No one is ever ready.

Blessed Azure-touched, High Priestess, and Herald, Esmerelda led the parade in divinity’s name. She pranced with rehearsed gaiety, a decanter of Azure-blessed water straining her arms, and fought very hard to ignore the crowds scrutinizing her every breath.

Her procession danced today in Novia’s honor. The first Inventor’s suspension bridge towered nearly as high as the crest of the shell itself, festooned in flowers from all corners of the world. The top level supported foot and car traffic, and the bottom level ran a series of state-of-the-art rails that would see the city’s trolley brought to unprecedented speeds.

Of course, the trolley was public knowledge and old news. For most of Wave’s Lament, this was the first glimpse of the Goddess’ newest Azure-blessed, and the whispers flew fast as knives.

“Just a child!”

“A bumpkin from up Dragon…”

“Surely the Goddess isn’t bedding her?!”

Was it better or worse that the cadre of former high priestesses – ever envious! – begged illness and skipped the ceremony? That Esmie should walk alone at the head of the procession?

Though her family lived in Wave’s Lament, high on the shell, none of them agreed to walk with her. Nor did her friends from Resting Dragon answer her letters. In the end, she swayed alone at the head of the festival: Esmie the chosen, her brand displayed down her naked back; Esmie the chosen, slip of a girl that somehow crawled into the Goddess’ graces.

The jubilee continued, dandelions on the wind and wine in the streets. Though Novia might sleep in a Lumian bed, she ever belonged to Wave’s Lament first.

Sweating, Esmie hiked the smooth incline towards the bridge. The crowds thinned, the road ahead cleared for her arrival. Wide enough for four cars abreast, the length of steel vibrated faintly in the Spring wind. From this vantage, she surveyed Wave’s Lament like a queen.

Squat buildings, crammed together. A turgid, brown river spilling into the ocean. A pyramid, its pyramidon gleaning bright. So very many people, all bound to the Goddess.

To her.

From the opposite bank, the other half of the parade began the hike onto the bridge. The former high priestess was supposed to lead, carrying an ingot of pure gold. Metal and water, blessed together, would bring their city to glory.

She waited, resisting the urge to shift her stance, and prayed that the reporters buzzing like flies behind her would not capture her sweating forehead or pained grimace.

Focus, Esmie, she chided herself. You have to do this right. In front of thousands and thousands of people. Most of whom expect you to screw up.

The two halves of the parade paused, each guarding one entry to the bridge, and then approached the center together. An altar loomed there, piles of dyed stones brought from the distant Novian mines and doused in a dozen shades of blue paint. A jet-black spear rested at the apex of the altar, tip firmly lodged. Though master-crafted obsidian, it paled before the chill of Lynne’s true weaponry.

We’re so stupid afraid of her spear that we stick it onto everything. Like we’re proud to be scared. Or that we’re proud that she’s our terror. Esmie bit her lip. Focus!

The replacement for the high priestess wore a billowing cloak of blue, but the cloth poorly masked her limp. The stranger rocked with each step, unsteady on her feet. Had something happened on the way? If so, this priestess would have to wait for a blessing; Esmie could not heal wounds with water and Will.

Though her brand prickled at the thought…

Maybe nothing more than heat stroke, she reassured herself. A full robe like that in Spring would suffocate me!

Drawing near, Esmie began the hymn, but the opposite priestess did not answer.

The young Azure-blessed felt her stomach drop. None of the priestesses were tall enough for this figure, and not even the hairy ones had arms that bushy. A man, then, leading a holy procession.

Now she spotted the distress in the faces of the parade behind the pretender. Confusion, uncertainty, marching along with the will of crowds.

Esmie halted well short of the altar.

The figure limped forward, each breath rasping like an old engine.

Reporters and priestesses whispered behind the Herald’s back. Somehow, of course, this sacrilege was her fault. The ritual disrupted! Could this child do nothing right?

It isn’t my fault! she objected silently. Nobody told her anything!

Nobody wanted her as Herald anyways.

