“Well? What’ll it be, mate?” Tabitha said, though that infuriating glint in her eyes told me that she knew damn well what my answer was.

“Aw don’t look so miffed. Tell you what, we’ll get in and out as quickly as possible, we’ll be there about a day, two days max, yeah?”

“And you intend to move a large number of relics within that time, how exactly?” I said. Tabitha simply smiled at me.

“Well you did want to ask me about my coat, yeah? How about we kill two birds with one stone?”

*

One word came to mind as I gazed upon the massive vault door before us, “Steel”. Indeed, the thing before me seemed to embody that concept so thoroughly that to attempt to describe it in any other way would be both a grave insult, and utterly futile, for if one were to behold this door, no other words would come to mind. Such was the purity of its purpose. Metal bolts, each the size of my fist, jutted out from the top and the bottom, securing horizontal strips of metal that in turn held the door in place. The door seemed like it was at least as thick as a man was wide, and thousands of times more durable. This door, which seemed so impregnable that it could refuse passage from even Junogloris, was marked, in garish, neon green paint, as the Armoury.

And it was currently slowly being bent forward, each new centimetre of movement punctuated by a hollow thudding sound that was so loud it seemed to come from all directions at once.

“Oh. I completely forgot about that.” Tabitha said, sheepishly sliding to the side, where a keypad was located. I heard a muffled cry from behind the door, followed by an even more savage beating, as whatever lay behind that door grew even angrier at hearing our voices.

“Tabitha…” I gazed pointedly at her, and she kept her eyes on the keypad. “Please tell me that’s not who I think it is…”

“You want me to lie to you, mate?”

“Tabitha…”

“You lot might want to stand back; he’s going to be pretty pissed off when he comes out.” Tabitha said, even as she entered her code.

I reached into my backpack and prepared my weapon. I heard the harsh sound of metal scraping against metal as what must have been unseen steel rods retracted from the door. With a loud hiss and a rush of pressurized air, the door slowly swung forward. Junogloris’s posture visibly shifted, his body like a taut spring, ready to explode into combat at a moment’s notice.

His crimson hair in disarray. His twin blades gripped so tightly that their silvery hilts protested against his strength. The evershifting name of El upon his forehead flickered erratically, and his wild gaze held nothing but fury.

Before us was a messenger of El. The same one who was swallowed by Tabitha’s trench coat.

His eyes drifted erratically, scanning each and every inch of the room, until they landed on Tabitha. He moved forward, swords drawn. Junogloris and I readied ourselves. None of us willing to make the first move, none of us foolish enough to lower our guard for one sec-

“Hey Cam. How’ve you been?” Tabitha said as she strode forwards, putting herself in between us and the messenger.

“I have been. Inside that God damn room. With a God damn severed head. For thirty-six God damn hours.” he said. Tabitha just laughed sheepishly.

“Sorry, kinda forgot about you. Crazy day, yeah?”

“What. THE. FUCK CONTESSA?!”

“It’s actually Tabitha no-”

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT! Of all the- GAH!” The messenger threw his swords to the ground, and proceeded to bang his head against the wall, a move which caused the entire ship to shudder.

Junogloris and I looked at each other, then at the messenger who was still swearing up a storm. Then slowly our gazes drifted to Tabitha, who merely shrugged.

“Mates, meet Cam-”

“It’s He Who Is His Divine Anger-”

“Cam.” said Tabitha, rolling her eyes. “My man on the inside.”

“You have a messenger working for you? Seriously?” I said. For his part, Junogloris remained silent, the tension never leaving his body. The messenger, Cam as Tabitha called him, scoffed.

“Man, I wish I was working for her. Then I’d actually get paid. Nah, I just owe Contessa a few favours. And you just had to pick now to cash ‘em in, huh?”

“Piss off, Cam.”

“And her slaughtering your kind by the hundreds doesn’t bother you at all? Or that she might come after you next?” I said, even as I lowered my laptop.

“You’re working with her, aren’t you?” Cam said. “‘Sides, I’d like to see her try to kill me again, who knows, maybe this time she’ll actually be able to scratch me.”

