I reached for the gun too late to stop Hera claiming it first. It shimmered in her hand, becoming a white glove. She slipped it over her fingers and crouched to examine the small wooly ovine that was my housemate.

Tru struggled, legs scrabbling in all directions, as Providence’s second-in-command turned up the hoof bearing his rune mark. She dropped it and rose again a moment later, turning to Colstee in accusation. “This isn’t Ares’ work. Explain.”

“He had assistance, ma’am. That man and an Indian woman in a sari.”

I searched the room for Durga, creating more eyes for the task until I had every direction covered. Nothing.

“Enlightening.” Hera’s voice was clipped. “No one else?”

“None.”

“The woman wasn’t missing an eye?”

“When I last saw her, she was missing most things.”

“One of which could have been an eye.”

“Not originally. She was right here a moment ago.”

Hera’s gaze turned slowly back to Tru, who stared at me with pleading violet-tinged eyes. I crouched and laid a hand on his head, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

“You’re to immediately annul the purchase,” the CFO addressed Colstee. She nodded to the video feeds crowding the office. “Monitor the situation. Suppress media on the matter until we give you an official line. We’ll have the stock markets report it as a glitch in their automation.”

“Ah… of course. Right away. And what about Ares?”

Hera swung back to face the sweating billionaire. “That’s Lord Ares to you,” she incised.

“My mistake. I thought –”

“You don’t need to think. You follow orders. Do that, and I may well be inclined to forgive this disgrace of an incident. We’re lucky Ares, or whoever finds it amusing to impersonate him, shot themselves in the foot by hiding a tree in a forest. Despite the forest being in this case a series of synchronised detonations.”

“Detonations, ma’am? Have there been more Deliveries?”

“This is multi-fronted reputational sabotage. He thinks playing the PR game will win him the war, as if there was still one to fight. As if what we do is politics.”

The muscles in Colstee’s jaw twitched in the manner of someone suppressing a comment hazardous to their continued survivability.

“I shall commission an emergency task force to sort out this and the other messes,” Hera continued. “Those responsible will have their heads roll, and then more stringent ongoing measures will need to apply. Incentives must become disincentives. Leniency a thing of the past. It is the only way people will learn. Legba will need to make that clear in his speech. I don’t believe it’s started. If there must be change, dissidents are in need of reminding it is not for their advantage.”

It hadn’t started, but Grace had finally stepped up to the podium at the top of the basilica, prompted by a nudge from Legba. The lack of the moon, sliver though it had been, made the spotlights seem to shine down all the brighter. It was hard to remember it was technically supposed to be the middle of the afternoon.

The rest of us crammed uncomfortably between the temporary event rigging, which felt like flimsy aluminium rushed through setup with none of the Vatican’s usual disregard for expense. I felt an elbow at my side and glanced over to Grace’s chauffeur wedged between Legba and I with no idea of the danger he was in. “So what’s your responsibility, then?” he asked.

I looked from Hera to Legba to Enki still imparting nuggets of ominousness passing for wisdom to Lucy, and threw up my hands in capitulation. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Being a good audience member, of course,” said Legba, throwing an arm around both of our shoulders. He gave it a squeeze. “Now let’s pay attention. Wouldn’t want to miss the history.”

On stage, Grace lifted the microphone from its flimsy stand, sending a mild ‘thump’ echoing through the piazza’s extensive speaker setup. A wave of silence descended upon the crowd, spreading out from the epicentre in a delayed ripple. Grace cleared his throat, shooting a querying glance at Legba.

The god waved an impatient hand. “As planned.”

Turning back to the microphone, the pope raised a single hand at the crowd. It felt like the piazza was holding its collective breath as Grace bestowed on it a smile completely at odds with his actual personality. An autoprompter waited at the fore of the scaffolding, giving lie to the illusion adlibbing was all just part of normal pope activities.

“Brothers, sisters and dear friends,” Grace began. “I never imagined we would be where we are here today.”