The interloper finally threw back his hood, revealing a sallow and haggard man with a bedraggled beard and spiteful eyes. He was familiar, somehow, though she could not place his face under that grime.

He spat dark phlegm onto the altar and sneered. “What a pretty little parade.”

Murmurs rose from the crowd, and the nearest priestess nudged Esmie in the shoulder blades.

Summoning her courage, Esmie pointed a finger in her best impersonation of Lynne. “In the name of Maiden and Tempest, I demand you explain yourself!”

“In the name of the Tempest…” The man’s gaze fell to her neck, and he worked his jaw like a mule.

Esmie bore no scar from the battle in the Bones, not after the Maiden’s care, but she remembered the malice burning her throat.

Donovan!

“Her little copy dancing in her place,” he hissed. Sweeping back his cloak, he presented a gleaming bauble – the very same covenant stone that nearly killed Esmie months before. “Everything I worked for drowned because of you!”

The young priestess retreated a half step, the urge to flee shrieking in her ears.

But the runes in her spine thrummed, warm and caring, and gave her strength where she was lacking.

Because Lynne loved her, a promise woven in every stroke of paint.

“I stole nothing from you, Donovan the Redeemer!” She surprised even herself with the vigor in her voice. “You chose to become what you are, and you chose to come back here!”

“I chose to bring this to an end!” he roared. He leaped forward, snatched the obsidian spear from the altar, and hurled the covenant stone between his feet. Raising the spear in his one good arm, he gathered strength to stab.

“He’s mad,” someone giggled.

“He’ll chip the spear,” a priestess muttered in annoyance.

Symbols link and bind. The spear of ice, Tempest darkness, closes the circle of sin. He still demands judgement; his heart has run dry of mercy, whispered the brand.

“Everyone run!” Esmie shouted.

But who listened to a child, even one wearing the Goddess’ mark?

Donovan bellowed his curse, flecked with phlegm and blood. “Ruin and darkness! May none be remembered! As I drowned may you burn!”

Obsidian spear stabbed into the covenant stone. Into the fire within.

Maybe Esmie was mad, but she thought it shuddered like a woman betrayed.

She reached into the cool place that Lynne had carved and found waters there. Drew forth the need and felt the Dragon begin to rise in response.

The core of the jewel caught like a fish under the spear; then it fractured, swelled, and roared outwards like a star. The conflagration consumed Donovan and the altar in the first heartbeat.

Plumes of the Dragon roared from the banks, but they would not be enough.

The fire swelled; the nearest suspension coils evaporated with the same ease as Donovan’s flesh.

Curious reporters reflexively captured pictures of their impending death.

Esmie had time to scream.

***

The familiar rhythm of the waves kept Lynne company. She watched the approaching smudge of the Ruhum coast and hummed in contentment at the prow of her royal vessel. Her clipper easily outran the lumbering metal behemoths of her escort on divine winds, and her wake stirred the Spring to life.

Belle kept one firm hand on the railing to her left; her other clasped a swollen belly. She grunted with the dips in the waves, her expression pained.

“The water without stirs the waters within?” Lynne teased gently.

“Perhaps if you mean my bladder,” the peasant woman admitted sheepishly. Weeks of coaching, and she still spoke like a mouse pinned by a spotlight…

Perhaps I should do the speaking, Lynne thought. The Ruhum coast grew nearer. Ah, not much longer now.

Alisandra awaited. They would put aside their quests and duties, and they would walk the flower paths in Spring like when Alisandra was a child. Strolling through the gardens, they would speak of absolutely nothing of importance.

The sun tickled at the angel’s neck, and the spray teased at her cheeks.

She was present in this moment, balanced as she had not been since the days of the covenant.

Perhaps it was finally time to apologize to Mirielle. To at least admit her own complicity in Gabriel’s scheme.

A world mended one word at a time.

Then came the scream of her adopted child, echoing across her oceans.

Through the brand, she saw the fire rising to scour Wave’s Lament.

To steal away her redemption with ash and ruin.

Between one second and the next, Lynne had to choose. Was she Maiden? Tempest? Or something more?