“Lulu, I’m hurt.” Tabitha said as she slid next to me, “I don’t kill every single divinity I get my hands on. Just the ones that deserve to die.”

“And it just so happens that category includes the majority of us, doesn’t it?”

“Your words, not mine.” she said with a grin. “How about we continue our talk inside the armoury? You too, Cam.”

“How about you go fuck yourself, Contessa?”

“Chill out, love. I’ll keep the door open this time, yeah?” Cam simply stared at her.

“Fine, I’ll hide Silencer’s head. Happy?”

“No. Now get off my back-”

“There are a few things that have piqued my curiosity, messenger.” Junogloris moved forward, his massive frame made Cam look like a child by comparison. “I insist that you join us for the time being.”

*

Rows upon rows of black metal gleamed under the harsh florescent lighting. Firearms of every imaginable size and purpose cast their shadow against the north wall’s peeling paint, from a silver nine millimetre, to a standard military issue automatic rifle, to an utterly massive automatic shotgun. I even saw the unmistakable, elongated barrels of a minigun, and its motor was no doubt hidden somewhere among the veritable mountain of ammo boxes that lay across the wall to the east.

To the west was a collection of glass vials and flasks, each filled with differently coloured liquid, making it so that the case they were in looked as if it contained an artist’s paints. However, no painter’s tools would ever glow like these liquids did, nor would sparks of ethereal power dance across mere coloured oil. These were potions, high quality ones at that. I noticed that four vials were missing, undoubtedly the ones that we used yesterday.

Scattered across the floor were different objects, I saw that mind draining orb lying haphazardly at our feet, and I had no doubt that every seemingly innocuous thing in this room was in some way deadly.

This room was an arsenal of the ages. As much of a testament to Tabitha’s blood-soaked history as the scars that covered her body.

“Soooo are you going to ask about my coat or-” Tabitha looked at me, here eyes gleaming with barely contained glee. I sighed.

“Your coat acts as a portal into your armoury. I get it.”

“Well yeah, but aren’t you curious as to how I bypassed-”

“Instead of brute forcing a spell that would reduce distance, you probably just opened two holes into the fifth dimension, one that leads to here, and one in your coat, and bridged them, bypassing the distance requirement altogether. You essentially created a wormhole in your coat.”

“But how did I-”

“You probably have both a summoning spell built into the wormhole, thus allowing you to always take whatever you need out, and a semipermeable magical barrier at the entrance and exit of your wormhole. That way, the only things that go through are things that you specify. That way, you’re not constantly transporting yourself here whenever you wear your coat.”

“Well, yes. But shouldn’t you be at least a bit-” Tabitha said.

“Look, in the brief time that I’ve known you, you’ve shattered my world at least thrice. You pretty much peaked with the whole knowledge of the fifth dimension-”

“Fifth dimension? I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Junogloris said.

“-as well as being able to warp the fabric of space-”

“Beg pardon?!”

“I should be shocked, but this sort of insanity is pretty much par for the course for you, Tabitha.” I said, as I sat down, carefully clearing the clutter as I did.

“Well take the fun out of everything, why don’t you.” Tabitha said as she sat down. Cam looked at the both of us, his face the very definition of amusement.

“It took Helena, what, five days to just roll with it?” he said, looking to Tabitha for confirmation. She simply grunted. “Grats, Luna Invicta, you just set the record for fastest to BNCB.”

“BN what now?”

“Being Numb to Contessa’s Bullshit.” he said, smiling. “By the way, I won’t be joining you guys on the floor.” He gestured at his feet, which still refused to touch the ground. “We should probably get started.”

“Right. You see, I was going to spend a good few minutes watching Lulu go absolutely mental about my coat. But since I can’t have nice things, we’ll cut this short. You know how we’re going to transfer relics into the ship now, yeah?”

“You’re going to shove them all into your coat.” I said. “Like an uncultured graverobber”.

“Right. We’re don-”

“A moment of your time, messenger.” Junogloris said. Cam raised an eyebrow, and he gestured at Junogloris to continue.

