his to speak and carve, and the tree he has raised is his to walk.

As such, he simply moves, without moving, from his throne room to this blighted, stifling realm the moment his ravens, who have remembered they are supposed to be useful, inform him everything is going wrong.

His ragged travelling cloak has been discarded for armour as grey and weathered as he is. In one hand, he clutches Gungnir. In the other, he holds destruction, shaped into a glowing rune and ready to unleash at any moment. His ravens perch on his pauldrons, their eyes seeing even more than his can.

Not that he needs sharp sight to spot the fire giant, or the victims at his enormous feet.

The Romanians have been torn apart, and burned-he is not sure which is which, even their souls are charred. The Olympian brat has been cut to pieces, still snarling defiance at his opponent as Surtr sneers down at him.

"We should have ripped you apart, too!" Odin calls to get his attention, raising Gungnir. "Though I'm not sure even my brothers and I could make anything worthwhile from your carcass. At least that frozen moron was good building materials."

"Borson." Surtr rumbles in response, a grin shining through his jungle of a beard. "I did not know you were masochistic, or suicidal. Coming here?"

"Took the words right out of my mouth-as I'm sure nobody has ever told you." Odin smiles back. "Do you think yourself my better?"

"I think you are no longer fated to die in the wolf's jaws. There is no destiny anymore, One-Eye!"

The giants lunges, and Odin lets him swing, raising Gungnir like a quarterstaff to block.

It does not pierce the spear, as Surtr realises, despite the shockwaves and flames unleashed by the blow turning Yggdrassil, all the words on its roots, trunks and branches and the stars in its leaves to nothing.

Smile widening, Odin speaks the name of time backwards, and all is restored. Enforced by the Allfather's will, this will be unremembered by any walking or climbing the world ash. No one, but Surtr, for Odin intends to anger the giant, just as his nonsensical slaughter has angered him.

"No!" Surtr growls, pouring his will into his blade, stoking the flames until they are hotter than all the stars in the mundane universe put together. "You cannot bring it back! I have burned it!"

"I think you'll notice...I just have." Odin pushes the blade aside with one gauntleted hand, sending Surtr sprawling across his blazing domain. "Why so surprised, giant? You burn the tree to nothing, yes-in Ragnarok. But I have been told recently that...there is no destiny."

Surtr roars in rage, but only briefly, before Odin closes the distance, throttling him with one hand. "Be silent! I have lost face before the other pantheons twice-once when Thor lost his temper, once when I humbled myself by allowing the taskforces free reign to walk my Realms. And you strike them down because...what? It's the first time you feel unburdened? You have been polishing your sword so long it has become tedious, and you want to draw attention to yourself?"

Surtr cannot answer with the Allfather's hand crushing his throat. Odin does not want him to. Glancing at the burned corpses and Heracles' remains, everything is clear. He will send the former to their Lord, preachy hypocritical bastard that he is, and the latter to his perverse lout of a father. It would not do to deprive Olympus of another incestuous fool.

Surtr is far denser than any natural material on Earth, and heavier than any star. This does not stop Odin from throwing him out of Muspellheim, up Yggdrasil's trunk, past its branches and leaves, and past the eagle who now has no rival. Veorfolnir startles between his living perch's eyes as the Allfather and his foe pass by, far faster than light. Odin has outpaced Surtr's flight, floating on nothing above Yggdrasil's tip to catch Surtr as he reaches the apex of the throw. One of Odin's arms is wrapped tight around the giant's neck, the difference in size rendered meaningless by his powers, and the other around Surtr's wrist, holding his arm extended and his power shackled so that he cannot use his sword.

"Do you think Frey will be jealous?" Odin growls, teeth bared in a wolfish grin. "You even burned down the tree...he'll feel like I'm stealing his role!"

With a hateful roar and a burst of strength that shatters his body, Surtr frees himself, spinning to face Odin and bringing his sword down on the Allfather's head. Odin raises Gungnir, its tip clashing with the sword's flaming edge, and shattering it, the void shrieking as it closes for Surtr's grimacing face. It pierces his flesh and skull and brain, bursting out of the back of his head, but Odin is not unmarked. A shard, still flaming, leaps at his eye, burying itself deep within it.

