On another Saturday I might have been out delivering my respects to the Singaporean police force through indirect and entertaining methods. Today, I dangled my legs off the side of a maintenance scaffold on the side of an Australian skyscraper.

It gave me a good view of the wall of black glass cutting through the edge of the central business district one block away and the clamour below it. From this viewpoint, several thousand people had gathered to deposit flowers and other memorabilia at the base of the cube, despite earlier police efforts to establish an evacuation perimeter. The structure was massive enough it would take the average person several hours to walk around it, though part of that could be put down to the fact it sat at a diagonal angle to the city planning code. Also to the substantial piles of surrounding rubble.

An army of drones hovered in the sky to the tune of almost as many helicopter pilots shaking their fists at them. Cameras glinted from every second window. At street level, a growing gathering of protesters half-heartedly rioted around the corner from the memorial crowd, the two groups keeping their distance in impulsive unspoken consideration. A third group mainly comprised of boats hovered in distant harbour waters as the local coast guard patrolled closer ground.

It was a tension mirrored on land. Police HQ had been squished, so the military were taking their turn. Armed forces in distinctive khaki stood warily over the vigil, while their counterparts quashed scuffles among the protestors. No shots had been fired, and the skirmishers seemed more dutiful than practical; consummating a perceived obligation to punish whatever was closest in the absence of a known enemy.

Grace had gotten in the first word, claiming divine credit before even Providence’s Marketing department. Giant black lumps hardly comprised the fiery conflagration the church had been expecting, but if you believed social media, it was already finding ways to claim they’d been the correct interpretation all along. The timing of his announcement made it harder for the skeptics to dismiss the claim’s potential validity, though so far only the less reputable outlets had drawn attention to it. Much of the local media was also simply gone, wiped out by cube.

In addition to God’s retribution, other theories included aliens, simulations, covert government strikes, and – hilariously – explosive fungus. With the exception of the fungus, the one detail the theories shared was speculation on the contents of the cubes, which probably explained the geophysical imaging equipment being lowered down by helicopter.

It wasn’t enough for them to just be giant rocks, apparently. No, they had to be Deliveries. Ones with a deeper purpose for humanity than mere shrapnel of war.

I snapped back to attention as a woman stepped out of thin air onto the scaffold – and lurched forward. Her long dress, far too hot for the summer, even at sunrise, billowed around her as the tenuous platform teetered precariously downwards. One gloved hand crushed a dent in its metal railing as its fingers spasmed. The other did not.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Hel demanded, recovering quickly, though one hand remained firmly on the rail. In addition to the dress, she wore an asymmetric headpiece of intricate blue filigree extending into a skullcap trailing chains like hair. One of her public outfits. This one made her look as punk as Eris, but still with better posture.

In response, I shifted into my well-worn shape as Sørine. “What a welcome,” I said with a grin. “Did you miss me?”

My daughter’s jaw dropped open, but only for a second. “How do I know you’re really her?”

“I don’t know,” I said, not getting up from my perch. “Depends how many embarrassing childhood stories you want me to force you to remember. Also, I found Janus. Both of him, actually. And Fenrisúlfr.”

Hel gave me a sidelong glance from her blue eye before picking her way across the scaffold and lowering her body next to mine, trapping her skirt between her knees. “I thought I’d lost you. They told us you’d been demoted. But instead –” She waved her healthy arm in my general direction. “How long have you been hiding this, and where can I get some?”

“Not long, and the moon. And I’d have thought you’d be at least a little more curious about Fenrir.”

“I am. But there’s a lot to process, here.” She took a long glance at the cube occupying pride of place in the nearby scenery. “A lot. Did you –”

“No.”

“Oh,” she said, and hesitated, letting her head and shoulders hang out over the lower bar. “Two million lives, that’s the latest estimate. And when it happened, I didn’t feel a thing. Found out the same way most others did – via company email. What kind of death goddess is such a failure they can’t even sense a cataclysm of this scale?”

I didn’t answer. Hel didn’t need me to tell her it wasn’t her fault. Even if she’d retained her powers, I wasn’t sure it would have made a practical difference. Her realm had been taken from her long ago. Her life’s work, quashed. She’d grown up in a prison from almost the beginning and never truly left.

But she still had me.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said instead. “The rate things are going, I might have only delayed my consequences. You should know I’m impersonating Odin.”

My daughter glanced at me sharply. “How?”