Neither half of the cycle could stop this fire.

But Lynne, angel of oceans, might.

I will not abandon them!

Lynne flung herself against the hands of the clock. She set herself against the tick of heartbeats and the rising of the dawn, and she did not care if her hubris brought damnation.

The eldest among Foundations stirred, but Lynne charged forward uncaring.

The waves slowed; the winds slowed; the expanding ball of sunfire on a distant bridge stuttered forward in factions of an inch at a time.

Eldest Time directed her great clockwork eye on the tiny angel that caught her clicking gears, and holy fire reached forward to teach the angel her place.

The planks of the clipper around Lynne began to peel and blacken, and the fire lapped at her heels.

This the angel of oceans ignored. What was her own pain before this task? It only proved she lived. It only proved she still had strength to feel!

Belle began to form the beginnings of a puzzled frown.

Even as she warred in higher places, Lynne gathered her strength and leaped into the sky.

Let the oceans flow through me by sky and sea.

Currents draw me home.

Harken cries for goddess and angel mother

I am needed!

To serve her people where she failed Hylas and Verdandi.

To save Esmie who would burn for a foolish woman’s sins!

At the apex of her leap, she drew forth her wings: wide as sails, sharp as ice, and steaming with the growing fury of Time itself.

Esmie will not finish that scream!

Lynne beat her wings, pinions brushing the waves. Even that was enough to blast craters in the slow-motion ripples, and she hurtled towards the horizon.

As Time nipped at her hair – slowed but not conquered.

As the flames expanded another inch.

The air was frozen and thick, given no time to react to her passage. Lynne ducked her head and turned her Will into the strength of another downbeat.

Her feathers tore valleys into the ocean, and droplets of seafoam evaporated against her cheeks. Her passage flattened the crests of waves, and she outrun the thunder of impact as the waves slowly began to heave in her wake.

What use this divinity if my heart lays charred?!

What use to grow beyond my madness when my children slip away?!

What use am I if I can’t even save them?!

In Wave’s Lament, the curious crowds watched the gleaming display on the bridge like fireworks. The more perceptive ones realized this was no Maiden display and opened their mouths to shout.

They would die.

Wave’s Lament would die.

Esmie

would

die!

Though she shot faster than the cannon, though she scattered the waves and scoured the skies, Lynne still tarried!

She tucked her chin and roared, “Clear my path!”

The air between her and Wave’s Lament tore itself a part, a tunnel of vacuum cold and slick.

Lynne carried a trail of sparks, half the burning ire of the Chorus and half the impact of particles against her skin. She careened forward into the vacuum, the world beyond her path blurring into long lines of color.

The hateful fire licked at the fallen decanter before Esmie’s feet. Another inch, another heartbeat, and it devoured the clay whole.

What use is love without the world to share?!

It boiled away the blessed water within.

Faster!

Time remained unyielding, beginning to end. Oldest of Foundations, inured to death. What was a city before the march of her gears? What was a world?

Everything!

Lynne blew through a cresting wave and left it roaring into steam in her wake. She strained her wings until her feathers stained to purple with pain. She wove holy words, tore currents from their beds, and stole another fraction of a second from the gears.

The sea in her path burned away as she crossed shallow waters, revealing the muddy homes of crabs for the fraction of an instant before the little creatures baked to death.

She flew at the head of a comet’s trail, streaking bright as the sun, crossing a hundred miles in a second.

Faster!

But she did not have another second before the fire claimed all she held dear.

Faster!

And even a mother’s desperate strength could not forestall Time.

Faster!

Lynne caught Light blazing bright in her heart and railed against every Foundation to ever lay its Law upon this world.

Who among you would let this be?!

From among the countless servants, she felt a single note respond to her need.

The weave to be bound by these words:

Diaspora beyond evil’s reach

Circumscribe the stars

That near should not be far

A lesson.

A memory.

A time when one could step between distant mountain peaks by fixating one’s eyes.

When one breath was the distance between stars.

Carrying her only hope, Lynne charged that sleeping Foundation.