Even as it burns, hotter than anything in the universe, Odin smiles, gripped by a rage fiercer than any since...ha. He cannot remember. He will have to ask Munin.

"You will die, Borson!" Surtr screams with the last of his strength as he falls down into Ginnungagap, steaming blood forming a curtain around and above him. "And when you choke on your ashen tears, you will wish you have died like your bitch of a son!"

Odin smirks, until the end of the taunt. With a thought command, his ravens blur over Yggdrasil. He not know how Surtr knew about Thor's fate-perhaps the Black God shared a plan with him, and he was merely expecting it-, but by the time Hugin croaks sadly in his ear, Thor is dead. Tyr, too, a braver warrior than he had ever had a right to ask for. And...his blood brother's little monsters, as well.

"No fate, indeed." Odin snarls, his godly sight searching Ginnungagap without the need for eyes. He is not sure if he could take the Black God-it has killed Fenrir, whether by surprise or fairly. Could Odin have done the same? Perhaps. He could have pushed himself far past his limits with his runes, but, during Ragnarok, fate would have done the same to the wolf, so he would still die.

But fate...is no more.

"I will not be the one choking on ashen tears." The Allfather muses to himself, a wisp of a smile twisting the corner of his scarred lips. He has found what he was looking for, far past his Realms. It is unsure and formless, without its anchor. Odin does not give that back to it-he does not want to be an accomplice to whatever it may do once returned-but he helps. Just a small flicker of runic light, a beacon, a lure, pointing towards the Black God who crippled it.

An old monster looks across endless darkness, and smiles. And, though it has no face, Nacht smiles back, and promises pain and horror, as it always has.

***
"Grandfather! Where are..." It is Magni who meets him as he strides back into Asgard, after this phase of the war(against what, Odin wonders? Perhaps chaos itself)ends, and a false peace descends. His grandson trails off at his eyeless face, but his expression, he knows, hurts far more.

As Modi and Vidar gather around him, and so many citizens watch from their windows and doorframes, Odin can only think how Freya will take the news. Sif, he knows, will be...

No matter. He has always been able to harden his heart.

"Split them however you wish." Odin says hollowly, putting Thor's panoply in Magni's hands and striding past him as Vidar calls for him to return, and Magni and Modi throw their heads back and wail-roar? He is tired, so tired...he cannot tell anymore-in grief and disbelief. Grasping his ravens in both hands, Odin tightens his grip, barks the harsh spell he has put together over the return trip, and snaps their necks.

Knowledge flows into his mind, no longer filtered and limited by the bond between master and familiars. Already, he knows the whereabouts of his sons' lingering souls, and how to make them coherent, so that their shades may return, at least in Asgard.

Fate is gone. The old ends are no more. And, Odin swears as his raven's eyes fill his sockets, and their insight and memories fill his mind, they will never be caught blind again.

Empty Tomb, Prologue

***
"Why not him?" I had suggested, flicking my knife at the black one.

As always, Hogge had skulked deeper into the shadows of his pen, eyes flashing yellow above gleaming tusks. His piggish face had somehow seemed to be grinning mockingly.

'Look at me, how scared I'm pretending to be.'

Pops had shook his head. "There are others, David."

"That one is unnatural. Hell, he's been around since my childhood. What the hell kind of pig lives that long? Besides the magical ones you insist he's not."

"I do that because Hogge is not a magical pig."

I had sighed. One day, we were going to adress the swine in the yard.

But, clearly, not today. Tempted as I was to just look at him with Mimir's sight, and see whatever pops was being oblique about.

Maybe I'd finally find out my father's dark secret. All weirdos needed a good parent with a dark secret, right? The town librarian had said so while we were discussing novels, and dammit, she might have been a crazy cat lady(as in, a werecat who believed she was human), but she was trustworthy.