“Bullshit,” muttered the chauffeur under his breath among a surprising amount of underlying resentment. Legba gave the man a consolatory pat on the shoulder.

I missed the next part of Grace’s platitudinous delivery. The ring of light encircling Enki was definitely constricting, even as I tried to keep a close eye on Hera’s more immediate threat. But it was taking too long; Lucy still hadn’t made the shot. If it was a ploy to stall for time, he was falling for it. And I couldn’t communicate without Legba overhearing me directly.

I tried nudging Vince again, gesturing to the gun in Lucy’s hand, then at the devil himself.

“I could just resurrect them,” Legba remarked happily. “If I wanted. Which maybe I do. Or maybe not. Either way, probably a good idea to keep me in good spirits, I’d say.”

He could read even that interaction? Body language was still language, I supposed. Damn place of power. I wanted to riposte with a jab about eating his limbs and face off while leaving the vitals intact, but I’d spent far too long around Odin not to recognise someone fishing for enemy capabilities. And I was the enemy, I confirmed with sudden explicit clarity, all of my antagonist’s intentional ambiguity aside. It was expected, of course. It was the reason I was here. What I didn’t understand was the why, other than the obvious.

“Sure, Legba,” I said, matching his tone with a pasted smile. “Insulting you would only circulate pheromones into the little provocateur receptors busy fortifying your self-worth. It’s like the Korean DMZ in there, except I’m not sure any of the propaganda’s making it through to the other side.”

As predicted, it bounced right off.

“Resurrect who?” asked the chauffeur, ignoring the interim. “Common sense and rationality?”

“Never existed,” said Legba.

“This is its funeral pyre,” I said at the same time.

In Philadelphia, as Colstee, on the edge of barely holding it together, scurried back to her desk, Hera turned towards the sound of clattering in the quiet, as the first sheep – the presumable unfortunate PA – scrabbled at the controls for the office elevator, jumping clumsily for the call button. I watched as it transformed again into an ornamental bonsai, falling neatly to the ground with a short thud. I felt the soul depart.

Tru was staying very still under my hand.

I didn’t think Hera realised some of her allies were gone. This was damage control mode in full force; options being considered and steps being planned. She was still asking questions and looking for answers. If she’d found them, the kid gloves would have come off. Literal, in Tru’s case.

“Only days ago, thousands of priceless lives perished at terrorist hands in a depraved act of evil. An act against the Church, and against the very nature of our Lord God,” said Grace. His face also beamed back at me from Colstee’s projected monitors on a one-second delay.

The billionaire herself typed furiously away at her machine. “I’m requesting reversal; proving the takeover false will be easy when all parties agree, even though the documentation we never saw is somehow all there. But ma’am –” she hesitated, “– we might not have to. The market’s in freefall. Investors are selling like there’s no tomorrow. Probably because that idiot over in Italy told them there won’t actually be one. Except gold, predictably, plus guns, agriculture and every listed supplier of toilet paper.”

Hera raised her eyes to the ceiling. “And I suppose they think they can deflect heaven’s omnipotence with armour-plated vehicles and cowering in bunkers.”

“And toilet paper.”

“It’s pathetic. Putting aside the fact the only tool required is obedience to the correct allegiance.”

Colstee looked up from the monitor, and fine lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Will there be an apocalypse?”

“Why, yes, that perfectly explains my continued interest in maintaining stability in already volatile mortal institutions. To think. A real prodigy, they said.”

“Well,” Colstee replied, jawline twitching, “there’s now a trading halt. Freeze applies for the rest of the day at least. We can’t annul immediately, but they also can’t set in purchases in stone. Extra time only benefits us.”

“For your sake, I –”

The rest of the phrase ended in a garbled slur, primarily from the unexpected knife extruding from the goddess’ throat. Its pointed tip glinted silver-green adamantine, obscured by surprisingly little blood.

