They drug me inside. Or walked me with stern looks and badly veiled threats. Both those things make you feel the same. If you don’t believe me, imagine being stared at by your angry father when he had control over you. His face is twitching. He’s going to murder everything in your room with mind bullets if you don’t go inside right now.

It’s being forced inside by a glare. That was me but I made a living being put in awkward positions while flipping people off. I made myself cool sunglasses and a ballcap. The cap went on backwards. I would have done gum or a beer to complete my disrespect, but summoned chewing gum tastes like rubber cement.

They spoke in hushed tones. Sound carried so I got to hear all about how muscle moron thought I was a minion of Hel out to end the world. Baldie told him I wasn’t in a peacefully serene tone that went with saints and mentally absent lunatics.

That continued until we reached an alter with this perfect beam of blinding sunlight coming from a hole in the ceiling. Candles lit up any semblance of shadows and a soft scent crawled up my nose and made me sneeze.

They ignored me and continued to argue over my role in existence. Maybe I was a demon. Maybe I was Hel’s lover. Maybe some guy name Daniel said I was the fifth plague or mankind and destined to boil people’s eyeballs.

While they argued, I fiddled with the ring and started to summon a compass that might point me in the right direction. We were close enough to the center that all I needed to do was blow the right place up. Which would be hard because no compass formed. I tried for a sandwich and failed at that too.

The oracle cleared his throat gently. I looked up and found him pointing at my ring then wagging his finger gently.

“Do you see, sad minion of Hel?” Muscled moron snorted. “Her powers do not work here.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying. Been trying to get a decent sandwich out of this thing for ages.”

The oracle stared at me then shook his head in the same soft manner he’d shaken his finger.

“Reality is immutable here,” he said. “By Hel or any other source. This is a place of what must be right now, not of what might be.”

He continued to gaze in my direction. My throat felt dry as I took note of his eyes. They were glazed over and milky. Ever had a bald guy without pupils or any of that nonsense stare at you? It’s freaky. They shouldn’t be able to see much less figure out where you stand.

I ignored his grand speech about the nature of existing and tilted side to side. He didn’t react to my shifting position. That’s probably rude of me to point out, but once again I’d like to mention his freaky eyes. Especially since I got the impression that he wanted to eat my liver without even a dash of seasoning. You know, because livers are how the Greeks told fortunes.

He kept up his beatific smile while shaking his head slightly. “I do not need your liver to tell the future. Or any other part of your body.”

Now he was a mind reader. I promptly drew mental dicks in hopes of discouraging him.

He kept on explaining with a faint smile. “The closest thing I practice is what’s known as Stikhomanteia.”

He lost me, and I’ve been around the block a few dozen times. “Stick human tea what?”

“I open books to random pages. Or chose from scraps of paper and interpret what comes from there.”

That sounded like hogwash to me. It’d be easier to throw some tea leaves into a cup and call it a dog.

“So, choose your own fortune cookies? Do you bake them too? Maybe you’ve got those little scones and spoons to bend.”

The oracle didn’t laugh at my poor humor. I like to think that someone, somewhere, did find it funny but their amusement would do me no good. Muscled man still had a death grip on my forearm. His meaty fingers would leave a perfect ring of fingerprints signifying how much he wanted to toss me into orbit.

He took a large breath then let it out slowly. Which either meant I’d won or we were about to get into some debate that neither side wanted to deal with.

The oracle chose his opener carefully. “Life is finite, and you’ve chosen to spend yours turning bringing others to a swifter end.”

“Eh. You’re wrong. I’ve got it on a good authority that I’m immortal,” I countered. “So, life is infinite. Right? By definition. Finite. Countered by infinite. Water and fire. Earth and air. Reality television and,” I snorted at my own building stupidity, “serious investigative journalism.”

He utterly ignored my clever rant. “You’re not.”

“A lot of other people trying to kill me and failing seems to imply otherwise. Two pretty irrefutable sources say otherwise.” My hands clenched in excitement. Score two counter arguments for me.

“You’re blessed by Hel!” muscles yelled.

The oracle’s eyes rolled gently. He waved his hand at the muscled guy to my left. “No Steven, he’s not. He’s blessed by circumstance, nothing more.”

Muscle man Randy Steve foamed at the mouth and gargled his own spit a few seconds before resuming his rant, “I still say he’s blessed by Hel herself. but Hel’s chosen weapon? Yet Why else does death keep sparing him? She’s already owns all he is and has no need for his life when she has his fealty!”