The undying and the desperate collided in the frozen darkness between, and a Foundation woke.

What sorrow this?

Light and space, angel of color and cloud, who witnessed through eyes of endless sky.

They will die! My children will die!

Death must be. This you know.

Not like this! Not in the first blooming! Not to wilt when redemption has just begun!

The angel of oceans hurled her black spear into the Foundation’s whirling heart.

The clouds parted effortlessly, and it passed without harm.

Beyond time and motion, equal and opposite, two souls given wholly to their duty. A barrier impassable.

The Foundation regarded her with pity.

Death far reaching slumbers too near the surface.

Would you see all mankind once more beneath the yolk?

I sleep against the grasp of would-be kings.

A Foundation Song remembered Eden.

Separation: a gulf too vast for armies and angels both. Each world to dance alone. Separation: vast as time so that one man should never again think to seize fate of all.

Please! Lynne begged.

What sovereignty do you claim to open this way?

I have none, the angel of oceans admitted.

What right then that you should break my vigil?

For the sins Lynne would repay. For the people she would embrace. For the daughters she would teach.

For love.

The Foundation focused endless eyes and saw the angel of ocean weeping.

You would cast aside my Law for this?

Yes.

Knowing even that darkness must surely follow. Would you bear that sin?

Lynne was no stranger to sin. Yes!

The Foundation stilled, seeking, and found an answer in a Song older than the Chorus.

A whispering voice of dawn.

Then let this be.

The barrier before Lynne’s way crumbled. Heavens rewritten; physics unraveled. The impossible released from a Foundation’s grasp, and the way was as simple as a need and a Will.

Lynne lanced across the heavens, a line of Light across the skies. She stabbed through the gentle fabric between one place and the next, and she drew the thread close. She entered a roaring tunnel, its passage dark and its walls flowing with the span of miles like paintings in a museum hallway.

Malkuth surrendered, and she carried her raging water and her love home between one thought and the next.

She erupted in the center of Donovan’s hateful fire with her spear at the ready; caught the broken covenant stone by its raging core; and flung the inferno into the deep void.

It wept in her grasp, twice betrayed, as she carried it away.

I’m sorry, she whispered as it dissolved at last into ash.

For those moored to earth, it flashed like a quasar for a brief moment and then vanished into the sky.

Her waters roared through the hole she had carved, pouring like a sea from a pinprick in the air, and a wake of frost carpeted the city. The fires and the waters met, mixed, and swept a wall of fog into the basin of the shell.

Lynne of oceans released her war against callous Time and rose on her meteoric momentum into the sky above Wave’s Lament. Her cerulean wings paused, brushing the towers at either end of the suspension bridge.

Maiden.

Tempest.

Just her.

She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed a quaking sigh. “Thank you…thank you…”

To an angel I have never known and will likely never meet…thank you.

Should sin and darkness followed, then Lynne would be here to meet it.

***

Mortal men lived in a world set and measured. Though occluded and distant, there were at least Rules. The sun rose; the sun set. Death and taxes both took their cut.

Men neither heard nor conceived of the earthquake that tore through the weave of Light called a universe.

Thea the Illuminated felt very Foundations shake and roar, and she turned her gaze skyward.

The Chorus Sang even as the Law changed.

What was this world of men but an agreement, knit by Will and sanctified by sacrifice?

Greet wheels reversed their course; principles and principalities released their vigil at the gates. What was impossible this morning became an exercise for the reader with the afternoon, and all creation Sang with what was now and now had always been.

Thea stretched her arms, bathing in the eternal, ephemeral Song, and dreamed of which Inventor to tease with warp technology.

We must complete the immunization program first. Communicable disease control, vaccination, and germ theory. Let us not repeat the mistakes of past first contacts.

Then her alarms began to scream. Terrestrial, atmospheric, or orbital, they cried in unison before a wave of force across the electromagnetic spectrum that fried delicate instruments and pulverized floating metal.

In Deepbloom, Thea saw the nesting birds in Verdandi’s great tree suddenly leap to the sky in a panic.

