High above the mortal world, between the clouds and the stars, lay a gossamer net of true silver and diamond invisible to the mortal eye, crisscrossing the world. Both cage and security, infinitively thin and yet absurdly vast, exists Nexus’ Divine Territory, the Divine Crossroads. Allowing both instantaneous travel and almost omniscience knowledge and surveillance of the mortal world, it was even whispered that it could perceive knowledge of other Divine Territories. Both feared and yet still used by all Pantheons, the Divine Crossroads offered the gods of Earth the knowledge of almost every event at any location, all at one place and at any giving moment on Earth. Past, present and some say future, if Nexus wishes that it be known.

Each silver thread representing a possible path and hallway, each diamond a crossroad and hall, and within one such grand hall, three goddesses stood, staring at a globe of the World. Floating above a fountain pool of molten true silver, virtual and yet solid, the World slowly turned before the three of them and their ever-watchful gaze.

The three goddesses differed from each other vastly in dress and appearance, but each were beyond mortal words such as beauty or gorgeous. Unless they were willing to humanised themselves, the eyes of mortals would likely burst, and their brains burn to ash trying to make sense of these goddesses divine and almost alien beauty.

One of the goddesses, dressed in a fine, soft leather, dress, a golden belt, with a gilded sword and its sheath attached, wrapped around her waist. A regal, thick cloak made of troll-bear fur and hide, the long, thick fur platted and studded with amber, and bound with rings of silver rested upon her shoulders. Her glowing hair, like thick honey and molten gold, captured in a long braid, rested beside her neck descending past her chest, stopping an inch before touching the floor. Blue eyes, the colour of the Nordic fiords, inherited from her father, gazed at the globe, a look of cold determination and a chilly thirst for revenge reverberated within their depths.

Her hand of translucent white, her graceful long fingers wrapped round and grasped a spear of dragon bone and dwarven gold, rose. Her wrists covered in hard studded leather bracers of iron, a thick band of gold, set with amber, enveloped her strong but lithe upper arm. The supple muscles of her arm, almost unnoticeable before she used them, showed long practice and experience, as she thrust her spear at the World before the three of them.

“Twenty years. Twenty years we’ve stared at this cursed globe and for what? That bastard son of a cur and a giant has vanished and taken our daughters with him. For twenty years! He stole them from us, denied us the chance to hold them, to even see them, let alone watch them grow!”

Her firmly toned yet feminine body, a warrior’s body, shook with her rage, her heavenly voice, originally deep like the ocean, now sharp and furious like a storm at sea.

“We had so little time to even do that! To see their first steps! To hear their first words! Just a few scant mortal years to see them come to womanhood! To guide them as much as we could! HE TOOK IT ALL WHEN HE STOLE OUR DAUGHTERS!”

She slammed her spear down, its base hammering the black diamond floor to the sound of thunder, the hall shuddering only slightly despite the fury and power within the blow. Her volume lowering to a vengeful hiss, full of venom and malice.

“And yet here we stand, and stare at a wretched globe, instead of hunting him down and turning him into a screaming red eagle! Tell me Athena! FOR WHAT!!!”

Her gaze burned at the goddess in question. Dressed in a pristine white toga, a golden bronze breastplate resting over it. Similarly armed with a spear, Athena had a shield of gold, the face of which bore the Head of Medusa. Medusa’s eyes covered simply with a white ribbon of cloth, her serpentine hair slowly writhing and undulating, their forked tongues slipping from venomous mouths, tasting the air and using what they find to smell for prey.

Only a few are able to surprise Athena while she wields her shield in hand or rests nearby.

A white maned helm, a pair of bracers and leg guards, under her arm, on her forearms and around her shins respectively, each of gold bronze straight from the Forge of Hephaestus himself, and indestructible to all mortal, and many divine, means. Her long, soft and rich brunette hair, flowed as a waterfall down her back, completely unrestrained. Fair skin, tanned by the outdoors and days on the battlefields, glowed with health and vibrancy as it covered a body refined by practice and battle, partly hidden beneath her apparel.

Eyes of greenish blue, like the Aegean Sea, inherited from both her mother and her grandfather, stunningly deep with wisdom while cunningly secreted but sometimes revealed, like pearls in the deep ocean, a piercing, razor-intelligence and patience dwelled. Her gaze, chillingly cool and placid, swept over to glance at her raging ally.