“He’s not Hel’s minion.” Baldy said calmly. “Hel lives in Detroit.”

I danced on my tip toes and spun in a circle while helping. “I am Alice’s minion. She has me by the balls. Or put a ring on it. I’d accept either.” My hand lifted, showing the ring made of Flux’s soul.

“Hel herself by any other name.” Steven snarled.

I shoot him finger guns. “Simmer down there, Steve. Your boss said you’re wrong. Hel’s a Michigan native. This is Olympus.”

“You’re an idiot,” the oracle said to me.

“Sure, but I’m literally a paragon of intelligence compared to him. I mean a beacon of shining hope in an otherwise,” muscle man growled but that wouldn’t stop me, “dark world of dim witted plebeians who couldn’t wipe their own ass’s without an instruction manual and seven other team members to clean up after their failures. Where is the rest of his pantheon, out punching giant Ragnarök spawned squirrels in their nuts?”

My breath nearly ran out on that one. Maybe it did. Let’s pretend I managed to stay strong through the entire speech about their mental capacity. It helps me look defiant in the face of demi-gods.

“They are,” Steven grumbled. “But not squirrels. Something much worse.”

“What?”

They resumed ignoring me and argued with each other. Which was fine because my feet hurt. And my head. And my shoulders.

Steven babbled, “What do we do? Morpheus is out of action. The giants are invading. Every minute this foul omen exists, the world crumbles a bit more. Soon they’ll break across the bridge between realms and attack Midgard.”

My mind wandered while Steven argued with white-eyes about the fate of mankind once giants launched their full-blown attack. I personally would bet on humans. Sure, we might lose New York again but guns eventually worked against the mythical nonsense god-based heroes brought with them. Or show up as a result of. I couldn’t keep the cause and effect separated.

“Fine.” Steven grunted. See? People can reach a conclusion without needing me to pay attention. “Let us use your ways to decide what to do with him. The sooner, the better. My companions need me.”

“You are right. Time matters.” The oracle sounded like an idiot uttering that and I decided to win one more argument.

I rejoined the conversation, “Time doesn’t matter. I’m immortal! I’ve got nothing but time. Lots and lots of time.” Thor got closer. My legs shook but I kept on pushing. “And power. I’ll come back again. Then I’ll glitter the hell out of this temple with enough sparkle to make a planet of tweens barf. Just make a whole,” Steve grabbed me arm and yanked me around.

My teeth rattled and I bit the inside of my cheek. He kept shaking me until I clenched my jaw and tried to summon more objects of doom or amusement.

“Enough,” the Oracle’s voice cracked. “There are limits to what we can control.”

Steven jerked me around again. “I still say we kill him.” The shoulders popped out of socket and back in, or just hurt super bad for a second. “Here. Now. Surely your powers will allow it to happen?”

“Unlikely. Trying to do so would likely add our realms to the list of the deceased. Or so my divination leads me to believe.”

They argued while my mind tried to calculate the odds. They were never in my favor but stupid stuff kept popping up to keep me in this wacky game.

If they could kill me, then that’d be an end to this madness which had an intense level of appeal. Remember way back in the first story, when I stood in a collapsing super villain cave and watched as this squish inducing pile of dirt came flying down at me? Better yet, do you remember how I almost wanted it to happen?

Here’s the fucked-up part of my quest to collapse realms. Anything that could stop me would probably end in my death. The fortune teller from the villain’s bizarre called me immortal and said my death couldn’t be plotted. Wilhelm The Wanker called me unkillable. If they were right and Steven tried to kill me, my normal powers would trigger and this place would turn to shit super-fast. If this place could trump my natural powers, then that was fine too.

With that glorious thought in mind, I decided prodding the angry Viking or whatever couldn’t possibly make my life worse. I smiled through the pain and attempted to poke Steven in his angry red cheek with the free arm. “You should try to kill me. You fail, this place blows up. You succeed, and I get the best night’s rest I’ve had in years. It’s a win-win for me.”

Steven’s face paled briefly then he ground his teeth together. He shook me. My body flopped like a wet noddle without a wall to stick to for support. Down I went.

My eyelids tried to shut on me. I fought off exhaustion by being an asshole, “Win-win.”