On the Plateau, she watched the cragbears thrash against their harnesses and maul their handlers.

Astride the oceans, she stumbled against fisherman’s rigging as serpent leviathans thrashed to the surface.

In her newest laboratory, sealed with such care against further intrusion, her empty dolls began to weep.

Shortly before crashing, her supercomputer frantically flashed a warning:

Entity approaching.

Signature unknown.

***

The sky above Wave’s Lament split in a bloody wound, pried apart by hundreds of writhing, shadowed tendrils. As the air cracked apart, it moaned like the damned in dark parody of Song. The stain seeped across clouds, and droplets of fresh blood gathered instead of rain.

The Wyrm, ancient and dreadful, erupted through the wound and crashed with a colossal shudder atop Lynne’s holy temple. His claws gouged the damp stone, and his shrouded wings blew the cerulean banners from their posts. Stretching his compact, squirming body, he promptly announced himself for all to witness.

“Hello! I am Jörmungandr the Wyrm.” He flicked his barbed tail through the prayer wall, burying pilgrims in rock, and relished the fresh air against his scales.

He gave them a moment to properly appreciate his entrance.

“Where is the one who stands against the Chorus? What hero or villain has felled a Foundation?”

Already panicked from the explosion at Novia’s bridge, the people began to flee from the sound of this strange voice.

Atop the ruined bridge, Lynne turned towards her temple. She saw through mist like brightest day, and she beheld what intruded on her land.

Above the monster, the wound slowly began to close, leaving a violent bruise in its wake.

“Come now! No need to be shy. I seek the defiant soul with the courage to stand!”

“Who is that?” Esmie whispered softly, her knees still trembling.

“I do not know,” Lynne replied coldly.

The monster atop her temple yawned like a cat, stretching his jaws wide. His throat boiled, its depths shadow and lightning in furious storm. The wisps of shadow rolled and tossed across his body, making the serpent shiver even perched in plain sight.

“Surely you have a champion or two! I know a temple when I see one!” Jörmungandr punctuated his words with a swipe of his claws.

Chunks of the temple soared into the mist. The debris should have crashed into dozens of homes and killed scores of people, but Lynne’s element drained the strength from the rocks so that they sank gently to the roads between buildings.

“Esmie. I know you are scared from what just happened, but I need your help now.” Lynne called forth her spear. “Do you remember where the shell is armored?”

“I…I do!” the child replied, surprised to find the knowledge lurking in her mind.

“Then lead the people there.”

For a moment, Lynne regarded her spear. The icy black fury of the Tempest, condensed for war…

“Hells, I can’t see a thing,” Jörmungandr muttered.

Yet this is no time for the Maiden.

Inhaling, she steeled herself for war. Then she stabbed her spear forth, and a lane of mist cleared between her and this monster.

The Wyrm crouched, squat and broad like a bulldog. His squirming scales drank the sunlight without a glimmer, and his sinuous neck craned for a good look at this champion of Wave’s Lament.

“Nice to meet you,” he remarked, noting her billowing wings and black spear with equitable regard.

“Who are you, defiler, to assault my city?” she demanded, rising into the sky.

He lifted a claw to examine the temple’s crushed pyramidion. “Is this yours? I see you are fond of blue.”

Lynne sought the monster’s mettle through her waters. As the Maiden felt blood and breath, as the Tempest foresaw treacherous currents, she would…feel absolutely nothing at all.

Like a shape cut from the world, shadow intruding in the form of winged serpent.

A darkness self-contained, self-sufficient, and self-congratulatory.

Run, whispered the Tempest deep inside.

“What are you?” she breathed.

“Jörmungandr the Wyrm, among other things,” he repeated patiently. “My apologies for the intrusion. I was on a flight to Haven to surprise some old acquaintances, but this little gem caught my attention.”

“You are not welcome,” she retorted. “Depart.”

“Oh? Forgive me,” he rumbled, “but Charlotte Broadleaf made her invitation quite clear. I understand that I might be a touch early, but don’t rush on my account. I can wait while you whip up some virgin sacrifices.”