“By all means Freya, go ride your chariot and trumpet your horn all over the mortal world, declaring war on Nexus themselves in the process, looking for your daughter. It matters little to me if you are impaled on your own grief and pain induced idiocy. If there is anything to be learned from my wild child and wilful sister Artemis, it is that to track and hunt a cunning and scheming hound like Lugh Macnia Lámhfhada, the key will be who is more patient. Even Artemis can cool her mind, her eager restlessness for success and the taste of blood, when she hunts such a prey.

“But far be it from me to advise you, my fellow sister in loss. It is not as if I have not also lost my daughter! You are not the only one who is eager to see their daughter Freya.”

Athena curved her gaze back to the globe, her refined classic features still, her expression stone-faced and emotionless. Only her more numerous words and the hissing and agitation of Medusa’s serpentine hair revealed her emotions were not as sedate as she would have her allies believe. It was clear that even her wise patience had begun to thin. The knowledge of her first and only child’s girlhood basically having come to an end burned her willingness to remind still. Like the heat of the sun evaporating a deep pool of water over decades with no rain, what was left, if any, was minute.

Freya tightened her grip on her spear and a tick of muscle as her jaw ground her teeth together clearly showed Freya’s growing frustration and deicidal intent toward her ally. An intent that was quickly quelled and soothed by the third member of their Triumvirate alliance, as it had been so many times before.

Dressed in silken garb, its threads not of actual silk but instead made from flexible and soft gold, her choice of attire let much of her darkly golden coffee coloured skin show. Though light of clothes, she was heavily draped with jewellery, with much more of her skin being covered in precious stone crafted artistry than the golden cloth of her dress. Emeralds, the largest of which the size of a fist, the centre piece of her necklace, and gold were the primary materials of her jewellery.

Where it would look tacky on most, she carried her ostentatious use of gold with a divine and regal bearing, with power and purpose. She seemed to glow with a royal majestic yet powerfully forceful and ravenous sexual energy. A true Queen of the Heavens, confident in her grip on her divine sovereignty, and with her feminine sex, aggressive in her hunt for more power but never at the cost of lessening her own worth.

However, she carried a polished smooth amethyst and green garnet rattle on her sash of ocean blue silk next to a black iron and emerald sceptre, both of which stood out. But her hands could be seen resting upon rattle, the spectre forgotten, caressing it with a love and a gentleness that seemed out of character for her. It offered a softening of her general character, a gap in an otherwise impervious suit of golden regal authority, harsh justice and sexual confidence.

Her hair, long and a blood red so deep it was black, a red that stories say her hair had been dyed from her many conquests. It defied the mortal laws of gravity, floating and drifting around her shoulders, as if rejecting such limitations, such be the concerns of lesser beings. Eyes of heavenly gold, bright and warm, though at times they can be brutally harsh and scorching, a trait she shared with her brother, flickered from the rattle to the brawl on its eve.

She sashayed to Freya, her hands hovering just over Freya’s tensed arms and body, her golden claw covered fingers only a hair width from Freya’s skin, her lips against the other goddess’ ear.

“Be calm, Freya. It is not Athena you rage against. Any harm you would do to her and any that would be done to you will have no sweet taste of blood, only the harsh bitterness of ash.”

Freya breathed deep the heady yet airy scent of the other woman; a natural fragrance as smoky and saccharine smelling as divine and sexually charged as perfumed incense. Freya whispered, her voice rough and dark with a need for either blood or sex.

“Do not start that what you will not finish Ishtar!”

Ishtar grinned, her lush lips were so close though they might as well have been miles away from Freya’s ears, ears that were now flushed hot blood red with either anger or lust.

“I never do my fierce Norse beauty.”

Freya closed her eyes, the voice of the other goddess as delectable rich, pulsating and invigorating as a lioness’ heated growl. Ishtar’s claw-like non-touch traced Freya’s arm, distracting and soothing her anger, redirecting it into another, and more satisfying in Ishtar’s opinion, emotion. Her hair coiled around the two of them, strands drifting just beneath Freya’s nose, not close enough to tickle, although alluringly close enough for Freya to inhale more of Ishtar’s sensual scent.