Now, let’s assume that nothing else interesting was said for the next twenty minutes. Or three hours. Or however long they argued for. People came and whispered things to the oracle. He nodded sagely and shit. Steven rotated between angry, and angry, and really didn’t have any other tone to his existence besides “Please let me throw Adam, ruler of all the brains in the universe, into orbit because his intelligence is too much for my roid brain to handle.”

So, blah blah, fast forward.

They drug me, literally this time, into a new room with more scrolls and parchments than any public library. Steven threw me onto a tile mosaic of some god’s rugged face. I stood up slowly, eyed the dry room, and wondered how much fire it would take to piss off the entire pantheon.

“Chose one. We’ll decide your fate from the first scripture you find.” Chief Oracle gut-reader pointed toward a row of books around us.

My eyebrow lifted and the earlier desire to be a jerk resurfaced. “Really? We’re going to put it all on the line with a book? You guys can’t even keep your pantheon straight. We’ve got Morpheus over here, a Thor, and you’re in a Greek Parthenon rip-off. He’s talking about Hel and I’m pretty sure she’s with the Norse.”

“Chose.”

“I’m going to say, go to hell. I’m pretty sure that’s a quote in one of these books.”

He shrugged and kept on smiling annoyingly. “Suit yourself.”

He walked off. I stood there rubbing my sore everything and debating what to summon from the void. Glitter bombs still seemed like the best idea. They were vaguely no violent and utterly annoying. Which summed up my entire existence.

He wandered down an isle with golden plaques then shook his head. The Oracle turned at shelving full of rolled up scrolls then kept right on going to the end. “Ah,” he said.

A moment later he stood in front of Steven and I with a book in hand. He cracked it open. Dust spilled onto the floor. Which was tacky. If that sounds judgy then please remember that’s all I had the power to do at that moment. Judge.

“Survey says?”

The Oracle ignored me and stared at the open book in front of him. His fingers traced down the page while his white eyes stared at me.

“Did I win a prize? Is it a brand-new car?”

Steven jerked my arm hard enough that I bit my tongue. Part of me thought about creating a nuke but the rest of me wanted a nap and more than an apple to eat.

“Well?” Steven asked. “Do we kill this plague upon humanity?”

I snorted, quietly, mostly in my head.

The Oracle smiled even wider. It reminded me of that poster above my bed. He tilted the book in my direction. I couldn’t read the gibberish there but whatever it said made the Oracle start chuckling. Then he laughed even harder.

“We give him what he wants,” the Oracle said.

I threw up my hands in joy. “Finally, someone who sees reason.”

Turned out they weren’t going to collapse the realm for me so I make progress in my search for Alice or some power strong enough to stop me.

Steven sighed heavily. They drug me to the next room. This grand chamber with torches all over it and circles on the ground that might have been evil but probably weren’t. I mean, this was a place of gods, not some satanic cult where they cut up goats for their livers.

“So, is this where we blow up the realm?”

They pushed me to the center. My stomach clenched from either hunger or a sudden feeling of dread. Not the fear for my life kind, but the kind that said this wouldn’t go the way I wanted it to.

Honestly, you knew this wouldn’t go my way, right?

The circle beneath lit up with ghostly green runes. Smoke billowed up into the air as even more green runes lit up. Black, that kind of neon trippy effect, filled the space between puke colored markings. Those marks further spiraled up the sides of the room.

From the doorway, the Oracle continued to smile.

“Not exactly. You want a realm to collapse, so we’re sending you to Hel.”

It clicked. I’d signed my own ticket with this one. “Fuck.”

You see the problem here? These pseudo gods literally telling me to go to Hel and take my bullshit with me. Because I’d told them to go to hell.

Torches flared into bonfires. Their red flames shifted to the same spooky color as everything else. Wind whipped through when we were indoors. My hair swirled around and I felt weightless. Something pulled me in the air and my brain scrambled to remember if I should clentch my stomach or keep it loose before the teleportation hit.

The last thought I had, to summon glitterbombs high in the air above Steven. It worked, but circle of markings sparked as if someone threw a match into a pile of hay. The apple from before climbed up my throat in protest. The portal yanked me sideways and the last image I saw was Flux’s emotionless eye staring at me.

I ended up somewhere new.

We’ll get to where in a moment.

Before moving on, it’s worth noting what’s happened since my last story. I know it’s a bit late to get into the recap but here we are. Olympus had kicked me out of their little secret realm thingy and that kind of ruined one of my goals.