“There will be no further warnings.”

“But I have only just arrived!” the Wyrm protested, cracking his neck with tremendous, wet pops, “and I have been asleep for quite some time.”

He stretched his head, and a small thunderstorm burst across his scales. The electricity squirmed and wiggled into linked fibers, and those fibers congealed in turn to runes. The runes linked their tendrils into an arc, the arc into a circle, and a collar of bone-white light solidified behind his thick jaw. The collar groaned like an ancient machine, and it began to slowly rotate in place.

Words of creation, brazenly burned into the air.

Lynne read them warily: Knowledge; Fire; Shadow; Power; Life; Death. The seventh symbol confounded her, an angry crisscross like a wound that sizzled against the very air in rebellion.

“You wear runes like jewelry,” she challenged. She spoke slowly to buy time, gathering her Will in her breast. “Even the most arrogant of the magi did not dare so much.”

Esmie led the procession away, shouting in her squeaky voice. This time, her people heeded the call of the Azure-blessed.

“Magi did not require runes to be foolish,” agreed the Wyrm. “They played with fire, but they could hardly call that power their own, could they? Easily stolen, easily lost.” He watched the mists beginning to swirl into the angel’s wings with casual interest. “You seem busy. Would you mind if I read a moment while you prepare?”

Without waiting for a reply, he leaned forward, and the rune of Knowing beneath his throat burst to life.

A foul, ancient touch invaded Lynne’s mind.

The spitting image of Eden

Right down to the smell of petty lives

A world hidden so far from the bright lights of man

What morsels scurry here?

She staggered, clutching her spear, and fought the urge to retch.

“Tempest,” he named her, savoring her name like a treat. “Fury of the seas and pitiless end of unwary sailors.”

“I choose what name to bear!” she hissed, clutching her spear. The tides as far as Lumia began to buck, leaning towards her, and the clouds began to circle Wave’s Lament in a building dance.

“As you say, Lynne,” he remarked. “A soul so freshly knit your sutures still bleed. What drove you to challenge the Foundations themselves?”

Lynne let the seas rock in time with her heartbeat.

“I have given you fair warning,” she announced. “There will be no mercy.”

Jörmungandr crouched, grinning. “Show me.”

She hurled her spear.

He vaulted from the temple.

Her lance pierced the pyramid, bathing the entire complex in brittle hoarfrost, and vanished over the horizon.

“Nice weather today,” the Wyrm offered, rising on steady rhythm towards the turbulent clouds.

Lynne summoned her spear back and leaped after.

The Wyrm drifted into the growing the hurricane, still at the center of the whirling eyewall. “How does it feel when an angel grasps the world in her palm?” he mused. “Do you feel its pulse flutter at your touch?”

She grasped the clouds by Will alone.

“Are you ever tempted to squeeze, Lynne?”

Lynne slammed the hurricane’s eye shut like a maw around him. Rising higher, she let the winds whisper their secrets: the foreign presence in her world, the void where no waters touched. She felt him twisting, buffeted by gale winds, and readied her spear like a fisherman above a crystal-clear river.

The angel of oceans hurled the weapon once more.

The rune of Knowing flashed.

The Wyrm jerked aside, shadowy wings avoiding the spear by inches.

“I am no Gamchicoth, so easily tamed!” he called, projecting his voice through the roaring winds. “Nor am I particularly in need of a bath.”

She steered the hurricane, thrashing at him with the gale winds. In her city below, shingles began to wiggle from homes, and the trees bent double. A hail-heavy deluge began to pelt the city, the droplets cold as arctic waters.

The monster’s rune of Fire flared to life.

A firestorm erupted around him, so fierce the wind turned and fled, bleached dry as the desert. The hurricane shuddered, and Lynne cried out.

“Careful where you place your heart, dear angel,” counseled the monster. “Wouldn’t want you to end up like some of those mages of old, after all! Why, this one time–”

Having reached the apex of her flight, she folded her wings and dove spear first. She caught the beast dead in the crevice between his shoulder blades, and she bore him through the clouds and into the heaving sea.