I paused. We were very close to pact territory. There were lies I could give providing neat explanations, of course. But of all the people I could ever lead astray, Hel deserved it the least. If life had a balance sheet, I owed her more than anyone else on it, alive or dead. Most people did, they just didn’t realise it. The dead and the living. The problem was that Hel didn’t realise it either, and telling her was a proven exercise in futility. The kind with magically enforced chains attached.

“A lot can happen under the cover of chaos,” I replied, keeping it vague. “The important part is that he won’t be coming back. He had it coming, and it’s finally done.”

“You’re serious.” Hel squinted at me, analysing my face. “Then all of this was tied up in that? What did you do?”

“I told you, this wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Tez. I mean, look at that thing. He’s practically signed his name all over it.”

“Yes, the email did mention his… promotion, along with the departmental changes.” She held out a pale hand and squeezed my wrist. “But if Odin’s gone, and you’re in charge, you can make the best of it. Use it to change things. Even if it only starts with your own department. Mum, if you play it safe, this could be the difference we’ve all waited for. Work on the other executives and the managers. If things are changing, this is our chance to direct them into the shape we want to see.”

Her speech reminded me of my own advice to Grace earlier in the week, and I smiled a little. “I doubt I have that much time,” I remarked. “Which is why I need you to tell me about Janus.”

Hel stiffened. Her hand withdrew. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Of course not,” I scoffed. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask, would I?”

She looked away, off towards the cube. A second helicopter had landed on its surface, where people in high visibility gear were piling out to help with the setup of the surveying equipment. One appeared to be holding up a Geiger counter. “I never expected it to come to much,” she said. “As long shots go, it’s up there.” She sighed. “I need to know I can trust you. I love you, but I’m not prepared to turn my back on my cause again. You asked too much already.”

“I know,” I said as my gut wrenched. “And I don’t plan on asking it of you again. This is different. We’re on the same side. We have always been on the same side.”

“No,” Hel disagreed. “We haven’t. Every day that goes past, I regret the decision I made to follow you. I still blame you for the mess we’re in. Just like I blame myself. We had our chance to stop Providence, and we blew it. But in spite of it all, you’re still... you. You did almost everything else right, and I’m grateful for it. But you just can’t admit you made a mistake.”

All I had to do was say the words. Easy. But it hadn’t been one. “We all make mistakes,” I evaded. “And Janus’ offshoot is off spouting proclamations about the end of the world, so I figure whatever you and his other bit have planned, it’s probably important. I have Odin’s resources at my fingertips. Let me help.”

I watched her face twist. It was too good an offer to turn down, and she knew it. “You really killed Odin?”

“Better. He’s out of resurrection range.”

“So no interrogation. Good. I still worry that as long as he has his powers, conscious or no, he’ll be one step ahead.”

“Not unreasonable,” I confessed. “I’ve still got to figure out what to do with the leftovers.”

“Alright,” Hel said, and let out a shaky breath. “We’ll see if it sticks. I don’t want to lose you again. As for Janus, it’s an old story. I was part of his transfer team, back when he was still being held in Tartarus. It was right after the last uprising. They wanted independent consultants with no prior connections. They promised my powers back if I did it, and like a fool I believed them. Of course I said yes.”

I hadn’t been there at the time, already on the run, but I could imagine it well. When I’d come to break her out of Niflheim, my young daughter had turned me down. Even as a child – or perhaps because of it – she’d been appalled by the aeons of neglect endured by the dead, an issue I’d given barely a thought in all my seventy years. I’d listened, stunned, as she’d explained in detail how she could make it better, using her powers to grow food, beauty and shelter even if half of it ended up wilted and decayed. Niflheim was all wilted and decayed, and for once, no one could deride her for making things worse.

Especially since no one else had bothered to try.

Thus schooled by my expressive offspring, rejected by Aesir and pitied by jötnar, I’d rocked back on my heels, examined her balled fists and determined expression, and understood she was better than all of them. The decision wasn’t mine to make.

And so Hel had stayed.

Niflheim wasn’t the kind of place you could visit often, even back in the days of the Bifrost. The garbage chute for souls and other undesirables, it was supposed to be forgotten. So many pantheons had them; places to rot for unsuitable crops. When you went, it was supposed to be one-way.

Ragnarok entered the primary timeline and I’d quit my service to Odin in one of my more spectacular moments, limiting my access further. My disguises had become cleverer, my excuses more inventive, but there was only so frequently I could push it.