Ishtar could feel the gaze of Athena, could feel her frustration, but Ishtar ignored it. Athena had never needed Ishtar to sooth, redirect or otherwise soften her emotions. Ishtar knew that what she did, seducing and controlling Freya’s emotions, was something that Athena would never accept being done to herself. Until twenty mortal years ago Athena stood among the small number of virginal goddesses in the world. Though technically since no intercourse is or was required for the creation of a divine child, she is still a virgin, but try telling that to the others.

Ishtar understood Athena; stoic, logical and rational. Although Ishtar was no virgin, having indulged and delighted in the power and pleasure she had over both men and women alike for the entirety of her existence. But twenty years ago, like Athena, it had been her first attempt at having a child, in her case it was her first in a history almost five thousand years or so long.

It had been a terrifying and exhilarating new experience.

One that Ishtar likened to her old war campaigns and conquests against other gods, those days long past when gods could, and did, walk and wander the Earth.

Freya, similar to herself, is a goddess who delighted not in the tactics and strategies of war but the thrill of it, though they still acknowledged the need for them. Both Freya and Ishtar were also beings that enjoyed passionate lust and sexual desire.

Ishtar bit her tempting lips in a strong carnal delight as Freya let out a lynx-like groan of sensual frustration at Ishtar’s teasing non-touch, her seductive whispers and intoxicating natural perfume.

Yes, both enjoyed this, their little games. Sexual. Passionate. Risky. The perfect distraction from your pain is drowning yourself in a different emotion. Mortals would call it unhealthy; Ishtar would respond that the gods have never been the healthy sort.

Like the similarly sexual Ishtar and like the virginal Athena, for one reason or another, Freya had been childless until twenty years ago. They were coping with their lose in the least destructive ways they could.

The shared event and shared pain tied them together, one made stronger by the fact that they had, all of them, lost their daughters. They formed an unbreakable bond born from their sorrow, an alliance, to find their children. Then they would castrate the mongrel cur who took them, for his cruelty in stealing the limited time they’d had to watch their daughters grow up in the mortal world.

If there was one thing, they could not forgive, it was that! Stealing those few scant years their children were required to grow to maturity in the mortal world. All while they, their mothers, bereft, cast aside, used without the simple reward of being able to see or watch over them. Unable to even know their daughters, to see how they grew up in the mortal world. A blink of time for their divine mothers, but precious for the very same reason. He stole it all!

Still, Athena, in the end was not free feeling enough to let Ishtar control or influence her emotions, even to help her ease them.

Athena refused to be anything but rational one hundred percent of the time.

Ishtar respected that.

Still, she wondered what Athena would look like if she was as wild and unfettered as her siblings.

Freya suddenly sprang away from Ishtar’s sensory embrace. Her eyes staring at the globe with a fever-pitch as she took control of it from Athena. Reaching into the neck of her dress Freya draws a triangular section of an amulet, of green and gold, after which, she held it out toward to globe.

The globe suddenly twisted and spun before stopping, all in the blink of a mortal eye.

The Anglo-Celtic Isles centring itself before them, Londinium to be exact, of the High Kingdom of the Isles.

Ishtar stared at the Isles thoughtfully.

“Tis ruled by the descendants of Queen Boudica after her successful reclaiming of the Isles from Roman rule. She and her descendants would unite the whole of the Isles into a single High Kingdom, the individual kingdoms being the Northern Kingdom of Alba, Southern Kingdom of Prydain and the Island Kingdom of Eire.

“And while united in preparation of a Roman attempt at reconquest, it never occurred due to the splintering of the Roman Empire after the disastrous reign and death of Nero.

Her eyes glanced to Freya.

“Though it did serve them well in fending off the later invasion of the Saxons and the even later Norse invasion, instead forcing the surviving members of both invasions to assimilate into the already established kingdoms, much like the Roman civilians before them.

Freya turned her head to glare at the blatant verbal slap to the face as both the Saxons and obviously the Norse were her Pantheon’s followers. Ishtar clearly indicating that their followers’ failure at conquering the Isles was a consequence of their own failure to best the Celtic Pantheon.

The same Pantheon that Lugh Macnia Lámhfhada belonged to.

Freya responded frostily.

“It was weakness that drove them to seek green fields and meadows, unable to withstand the harsh icy beauty of the Norse-Lands, their weakness has nothing to do with me. Now, if you are done being snide because I walked away from our little game, I felt my part of my daughter’s amulet resonate.”