“You were created with for the explicit purpose of serving El. Your brethren bled and died by the hundreds yesterday in service to that vile usurper. Yet you willingly throw your lot in with this bloodthirsty savage. Why should we trust you, when you would betray even your creator for, what was it, ‘a few favours’? More to the point, why should I let any servant of El live? What’s stopping me from killing you where you stand?”

“That’s funny. You, a washed-up demigod of a dead faith against me? Ha!”

“Watch your tongue, Cam. If Junogloris fights, he won’t do it alone.” I said.

“And if any of you lot fight in here, I’m gutting you all like fish, got that?” Tabitha said.

“Besides, I don’t see how that’s relevant. Yeah, I serve the One True God-”

“I said watch it, messenger.”

“-but that doesn’t really matter now, does it? He hasn’t been around for 300 years now, and His personae aren’t coming together anytime soon, especially not with how the war’s been going.”

Junogloris stood still. His eyes wide, his gaze never leaving the messenger.

“Say that again.”

“Yeah, it’s supposed be all hush-hush, but the Empyrean’s at war, and the Heavenly Host are divided… into several factions…” Cam’s eyes widened as he finally understood.

“You mean you didn’t know? Were you living under a rock for 300 years?”

“Mistress Luna?”

“I thought you knew.” I said. There was simply no way for him to have been unaware. When it happened, all of the surviving divinities felt the ripples throughout the Thoughtstream. It was so great that even a few humans felt something was amiss on that fateful night.

“How could this have happened? Our armies fell in the New World, who else could have bested him?”

“No one but himself, Junogloris. El’s pride was his own undoing.”

“Turns out that turning yourself into the Ideal of Divinity and convincing humanity that you’re the only game around had a few side effects, yeah?” said Tabitha. “See, we humans? Really diverse lot, ain’t we? Put three of us in a room together, and you’ll have six different tiffs. Doubly so when it comes to gods and all that bollocks. Used to be that those ideas became separate divinities, but when El went and said that the only god around was him, and he made sure that no other gods could be born wherever his reign was, well, suddenly all those different ideas get applied to him and only him, yeah? And since he both reigned over the Domain of Divinity, and was also its Ideal… Well, the question wasn’t why El fragmented. It was why he didn’t fragment sooner.”

“The differing ideas on what El was supposed to be caused him to split into myriad personae, aspects of him that represented a point of view, and who also inherited but a fraction of his power.” I said. “Last I checked, there were around at least a hundred prominent ones, though I have no doubt that an uncountable number of them exist. But the unified El is gone, and short of the personae being reconciled through an agreement of all of El’s flock, he’s never coming back.”

“Yeah, actually, not even then.” Cam said. “At least, not anymore. You see, the thing about wars? They tend to leave a lot of people less than healthy, if you catch my drift. I know for a fact that the Dio persona’s been slain, and there are rumours that Yeshua’s and Incarna’s armies have been routed. And once the Thoughtstream records you as dead, even if it’s only a tiny fraction of your true glory, you stay that way. Rest assured, pagans, the One True God is gone. You won. I’m just trying to make sure I survive in this God forsaken world.”

Cam’s words were without venom, but they were like daggers within me. I could only imagine what they were doing to Junogloris.

“All our sacrifice, all the comrades we lost, every single drop of blood we bled on that blasted land. It was all for naught?” Junogloris’s voice grew louder. He stood to his full height. “That I have hid in shame for 500 years in vain? That the glory of avenging myself upon our most hated foe, even that is denied to me?”

“In short? Yeah.” Cam said, all trace of cheerfulness gone from him. His gaze was cold as it turned towards Junogloris.

“Deal with it.”

Silence reigned. I couldn’t bear to keep looking at him, any words I could speak rang hollow even as I thought of them.

All I could hear was the sound of Junogloris’s harried breathing. All I could see in my mind’s eye was his face. A furrowed brow. Pursed lips. Eyes that have lost their way. And, hidden beneath it all, tears.

He turned away from us, and ran.