Hera’s eyes swivelled sideways, the only part of her that moved. They didn’t make it far enough to spot the collection of arms behind her, one of which still extended forwards, fingertips outstretched from the fling of a dagger. In the middle of the clump, less crowded compared to minutes earlier, I made out a flash of red and something that might have been Durga’s face.

Just as quickly, she was gone.

Durga, you beautiful armoury, in multiple current senses of the word.

I expected Hera to reach up and pull out the Harpe, or what remained of it. She would recognise it, given Durga had handed in its clone only days earlier, not to mention the small fact of it killing Apollo. Quite the quality kill count it was racking up, just the way Hera liked prestige to feature in her life. But her arms remained paralysed at her sides. Severed spine. Injurious and disabling from inter-pantheon weapons, but not fatal. But a Greek divine weapon delivered more.

Albeit on a slight delay. The goddess of marriage swayed unsteadily on her feet, not quite tipping over. I saw the whites of her eyes. Furious, and almost, but not quite, relieved.

It was the kind of look people gave when they stopped holding back.

I scooped up the sheep in front of me and exerted my power over it, tucking it under an armpit where theoretical onlookers could see it floating like some kind of ambiguous ovine portent directed at late-stage capitalism.

And then the building collapsed.

Colstee went first, scattering in a shower of white petals. They didn’t make it to the floor before it disintegrated next, along with the walls, ceiling, fixtures and expensive furnishings in hundreds of thousands – millions, probably – of fragile leaves tossed among suddenly-exposed skies and the air currents passing through them. Feet plummeting out from underneath me, I looked down into a snarl of raging vegetation made up of several dozen floors of offices and livelihoods while Tru bleated under my arm.

Hera fell past me, knife still embedded in her throat. Her eyes locked on to the sheep before her body twisted and faced downwards, displaying the hilt lodged in her neck. The Harpe itself remained unchanged. Immune to transformation, perhaps, but I’d seen the CFO alter Yahweh’s godkillers even with their inbuilt touch of override. No. She knew the dangers. Disperse the weapon into a gas or liquid, maybe no one else would get their hands on it. But it was already inside her. It would seep through her blood, infect more thoroughly. Shifting to a larger solid and back to a smaller one might work, at the cost of more permanent damage in the process.

And none of it probably mattered now, anyway.

In that instant, I didn’t care what Tez had said; Hera wasn’t a shapeshifter. No matter how powerful the Harpe, she would have tried something. Grow a second head if she had to; it wasn’t like the Greeks were strangers to the concept of hydras.

So Tez had lied to me, and I didn’t know why. If he’d wanted to set us up for failure, he could have done it far more efficiently than this, and earlier, even allowing for the pact needing to come down first. Prophecy was unfair like that.

We plunged through showers of leaves that used to be people. It was hard to see past them; just glimpses of sky and colour. I lost sight of Hera. Torn souls blipped out around us at surprisingly staggered intervals as some struggled to hold on longer than others. None stayed for long, succumbing to the irresistible pull of the afterlife.

I moved into a glide, somewhere between bird and flying squirrel, aiming for the edge of the maelstrom. Important conversations were taking place near my other selves, but my mind was awash with its own questions about Tez.

Why, being the main one. Petty revenge for the promotion thing? Didn’t make sense; it still hurt the plan as a whole. Did he want to take over Providence for himself? Good luck forcing thousands of deities into line without any cooperative allies. Even the tyrant needed support, and plenty of it. Monarchs were only defined by the existence of subjects, after all. And those were rapidly diminishing in number.

I still hadn’t broken through to the other side of the leaves. I had to think like a seer. Something had been set on track because of that lie. I’d wanted to fight Hera. Would have, if not for Tez’s claims. I was the obvious foil to her abilities. She wasn’t a shapeshifter, and she couldn’t override me, or I’d be grasping at tree confetti instead of a sheep headbutting me in the armpit. Another lie.