See, in the process of going around trying to find special items to bring me closer to Alice, I’d also sort of been collapsing planes of existence. I’d hit at least three personally. Normally it’s easy, I’d find the center, shove some stuff that shouldn’t exist into it, or move it, or punch a hole in it with my wedding ring. Then it would go all wobbly, collapse into that flat mirror like plane, and I’d wait to see Alice or the smiling face.

Not a single one, aside from the one where Alice disappeared in, had ended the same way. I couldn’t tell if it was a magical combination of mole people, Alice, my sister, college students, or some other factor. I’d been bumbling around badly since Alice left me. I’d been bumbling around badly before that too but who cares. I didn’t really know where to look anyway but at least learned the ring could guide me to the center of these places.

Failure had happened before. The ones with actually intelligent life often knocked me out then relocated me in a dumpster. Which brings us back to the main story.

I woke up in a dumpster. One hand pushed up the lid while my lungs gasped for fresher air. The air outside the dumpster smelled just as bad. How bad? Seattle bad. It’s rich homegrown snobbery mixed with utter filth. That or rotten oranges. If anyone’s interested, Dallas smells like feet mixed with ineffective deodorant, and heat. The only way you could prove me wrong is to stick your face in a dumpster to find out, and that means I win.

I got out of the dumpster, conjured myself up some new clothes, used the old ones as rags to clean my face up, and wandere down yet another alley in search of lunch.

The stores were mostly closed. Those that were open all belonged to clothing outlets. Which served no purpose to a man who could summon any clothes he wanted. After two blocks it dawned on me that this place was a ghost town, literally. The first people I found were half see-through and went about their day as if no one else mattered.

That might have been normal. Seattle’ seemed like the kind of place where unaware figments wandered the streets from one clothing store to the next. I kept on walking down one of the long boring streets searching for an all night deli and took note of more details. The stop signs were in some foreign language. The street signs were neon yellow. People were all see-through and despite how far I walked, no sandwiches.

So, probably not Seattle. My mind tried to sort it out as hunger slowly overtook me. Thought wandered and an hour of wandering later and it suddenly occurred to me that there were better ways to defeat the heroes that had fought me from Olympus and my dastardly plan. Which proves two things. Roaming boring streets leads my mind to wander, and my knowledge of how to use my own powers proved terrible. I’d had the ring for months. “I should have drowned the place in jelly!”

Then the idea went out the window. I probably couldn’t have made that much material. Maybe enough to fill up the room but not enough to flood a city. Next time I’d fill up the library with more scrolls filled with rude images or porn. That should liven the place up. How much actual porn could Flux’s powers summon, when they weren’t being used to create magazines with curvy workbenches?

“Assuming the stupid oracle lets me use my powers,” I mumbled.

“What?” someone squeaked.

I turned to find one of the multitude of ghost people actually paying attention to me. A tiny little girl wearing a jacket four sizes too big. My gaze drifted off for a second as a dozen different responses popped into mind. That or I couldn’t get over her see-through head.

“Hi,” I said slowly. “I’m from out of town and got lost. Is there a deli that way?”

“No,” she said in a flat tone.

I couldn’t tell if she was bored or didn’t know what else to say.

“Okay. Is there a deli that way?”

“No.”

“Is there food anywhere?”

“This is the road to Hel. There’s no food anywhere.”

“So,” I looked around again. It looked like a normal human city. Minus the see-through people. “Not Seattle?”

The ghostly figured blinked a few times then tilted her head ninety degrees.

My jaw dropped then quickly resumed normal operation.

“Well then.”

“The road goes that way,” she pointed down a long-abandoned highway. “Everyone’s going there eventually. You’ll be like us soon. A ghost that barely anyone remembers.”

My lips puckered as I thought about the Oracle sending me here and what the little girl said. I lifted my hand and summoned a cloud that might lead to the center of this realm. It spun a thin trail of fog that went down the same road she’d pointed me on.

“If the road to Hel could stop me, someone would have put me here a long time ago.”

She ignored me then resumed walking down the sidewalk. I decided not to walk, and summoned myself yet another Stingray. Moments later I merged with the slowest traffic jam in the world and hummed happily to myself.

I tried to form a laptop for internet connection. Nothing happened, which left me bored and making sock puppets. A mile of stop-and-go traffic later I decided to switch to an express lane. Me and an army of blow-up dolls in bad wigs that may-or-may-not have looked like Alice were doing ninety down the freeway.