The rune of Shadow flared, though, and he melted away before the impact with the sea floor.

Lynne pounded into the silt, empty handed, and snarled.

“Looking for someone?” Jörmungandr whispered from the corner of her eye.

“This is no game!” she hissed.

“I’ve never understood why you angels embrace aspects,” he continued. “Holy, higher beings, and you define yourself by limits!”

He slipped through her waves like a parasite, just ahead of her seeking Will…

“Moreover, if you feel such need to bind yourselves…wouldn’t it make more sense to pick a pure aspect? Like, say…Power.”

The rune of Power gleamed from the dark depths, and a foreign Will reached to steal her waves.

A foul mind intruded upon her domain. Into her eyes and ears. Mocked her as he wound himself into the silent pools and still waters of her peace. Her altar ran black with tar, the ocean began to roar, and she struggled not to retch.

This foul strength! She gasped. No Gamchicoth indeed!

What was this monster?! Where had he lurked to arrive like judgement too long deferred?

“Do you think you own the waves?” the Wyrm pondered, “Or are you merely uncontested?”

Lynne staggered and finally screamed at his burning, invasive touch, and her serpents heard. From snakes barely old enough to call ripples from a bath tub to the serpent of her priesthood, they raised their heads and bared their fangs.

Not for Tempest nor Maiden, but for Lynne.

They rushed into the treacherous sea, heedless of the darkness polluting the waters.

“Do you remember the Flood?” he asked. “I suppose not. You are rather young.”

His Power burned brighter, spiteful and confident. He wrested the waves from her grasp, and he began to build them higher. Higher, swelling, pulling away from every shore. Higher, blocking the horizon, casting a shadow across the works of men.

A new torrent to wipe the world clean.

And the elemental beasts met him amidst the crest. They hurled themselves into his pollution, guided by raw instinct, and tore at the shadow between droplets.

Jörmungandr roared in surprise. “What pests!” His squat body retreated and condensed in the depths before Lynne, scales gouged and chipped. “No respect for their elder at all!”

He was wounded by their bites. He is not invulnerable!

“Excuse me a moment, and I will instruct them.”

His rune of Death began to glow.

The Foundation of Separation surrendered before the Maiden…

But this creature would not heed tears.

But this terror deserves the Tempest!

Lynne had the anchors to guide her heart. She would not lose herself in the rage this time.

Alisandra…Esmie…Alice…

The bonds that made of Lynne a Goddess.

She grasped her spear and stepped through space. Appearing before the monster, she caught the rush of Death headfirst.

An angel, immortal and enduring, she felt a faint chill tickling down her back.

“Nice catch!” the Wyrm congratulated her.

Then she lunged forward and drove her spear up through the soft scales along the underside of his neck. Tempest strong, fury given purpose, she carried the monster up by the neck and back down into the mud.

“Are you beginning to feel it in your blood?” the monster whispered, swinging a claw at her.

She kicked away, easy as a mermaid, but left her spear buried in his breast.

“Perhaps beginning to remember the power beneath waves?”

Rage too was a guide. She heard now the love that both fueled her power and led her astray.

She began to pull currents into her outstretched palms.

“Growing tired of the play? Tell me - are you a scullery maid or a higher being?”

Tempest memories rose as the currents spun faster and compacted tighter:

Alisandra carves my name in runes with crayons on the floor, humming to herself.

She shows me the name Alice returned, and I feel my heart fill to bursting.

Tempest rage wrapped in the pain and loss.

Alice left me her last treasure.

The baby screams, inconsolable.

I would pitch the babe from the cliffs to speak to her once more.

But mortals never stay.

Tempest power, hers to command.

For the sea in all its fickle glory calls to me.

It always has.

The water in her palms boiled to steam. Then to plasma.

Jörmungandr finally squirmed free of the spear, braced his claws into the muck, and grinned. “If you are angel of oceans, then why don’t you command what you own?”

Twin spheres of pure fury spin in the cage of her fingertips.