He’d been angling to get me in Rome, or Durga in America, or one of us away from the other location. But why? The reasons looked good on the surface. We were winning. Mostly. The place of power on its own made a compelling argument to place me in Italy. Perhaps to hurt or perhaps to help. A selfish motivation, even some kind of insane allegiance with Legba, would make more sense. Because if his reasons were good, it shouldn’t have hurt to tell them.

Unless he still didn’t trust me, after everything.

Once I’d thought it, the idea wouldn’t go away. A phantom hollow formed around it, almost as bad as the one Odin had bored in my chest. For a few fleeting hours, I’d actually believed things might have finally changed; that time really could heal all wounds despite centuries of evidence to the contrary. Stupid. Stupid. Wishful thinking had clouded my judgement, and now events were slipping away in directions I couldn’t follow. Illusions of trust. Platitudes to keep me in line for purposes of mutual benefit. No doubt much was derived from genuine care and respect. You could love a wild animal even as you erected fences to keep it off your property.

But there was nothing to be done. Wallowing was useless when no one would hear, and I’d howled all my screams out a long time ago. Exhausted every option one by one, failure after failure, until at last coming to focus on what I could change, which had to be enough. If we won – which was still probable despite Legba’s insufferable gloating – I could reclaim almost everything.

Elsewhere, feet solidly on the basilica rooftop, I glanced up at the Roman skies above me, not caring if Legba overheard. The cat was mostly out of the bag anyway. What are you playing at?

Tez, if it was indeed him, didn’t respond.

Perhaps I could find answers elsewhere. His exchange with Lucy done, Enki had his arms raised, bent at the elbows to protect his face. The golden circle was only centimetres away from constricting him in a more visceral sense. “Do me a favour, Lucifer.” His eyes dropped to the godkiller in the former’s hand. “Make it quick.”

Lucy nodded. He raised the weapon.

“No, don’t,” I cut in, sidestepping close enough to bat the gun to the side. Not expecting the interference, Lucifer resisted too late to keep me from nudging it off-course. “Tell him, Vince.”

“Loki argues in favour of slow and painful suffering, my lord.”

“Khuno’s rehab fees,” I muttered, keeping pressure on the weapon. “No. Something’s up over here, and I don’t like it. How much longer can you keep him contained? If he’s willing to talk, what does he know about Legba’s plans?”

“That’s unwise,” Lucy said, but he didn’t push back on the gun. “Quickly. What do you know about Legba’s ambitions?”

“Legba?” Enki repeated, confused. “He does what he wants, when he wants, as long as it doesn’t get him in trouble. I don’t think he’s interested in the top job, if that’s what you’re getting at. Yeah, he’s messed up in the head, but aren’t we all?”

“He was going to attack and save Rome. Was there anything else planned on the schedule?”

“No.” He winced. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m under a little time pressure here; I can’t really think past the part about my impending doom.”

Lucy made a small gesture with his free hand, and the golden cylinder stopped contracting. Enki expelled a sigh of relief and let his forehead slump forward to rest on the barrier of light. The sound of infernal choristers immediately started up again.

“So think,” Lucy said, over the broken music. He wiggled the godkiller at the trapped executive. “If you meant it when you wanted us to succeed, your insight could make the difference.”

“Give me time, and I can find out for certain,” Enki submitted, in the tone of predicted defeat. “Twenty minutes, tops.”

“Not a chance.”

“God, I don’t know. For a communicator, he talks a lot but doesn’t say much, if you know what I mean. He’s on Yahweh’s side for the benefits, but I’m fairly sure he hates him. Personal stuff. But if there’s anger there, he won’t show it. Repressed, maybe. The rest of us, I don’t know. Sometimes I think he sees us as characters as opposed to the actors behind them. Like we’re there on one level, just not the one that matters.”

“Could he be aiming for vengeance?” Lucy asked with a frown.

“Like you, you mean?” Enki’s lips quirked.

“It’s not about revenge.”

“I don’t think it’s about revenge,” I said, glancing at Legba.