Flux’s form appeared ever few mile markers. It’s red lenses followed me as I sped along. I flipped it off, hoping that the folks at Hero Watch would enjoy the footage.

Oh yeah. Ted and I were talking again. Why? Because Ted was a sucker for the love ‘em, lost ‘em, then turning over the planet to get them back. He’d done it with his own wife. They were still together, and still mostly on vacation. With enough computer graphics and a green screen, he could pretend to be a reporter anywhere.

Since most of Hero Watch’s website had devolved into ‘what the fuck is Adam doing today?’ laugh-a-thon, he didn’t need to do field work. We, they, whatever, had a pretty steady stream of amateur reporters providing footage.

Anyway, my point got lost again, surprise. I talked to Ted because I had no one else. Or because I needed someone who’d been in my shoes to bounce ideas off. He’d gone villain and worked me over to get his wife back. He’d also later confessed that he expected me and Alice to come out on top. Because the footage he’d somehow siphoned from Flux’s future footage said so.

I couldn’t quiet wrap my brain around why their continued existence no longer bothered me. It probably had been a mix of months of crazy sex with Alice, finding purpose in life, and losing the woman I’d been planning to spend my free time with. Something about all those events made me rearrange my prioities and hating people took to much effort. Screwing with them became an easier option. I’d spawned an army of self-replicating mice in their penthouse suite during my last trip to New-New-New York which seemed like an effective form of revenge.

Anyway, the point is that Ted’s plan had been to collapse realities. He’d also been the one to really sell me on how no one got hurt. Since every single normal human who’d been in those realms, all five of them so far, had shown up in some suburban home a few weeks later. They had become normal mortals unaware of their powered past. You’d think the count should have been higher, but most of my victims had been animal hybrids or alien misanthropes of some sort.

The highway traffic thinned out and a mountain range looked in the distance. The road had fewer offramps and no cars joining me. The other vehicles were ghostlike too but proved impossible to simply speed through. I didn’t want to risk the Stringray’s newly created paint-job trying to ram them out of my way.

An hour later I saw one of the signs with some sort of house symbol on it. It might have been an inn, or a gingerbread house owned by some evil witch. Either way, it might have food and I felt in desperate need of something to eat.

As a matter of record, I don’t actually have a license. Which is probably illegal but who’s going to tell me not to drive? Were the ghost police going to pull me over and ticket me for speeding and living at the same time? Some super hero would risk showing up to stop me, only to find out I was a No-Go?

Back to the potential food source. The inn resembled a dilapidated down mom and pop building in a desperate crossroads in the middle of nowhere. The sign on the front said “Always Vacant” with bright lights and arrows pointing toward the words. A neon hamburger sat below those words and had strips of bacon in pink. That seemed like my kind of roach motel so I parked and ambled in.

Flux ambled along behind me. The parking lot had cars from all eras. Two horses were parked in other stalls. A Model T sat there looking like it’d rolled off the lot a few days ago.

The door had large chains wrapped around the handles holding it shut. Which meant the “Always Vacant” sign didn’t equate to “Welcoming” or any of those other words for a business that wanted customers. I’d been looking forward to summoning fake dollar bills to pay for a stay. It should be possible to make ghostly money just like the denizens of this place.

“No solicitation,” she said.

I blinked a few times. A kid in a jacket seven sizes too large sat in a rocking chair at the front door. She looked exactly like the one from a few hundred miles back. Either someone was screwing with me or all ghost children looked the same with a large enough jacket.

“Is there a sandwich in this place?”

She turned to eye the closed interest, squinted briefly in thought, then shook her head.

“Well then.” The viewers would raise hell if I didn’t ask. “What is in there?”

The little girl in the oversized jacket smiled. “All the horrors you could possibly imagine gorging on their self-spawned excess.”

You know how I’ve been around the block a few times? Well if not, then please realize even I know enough to not seriously pry when a little ghost girl tells me something like that. Eldritch horrors are weird, hungry, and always terrifying even to a jaded soul like mine. There’s something about them that crawls into your brain and lays eggs made of silly putty, cocaine, and a ten foot dick trying to use your body as a sleeve.

“Not a sandwich,” I slowly said.

She smiled. “Not even close.”

“Because some liver gouging oracle said I could get a sandwich here and I have been thinking about that mean for hundreds of miles now.”