No mud touched pops' faintly-glowing rubbers boots as he paced through the muck, orange flames streaming from his open palm and turning the slaughtered pig's skin a rich brown. Mihai had offered to do it himself, but pops had declined, claiming the aetherically-sensitive would taste his magic's residue while we were eating, and faithcraft was faster than a burner. The old man wore a pair of thick grey pants-a gift from a retired friend, who'd worked at the car factory in Mioveni-and a black jacket he didn't need to protect him from the cold. On the back, a golden image of Christ wept red tears, smiling plaintively with his arms outstretched. 'DO NOT' was written above the Redeemer, and 'CROSS ME AGAIN' beneath.

A tasteless joke, in my opinion. But then, pops often received dubious 'gifts' from his parishioners who wanted to see if they could rattle old Father Silva, or shake his faith. He kept them to prove they did not.

I leaned against the wall next to the cellar door, one hand toying with my new cross. Pops had forged it after Chernobog had turned the last one to dust during the Headhunt. In truth, I wasn't wearing it, because it would have made me sink through the concrete. Instead, I was shaping the air around it, creating a supernaturally-strong current, that, while small, could still keep it floating a few millimetres above my skin, preventing the thousand-ton cross from cratering the ground. The weight had been a suggestion of Rivka Peretz during a particularly frustrating sparring session. The ghoul had kept coming at me, however many times I'd reduced her to stray atoms, after running out of curses and taunts, we'd started talking.

"God," I had sighed, holding her above the ring in a sphere of spinning air. "I wish I had something to just...pin down angry, unstoppable midgets like you with."

"Watch the low blows, Silva!" Rivka had said, before performing a gesture that I was sure wasn't encouraged by the Tanakh, or even common manners. "Why don't you just ask your daddy to make you another eyesore paperweight, if you want to pin me down so much?"

A comment I hadn't replied to, not even jokingly. I had a girlfriend now, for the first time in over a decade.

And so, the second cross. Still made of iron and silver, though I wasn't sure if pops had simply made a shitton of the materials and compressed it, or just made the cross heavy despite it not physically massing much. It also had bladed edges, just like the first one.

Mia squatted next to me, or maybe she was kneeling. With zmeu legs jointing backwards, they were pretty much the same thing. Even like this, her head was still above my waist, but I'd gotten used to the height difference, while she was using the height difference.

"Sure you don't want me to lend a breath, Costi?" My girlfriend asked, arms folded across her thighs as her tails fiddled with the strings on her red hoodie.

"Thank you, my dear." Pops waved her off. "But your flame's power would linger on the meat, just like Mihai's magic. It's...almost done, anyway..."

Mia had grown close enough to my father since the beginning of our relationship that she refrained from cracking a joke about the meat, just smiling. She knew he found her humour 'quite energetic', but not really his type. In turn, she held her tongue around him, and opened up around me.

She didn't refrain from jokes, either.

When pops was done, Andrei approached the pig, boots making the tarp it was on creak. The were was wearing a thick black longcoat over a dark green shirt and blue pants; the coat was a holdover from his Securist days, proof against silver blades and so heavy it would have broken a human's spine. His calloused hands became the paws of his beast form, fur running up to his elbows and filling his sleeves. He drew a claw the size of my index finger across the pig's back, opening it up like an envelope. Then, he wisely jumped back, clearing over a dozen metres and landing in the back of the garden, and I joined him an instant later. Petru and Pavel were tied to one of the apple trees, just a few metres away from him, and both dogs growled as he touched down. Being moved from their usual places was usually great, especially when pops took their leashes off, but the presence of strangers annoyed them.

Andrei, like my other friends, came by when pops and I were away, to feed the dogs, the 'neighbours' cats' that seemed to live with pops, and water the plants. This didn't stop the dogs from barking their lungs out whenever they smelled the werebear. Maybe they just sensed the animal in him, and couldn't stand it. He loved them, and, since most of his work consisted of working as security for bored rich people or tearing up people in the supernatural fighting circuit, sometimes along Lucian, he had a lot of free time. So, he had spent a lot of time with the dogs. They just didn't like him.

Mia stood up, dusting off her tights as Lucian and his brothers dropped out off the sky, making us jump into the air. Both Lucas and Aaron flipped before landing, shrinking in size until they were hardly bigger than their younger brother. We didn't really have enough space for Aaron, so...