“Sure,” Enki said dryly, speaking over my visitation. “I don’t know. If I had to guess, I don’t think he’s on anyone’s side, not even his own. In the end, we’re all tools forged in Providence’s crucible. We do our jobs, or we get put in the scrap. We do it until it consumes our lives and the rest dwindles to a flicker of what it could have once been. Until we can’t afford to recognise an alternative presenting itself, even when it lays itself with streamers at our feet. Fatigue, Lucifer. We care until we can bear it no longer.”

“But even then, you still care.” Lucy’s tone was soft.

“You do,” Enki agreed.

I should have come out of the leaf storm by now, and warped ahead to shortcut the process. More leaves. Whole thickets of them, spaced out by occasional thinner patches. I couldn’t see anything through them but sky.

There should have been traffic below. Car horns and raised voices, even on a weekend. I only heard the rustle of falling leaves.

I warped higher, below the rim of the winter clouds blanketing the city.

There was no city.

Leaves and petals fluttered to the ground as far as I could see. Animate and inanimate alike, all was gone. Everything not dirt, rock or river had been stripped bare, erased from existence in any form that mattered, all by the mere thought of a dying goddess. A rain of green and gentle petals, elegant and ephemeral, the essence of mortal lifespans captured in a matter of staggering fleeting instants.

It looked… exquisite. Even Tru had stopped struggling and stared wide-eyed at the executive’s final curtain call.

“…and I give you,” Grace’s words bludgeoned into the peaceful serenity, “with joyous tidings, the Second Son, the Returned, harbinger of hope, light, and our Lord’s promised eternity. In paradise, there is no fear, suffering or conflict. In our lord’s utopia, all will worship with one heart, one mind, one singular obedience. Free will was our lord’s test, and we, my friends, passed. But now the end of this era is upon us, heralding our collective transition into a new, glorious age. Be not afraid. Here, today, we are to be reunited with the love of our lord.”

It wasn’t a massive departure from the usual playbook, which had always been interpreted to various degrees of ominousness depending on the reader’s relationship with cognitive dissonance, but the passive-aggression wouldn’t have flown under the tyrant’s oversight. The speech’s tone reflected in the crowd, too; rumblings from the piazza grew louder, and not all of them positive.

I glanced sideways at Legba, gauging his reaction. The CMO hadn’t stopped grinning the entire time.

“It is my very great pleasure to present –” the pope paused, and pointed up at the sky, “– Lorenzo. Or as you will come to know him, our messiah.”

“Hey, Legba,” I remarked, as Lorenzo, in his bulky robe sandwich, materialised floating above the stage amid a blazing halo of radiance. Unearthly voices made from no human vocal cords resonated softly but clearly from all around us. I didn’t know how they were doing it and I didn’t care. Excited cries drifted up from the audience. “Lot of crossroads in Philadelphia, aren’t there?”

They were gone too, bitumen and concrete peeled off with the rest of it, leaving behind only barren earth and a leaf-blower’s nightmare.

A brief flicker of irritation passed over the god’s face, so smooth I almost missed it. Interesting.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Legba responded mildly.

“Lost me there, too,” said the chauffeur.

“Maybe you should take a look, then,” I returned, just as mildly.

“Good luck getting a signal,” said the chauffeur, with something approaching a snort in the back of his throat. “All the networks have been backed up for hours.”

“You can blame him for that,” I said, jerking a thumb at Legba. “Putting on a show and he can’t even get the message out. Wow. That was, like, your main job.”

Grace’s driver tore his eyes away from the puffy messiah to glance between us, clearly confused.

“All things in moderation, Loki,” Legba replied. “But since you insist.” He lifted a hand, snapping its thumb and middle finger.

The chauffeur froze, arms falling slack to his sides. He swayed and would have fallen over if I hadn’t moved to catch him mid-tumble. I patted at his cheek with the flat of one hand, which only resulted in provoking a low groan that rose steadily in volume and didn’t waver. The soundtrack composition of Providence’s marketing team drowned it out.