“Well. Olympus is full of idiots.”

I perked up and puffed out my chest. “Yes, I said exactly that a few times.”

“No. It’s worse than normal.” She stared me and lifted an eyebrow. “If you end this realm, you end theirs too. Which might be for the best. If we got, so does the doorway here and I can finally take a break.”

Sometimes when she spoke, she sounded like an eight-hundred-year-old woman who’d been chain smoking for most of her life. Or maybe she sounded like a cute little girl. Or a teenager that was all breathy and probably seriously crushing on someone within eyesight.

I suspected she might be a horse lover. They were the closest parked rides to the doorway here. Those thoughts were shoved out of my brain as I processed what she said.

Collapsing this realm would get ride of Olympus. Or that’s what she implied.

“Hey, a two-fer. I love bargain sales.” That’s a lie. Sales don’t matter to me.

She ignored me and shook her head.

“They don’t get it at all. Without hells, there are no heavens. Which means I don’t have to be Hel anymore.”

So the girl with the wrong jacket turned out to be Hel. Or claimed to be. Queen of the Norse dead. Lordess of a realm. Older than dirt. Probably not even in the fifth grade yet.

“Hi Hel. I’m Adam.”

She gave a fake smile then rolled her eyes. “I know exactly who you are. I know what you’re here to do. Part of the perks of owning a realm. Very little in it is a secret from me.”

Remember how the Oracle read my mind earlier? Well I drew mental dicks for her too. Stupid older than dirt ghost mind readers. I mean, I could drone on about that or focus on how excited her next words made me.

Hel smiled and lifted her hand, pointing fingers straight up fingers. An orb of light or smoke or some other ethereal nonsense spun into being. Large enough to be a floating bowling ball. She pointed at it with her other hand. “But fuck.” Her little smoker girl voice made me snort. “Let’s do it. Let’s give you exactly what you wanted from the idiots on the other side.”

I ran my response through a logic filter before going with a gut response. “I’m already in Hel though. Not you. This,” I fumbled then pretended I’d said something normal.

“Cute. Pretending to be funny to distract yourself from the hope of getting what you want. Which I’m all for. I’m tired of the shit show anyway.”

I smiled but felt utterly exhausted. At least this seemed to be someone who wanted to work with me.

She laughed then wagged her free finger at me while the other kept the energy orb suspended. Green light filled the entryway we stood in. Bright enough to illuminate the inside of the inn energy. Something crawled along the window inside. They weren’t bugs but might have been something large thick and slimy. Like the worlds largest and blackest tongue.

Hel smiled. “Fair warning though. Getting ride of this place, or any other one, won’t actually get you what you want.”

My heart sunk. When a goddess, or a powered person close enough to being one, tells you that your grand plan isn’t going to work, you listen. Or you get annoyed and pretend they’re idiots. But she’d called the other people morons and I didn’t want her to be wrong about that. She had to be sort of smart.

“But it will get you closer to the truth. To your Alice. To the source. That’s what you’re really after. The source of all our powers.”

My eyelids felt heavy from the mental rollercoaster. I couldn’t take the ups and downs anymore. My mouth hung open and head shook in confusion.

“Right?” she said.

Hel paused for a second, waiting for me to answer. “I don’t know,” I said weakly. “Maybe.”

“Let’s find out.” She clenched her fingers into a tight fist. The gaseous mass suspended above her hands shattered into shards of broken reality. As it fell, my brain and the walls of the hotel behind me went to pieces as well.

Steve, Shakira, and Michael; insight into Awakened Divines

Awakened divines is a classification given to people who get powers from a mythological god or goddess. In most cases they’re fragments of the divine spark or some sort of psychic link from the original being.

Three people were on a field trip. Two siblings and a third sort-of friend from the same class. They were forced to be in the same group during a scavenger hunt. All three wandered up a mountain, searching the utterly wrong place for a clue or possibly ditching the field trip all together. That mountain exploded, sending dirt spraying for miles. They survived and in the wake of the energy that caused the disaster (and the details of the explosion are still unknown), they became vessels for older gods.

There’s speculation that if Steve and Shakira had actually liked each other before the explosion, their divinities may have been something more in line. Since they didn’t, they were put on opposite ends of the spectrum. Michael had zero to do with either of them and was barely friends with Steve.

However, it was not to be. In the end, Steve got to be Thor. Shakira got to be Hel. Michael got to Morpheus.