"I wanted to help with the guts." Andrei wasn't pouting. He just sounded like it.

"Don't woooory," Mihai smirked, slouching against the fence. "If you want to gut a pig so much, just get in trouble with a cop."

"Ha, ha." Bianca smiled sarcastically, then quickly covered it with one hand in mock-emabrrassment.

"That was pretty bad, man." Alex said quietly, rubbing his hands together out of reflex. He hadn't felt anything since his death, but he still acted human, even shaping his ectoplasm into winter clothes. In fact, the ghost's bluish-white face was barely visible-only his eyes were, really- under his thick 'woolen' hat and scarf.

"Agreed." Andrei replied. "Even by my standards. And I love making bad jokes-just look at David."

"Hey!" I spread my arms in disbelief.

"Do accidental jokes count?" Alex adjusted his scarf, sounding thoughtful.

"I'm a rapper, I swear." I turned away dramatically, fist clenched. "Catching strays for no reason..."

"What'd your name be, Lil' Moody?" Bianca raised her eyebrows, giggling.

"Stick around until evening, and maybe you'll find out. Mia and I are going caroling." Pops couldn't come. He was looking for a new verger, wanting the church to be fully-staffed until Chirstmas, for reasons he hadn't shared. Over the decades, pops had sometimes had helped, but they either died or quit, and he could handle almost all duties himself, between his enthusiasm and faithcraft.

"Ah..." The iela twirled a blonde curl around her index finger, smiling sheepishly. "Can't. I'm singing at several senior centres in Bucharest tonight. Next week, too...well, until after New Year's Eve, really."

"If you have to sing for old people, you'd rather be paid, eh?" I asked, nodding sagely. Understandable, understandable.

"Gotta stay on my grind." She flexed a slim arm that could have flattened a car, grinning.

"And she's not singing for them!" Lucian called out to us, turning to look over his shoulder, mouth and moustache red and dripping. "She's singing at them. Bia only sings for me."

Well, it was really nice that their tempers had aligned enough for them to be together for the holidays.

"He hasn't looked like that since my last period." The iela whispered theatrically, leaning towards me.

"Oi, don't eat while you're working, you arse!" Andrei yelled. "If you can't be serious, get here and I'll take your place."

"Let me show you where to shove that suggestion-" Lucas smacked his brother upside the head before he could demonstrate.

"Sooo..." Mihai stuck his hands into the pockets of his green tracksuit. "Caroling? I'd come too, but the girls are coming back tonight from Adi's mom, and I wanna greet them."

"Making sure your mother-in-law hasn't opened their eyes about you?" Alex rasped, eyes glinting.

"What's that supposed to mean, Gasper the Unfriendly Ghost?"

"Hey." Bianca turned to me. "Heard there'll be a lots of bears and goats this year."

"Bah! Those are for young men. Besides, only the two of them?" Andrei said, waving a hand dismissively.

"Oh, I don't know." I said, looking him up and down. "If you come with us, I think we'll be able to go with the bear..."

"Hilarious." Mr. 'I love bad jokes' bared teeth that had become fangs in dry amusement. "You need a costume for that, smartarse."

"But if you go hybrid, you'll be so ugly people will be convinced you're costumed!" I insisted. "I know that's unusual, but bear with me..."

We bantered for a bit more, as the morning sun rose higher, and Mia and the zmeu brothers finished their agreed-upon part, the former gathering the guts and jerking her head at Bianca for the iela to come help clean them.

The rest of the day was so blissfully normal, I should have known something bad was coming. After the pig's alms, the zmei brothers hung around a bit more, to help make the sausages(Aaron insisted it helped with his blood pressure, which I think was a first time for pork), then left for their country. Their parents had reunited for the first time in decades-not for Christmas, as their father didn't celebrate it, and their mother didn't understand most aspects of our reality, but through sheer coincidence-and, going by their excited apprehension, they really wanted to capitalise on this.

This was the beginning of what should have been a time of joy and charity.

Let me tell you, instead, of the Fright Before Christmas.

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.