True to her word, Hel transformed Niflheim, even in name. The climate never improved, but the framework became kinder. Structures rose up in the formerly barren plains, grown from my daughter’s transformations. A strange mix of ordered and warped, the latter loved by their residents as much as the former. Along with her reputation, Hel’s affinities grew in ways I’d never expected, her connection to souls rivalling any other contender in the pantheon. The fog lifted from her people’s minds even as it remained in the atmosphere, and the dead began to live.

But Helheim needed her in it. When Providence had taken over, stripped her powers, the realm reverted to its former self. Dead wandered from their houses, cold and confused, their fingers turning to smoke and whispers. Lacking materials for repair, the buildings fell into ruin. Hel had watched her vast empire crumble – again – leaving Valhalla’s cruel beauty unchallenged once more.

“Janus was supposed to remain unconscious throughout the transition,” Hel continued. “But at the border between life and death, he revived.”

“Place of power,” I surmised.

“Yes. None of the others saw it. They completed their crossing and the door closed behind them. Janus shifted the parameters the instant they were gone. But he’s not the only one strong in halfway houses, particularly dimensional ones, and I still had his movements under my control. I couldn’t reopen the border and he couldn’t escape without me. Stalemate.”

“So what then?”

“We talked. He begged me to release him, and I told him why it wasn’t an option. But Providence was our shared enemy, and we tried to work out a plan.”

“And?”

She shook her head, setting the chains on her mask clinking together. “We’re still here, aren’t we? But I could see he was missing a piece of himself, and he entrusted me with its location. Said if I wasn’t going to help him now, I could help him later. Free his fourth face, who could do the rest. In return, he’d fix the afterlife for me. I thought he was talking about Niflheim. Recently, I’m not so sure.”

I frowned. “You think he meant the void? He can’t have seen that far ahead.”

“You’d think. We didn’t even have access to it back then. Egress was limited to Providence’s inner circle. I told him that. The chance of me being able to reach his soulmate was next to none. It would have been difficult even with my freedom. But he said he’d seen it. At the end.”

“So when you told me its location earlier –”

Hel’s face darkened, undercut by anger hot enough to fry an egg on. “I can’t keep doing this,” she said. “I’m exhausted and furious. Each day that passes, I ask myself why I still bother keeping it together, and for who, and I wonder if demotion would really be that much worse. There have always been days I’ve wanted to watch it all burn. It’s just that now those days are all of them.”

She reached up, twisting her mask off with practiced ease, and faced me with a permanently contorted grimace. “I was working myself up to it,” she said, gold eye leaking water of the same colour. “Killing myself. Perhaps more. I think I could accomplish it, you know. Because if I didn’t, it was only a matter of time before I did something unwise.”

They were the last words I’d expected to hear, but they made all the sense in the world. “Do you really want to wait out infinity in the void?” I asked, my tone serious.

“Of course not. And –” she stroked the mask, “– I won’t, now. We’re the only ones left. They took Jörm, they took Fenrir, they destroyed one of my parents. When they told me about you, I thought they’d finally gotten the other. Screw Janus, and screw all of them. I’m this close to being done.”

A rumble shook below in the distance, and I tore my eyes away from Hel in time to witness a severed skyscraper fold like a deck of cards from the top down, tiny people scattering at full pelt out of the disaster radius. A flash of blue moved in my peripheral vision, and I managed to catch a glimpse of the mask as it fell to its certain doom.

Hel scrunched her empty fingers. “Or at least I was. Turns out we were all taken in by a lie. And that maybe I just had to wait a little longer.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you did,” I acknowledged. “Things are changing. I expect they’ll change more.”

Hel didn’t respond immediately. We watched the remainder of the building collapse to a slightly delayed soundtrack of rolling reverberation and unwilling audience participation. Add a few layers of slowly detuning distortion and background sirens and it would be a fitting theme for the day.

“You insinuated we have Janus,” Hel announced eventually. “Together with Odin’s resources, that should be enough. We could build a new afterlife, keep it under the table. It’ll be hard without Yggdrasil, but –”

“Funny you should mention that,” I remarked, shifting form to a sturdier build as I lunged to my feet. I held a hand out to Hel and she pulled herself up with me, clasping the rail tightly. “There’s someone I think can help you with that side of things. And you’re well overdue for a talk.”