“What did you do?” I growled at Legba.

“Oh, gave him access to every failed comms being sent over the networks right now. At least they’re finding a home somewhere now, right?”

I took a deep breath and let it slowly out again. “He was friendly.”

Legba took a staggering step back and pouted, one hand held to his chest as if struck by an invisible bullet. “Funny words coming from someone who did the exact same thing on a much wider scale only minutes earlier. Seems to me you’re taking your grievances out on a lot of innocent people as opposed to this one guy who literally asked for it.”

“They’ll get over it,” I attested, halfway through spotting something not green in the decluttering leaf cascade half a world away. I headed over cautiously, though there wasn’t much I could do to disguise the approach of a floating sheep.

“So will he, if you play along.” He looked up to where Lorenzo was majestically descending from the moonless sky looking somewhere between thrilled and terrified. “And you’re wrong about the content delivery. We’re not using anything so gauche as technology. Completely wrong segment. Evidence shows our target personas distrust media, politics, business, and other people in general. Most of the mortal channels, really. They’re here expecting miracles. So that’s what we’ll give them. You’ll see.”

The not-green thing turned out to be not Hera, but Durga, standing thigh-deep in a groundswell of leaves. She had an almost normal number of arms now; only ten or so counting the injured one still limp at her side. She raised a justifiable eyebrow at Tru as we approached, which lowered when she noticed the distinctive fehu rune.

“She’s gone,” she announced.

“Alive or dead?” I prompted Tru to pass on. I deposited him onto the piling leaves, where he dropped halfway to the bottom and bleated until Durga picked him up.

“If she isn’t dead yet, she will be soon,” Durga responded, giving Tru a subconscious scratch under the chin. It seemed to calm the demon lord down slightly. She shook her head a little, as if trying to clear it of lingering unwanted irritants. “Sorry it took me so long. My mind wants to steer in countless directions, and I should be more used to that than most.” She gestured to the gem in her forehead glinting Kali-blue. “I think it’s because I’m not entirely whole.”

“Any ideas where she is?”

The warrior goddess shook her head. “Fallback point, contingency plan, but she won’t have Yahweh or the boss – er, Apollo – to bail her out. The office, maybe. There must be a valid entry point somewhere, or she couldn’t have gotten out.” She paused. “Of course, she could also be anywhere under these leaves.”

“Is it too late to keep her alive and disabled?” It would almost be preferable, I thought, eying Legba, who was doing a good job pretending he wasn’t listening to every word escaping my lips.

Durga looked at Tru as though he was insane. She gently put down the sheep.

I sighed and picked him up again. “Sooo,” I began, dragging out the syllable, “we have a Legba issue. He can hear everything I’ve been saying. Resurrection might be on the table.”

“Might?”

I shook my head helplessly before remembering she couldn’t see it, but gauging by her reaction, Tru managed to translate.

“It was a killing blow,” Durga said. “I can’t just take it back. She’s probably already dead, and if she does come back, I’ll fight her again. Next time, I won’t have as much of a handicap. Speaking of, it sounds like you could use my help in Rome with your problem target.”

As far as I could tell, Legba could hear me, but not the other ends of my conversations. ‘Everything in the piazza’, he’d said. Wording was important.

“Yes,” I said in a deliberately neutral tone. “I think that would be a very good immediate plan.”

“Consider it done. I don’t have a Vodou weapon, but –”

She was interrupted by Hera’s voice booming out all around us. Close by. Durga, Tru and I swivelled in unison, the former vanishing somewhere between one span of attention and the next. But Hera wasn’t making herself easy to find, as evidenced by the fact her speech continued.

Assailants, it said, the word laced with rage and pain. Or shall we say, Odin.