Ishtar and Athena’s expressions became grim with their grave interest, moving to stand on either side of Freya. Staring at Londinium, Athena cocked her head, almost owl-like.

“Then we are to believe your daughter resides in Londinium?”

Freya grimaced; her expression vexed.

“Leave it to Lugh, the cur, to place our daughter in a Neutral City. Typical of him, so close to his own power-base yet so far from his own Pantheon’s influence. Nexus has never allowed any Pantheon to create so much as even a tiny shrine in a Neutral City, any that exist before the city had been decreed as Neutral would be either repurposed or taken by Nexus. The perfect place to hide my daughter from me and likely your daughters from you as well.”

Ishtar however moved closer, arms crossed, her gaze never wavering from the city of Londinium.

“Do you know why Lugh’s children always die?”

Athena and Freya turned to look at each other, then at Ishtar. Athena raised a sculpted gracefully curved eyebrow.

“Enlighten us.”

Ishtar smirked, but her eyes were cruel with a harsh light.

“Lugh is beloved by fate; he is the Luck Thief and the Fortune Taker. He is brave, noble and bold. He is also cunning, ruthless and cruel when he believes it is necessary, perfectly willing to scheme and use another’s honour to kill them. The master of many and varied skills, all of which comes to him with ease, ever adaptable and progressive due to his ability to stay current and up to date with the mortals. He manages to master every new technology the moment it is created.”

Ishtar knew she sounded bitter; it’s because she is.

“But there is a price to pay for being the favourite of fate. For fate is jealous. It will allow no other to rise to challenge its beloved. And all of Lugh’s children are fated to emulate him. All of them become heroes. And all of them die to become legends. So, fate has decreed.”

She looked at her allies. Her eyes were chillingly apathetic and cold, very unlike her usual heat.

“Lugh despises fate. He hates it beyond words. Though it has blessed him beyond telling, it has taken all that he loves in trade. He is paranoid and terrified that fate will lay its hands on his newest children, he would never willingly risk them being at its mercy. Look deeper, Freya.”

Freya frowned as she focused on the resonance between the amulet and herself, and the connection it had with her daughter. Soon, a path, winding and convoluted, ascended at an angle from Londinium. Athena drew a harsh breath, her gaze becoming steely with cold wrath.

“Lugh is insane. The Sideways Path . . . it is madness for your or any of our daughters to be there. Monsters, giants and dark and best forgotten gods dwell in that maze of lunacy, even we gods fear and would flee from the beings that lurk in its depths beyond the reach of Earth’s Territory. Why would he do this, go this far?”

Ishtar responded calmly; her tone cold with hatred and more than a little dread.

“Because he is afraid. Both of losing another child and what losing them would make him do. He walks a line between what is sane and insane, while wearing a mask for the world. He is willing to take risks with our children that you or I would never willingly let our daughters take. It is why we were not given the opportunity to object in the first place.”

Freya frowned; her confusion clear on her face as she asked.

“He is willing to take such risks because he is afraid of losing them. That makes no sense! Why risk endangering them at all if he is afraid of losing them?”

Athena glanced at Ishtar before answering in her stead.

“Because he can fight the dangers within the Sideways Paths. But he cannot fight fate. How can you kill that which has no true form, how do you kill the past, present and future without destroying the world? Lugh has chosen the risk he can fight over one he has no control over.”

Lifting a hand to Freya’s shoulder, Ishtar questioned her.

“How did you find her, your daughter? We have tried using the amulets before with nothing to show for it. Why did it help you now?”

Freya smirked grimly; teeth bared as she glared at the glowing mark hidden within the Sideways Paths.

“I guess even these Alien demi-gods do have a use. One connected to my Aspects found my daughter, what the nitwit is doing in the Sideways Paths is beyond me but, her suicidal tendencies aside, she has most certainly earnt herself a reward.”

Athena turned to her allies; her eyes determined.

“Then we should find her, your daughter, and maybe find clues, or even better Lugh himself, so as to lead us to our own daughters. I think we can entreat or if necessary, otherwise motivate Lugh to tell us where they are if he is there when we arrive don’t you?”

The cruel and vicious joy that blossomed on the faces of the three goddesses would make Nexus itself wary of their intent as they turned and walked out of the Hall of Nexus, marching for Londinium and the Sideways Paths connected to it.