I shifted uncomfortably on my toes, incorporeality notwithstanding. On the one hand, it was gratifying to successfully lay the blame at the feet of someone else who deserved it. Subterfuge simply wasn’t as easy against gods with cheats like Yahweh and Legba’s, not to mention Odin himself. On the other, that Hera’s suspicions went straight to Odin showed she had her head screwed on better than the others, no special perceptiveness to aid her. It was just a shame about the rest of her.

Every little success at Odin impersonation also made for an uncomfortable reminder of his assertion we were the same. It niggled at me, which of course was exactly why he’d planted the idea. We weren’t. Not at all. And even if we had been, the intent hadn’t been complimentary. I’d won against him, and he was still making himself a bastard.

Leaves were still falling from the sky, though the bulk had settled by now, the upper layer dancing eerily across the wide reconfigured landscape in an unfiltered breeze. They were stacked as high as where Sørine’s chest would have been, if I’d still been using that persona.

This day comes early, but you force my hand, Hera continued. Her voice had moved, the feel of her thoughts weaker. Dying. Providence was an experiment doomed to fail by the ceaseless squabblings of infants. Every pantheon the same. Each of you convinced you knew better than the rest, time and time again, failing to see your own reflections in the mirrors of your opposition.

“Except you, obviously,” I muttered to myself. Leaves pattered to join the others around me in a rain of oddly rustling paper. “Only you understand what it is to nobly sacrifice, blah blah etcetera.”

“Shhh,” Legba chided me in Rome, mock annoyance crossing his features. “You’ll miss the speech. I’ve worked hard for this.”

We are fundamentally flawed, said Hera. Myself no exception. Under Providence, under anyone, there can be no peace, no true happiness. It is our nature.

Maui’s hooks, she’d swallowed the manifesto and made it part of her gut microbiome.

Only under one true, perfect leader can our universe function seamlessly. And yet, it is still not enough. If you would dismantle Providence, so be it. I, goddess of birth, give my life as I gave the lives of my imperfect children. It is time for a new generation to replace the old. Rise, perfect sons of the one king. Rise and fight for your master.

Something crashed into the leaves nearby, sending a minor explosion of vegetation puffing up into the air. Another followed, and another still. People?

The leaves swelled around us, no longer rising in a gentle fall, but ballooning in a bloated tide. I warped skywards, transitioning back to bird form, only to almost instantly lose my grip on Tru as a falling corpse crashed into him out of nowhere.

No, not a corpse. The body was alive, and what was more, it had a soul. I felt it as it passed through me. It wasn’t a regular soul, either, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how.

Below us, the sea of dwindling leaves surged towards us, drowning in legs, heads and arms like a jötun gone horribly wrong. Except these were human in their individual thousands. Millions. Hera’s second and equally dangerous ability, summoning: the power of new life. Every leaf a new creation, a new servant. I flew higher, avoiding the expanding sea of human flesh and bone. All adult men, I realised; Adams without the Eve, Epimetheus minus Pandora.

There should have been deaths in their masses; tens of thousands crushed, trampled and suffocated. Instead, nothing. I dodged more bodies splattering into the tide below, picking themselves up and dusting themselves off as if nothing had happened. Those on the top – if they didn’t get slammed rose to their feet, blinking in the light and their new brethren, and walked across the fields of their brothers. Not gods. I would have felt it. But lesser immortals all. Clothed in robes of white, barely distinguishable from each other.

Batch one had been too individualistic and evolving. The second, overkill in the opposite direction. I’d figured it would end there. Mindlessly obedient, endless fonts of heartfelt praise, and pretty in a manner too disconcerting to ever risk overshadowing their creator – what more could a narcissist ask for?

But I already knew. This was nothing I hadn’t seen before. He wanted it to be real, like the adoration he soaked up in his starry tower. His perfect little bubble, where he could pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. All the haters, competition and unbelievers he couldn’t destroy for turning the rest of Providence’s oh-so-fragile balance against him.

In her last act of defiance, Hera had made – or at least tried to create – angels mark three.