An aspect, a path.

Like a Tempest and a Maiden met.

Only a starting point.

We can be more.

We serve.

She grasped fury in both hands and hurled down the judgment of the seas.

***

The seas heaved before an impact of astronomical proportions, and only the Will of a Goddess kept the waves from scouring the lands clear.

Tattered remains of Jörmungandr the Wyrm soared north through the upper atmosphere at rocket speeds, still trailing the fire of stars. The shadowed scales glowed from the force of impact, and the gaping holes in his stomach revealed the charnel smoke within.

But that bone white collar…that remained whole.

And the rune of Life began to glow.

Jörmungandr shuddered and rolled, catching the jet stream on tattered wings.

“Certainly a sentimental sort,” he drawled as his jaw reformed, “but a disappointment. What is there worth Knowing here? ‘Let us live as mortals might’! Who dredged up such tripe?!”

Sighing, the Wyrm surged power through Knowing like sonar.

In response, the island to his northwest sang like a tuning fork.

“Hello there,” he purred, banking.

There was a worldship buried in the crust beneath the so-called Isle of Peace. Cute, but hardly noteworthy. How else would humans have arrived so far from Eden while the Foundation of Separation still remained? With that Foundation suddenly felled, worldships were nothing but a tacky reminder of old times.

Yet the land itself…a pattern woven by the random sprawl of roads…pipes that fed fire into great centers of golden metal and then dispersed the destruction…recently disturbed…cracks in the Work now…

This little island whispered of a secret history between immortal factions.

“More interesting than an overbearing sea, at least,” he thought to himself.

He twisted, taking control of his flight once more as his scales began to cool.

His Knowing heard a mansion…a man…a defiant, oddly familiar soul at land’s edge.

Jörmungandr licked his lips. “Best not keep him waiting.”

***

Death was the fundamental constant of the universe.

Time was Death’s bride, oldest Foundation by definition.

Together they taught a lesson that remained a bitter pill even after millennia:

Some things would be regardless.

Sebastian the Witness still rested in his spell at the Mishkan mansion, enmeshed in Light and blood. Around him, the mansion glowed with tendrils like vines – a garden too tantalizing for the creature that approached to resist.

Verdandi’s seed rested in his palms, throbbing.

What good was prophecy when all roads narrowed to a single juncture? If Lynne had never mentioned this quest to Gabriel, would some other contrivance have sent the Archangel away?

Was God set against them?

At least Alisandra has fallen to Reverie, he thought. She is spared this darkness.

The Wyrm approached fast.

Sebastian shuddered at what he Witnessed.

At what he remembered.

Jörmungandr crashed among the flower gardens. His black claws tore through the rows of flowers, and his fat tail thrashed at the bottom of the swan pond. One flick was all it took to erase an old white gazebo, disused and largely forgotten.

“Hello,” said the creature. “I am Jörmungandr the Wyrm.”

“I know who you are,” Sebastian replied from his web. I know better than to hope my words will reach whatever heart remains in that husk. But he had no other weapons to bring to bear. “I know what you are.”

The Wyrm reached forward delicately to rap a claw against a pillar of Light sprouting like a tree before the manor. It rang like the call of dawn, and Sebastian tasted agony like nails scraped across his bones.

“Then I confess to a disadvantage.”

Knowing flared, foul and invasive.

Sebastian shook, fists clenched. “That magic…it will grant you unending knowledge and not a sliver of wisdom.”

Jörmungandr reared back in shock – though not at the angel’s words. “You! The lapdog of Eden!”

The angel of witness felt his lip curl in self-loathing.

“Then you escaped your master’s fate. Excellent! You should have called. I would be happy to give you a ride!”

“If I wished to be heard, I would have spoken.”

“Ah, that’s strange. This is my newest rune, and I haven’t quite worked all the kinks out yet. It names you Sebastian the Witness; Sebastian the pacifist.”

“We have no interest in dominion here. Depart.”

The Wyrm tore a tree from the garden with his clawtips and began to pluck the branches away. “This must be where Lynne got all those silly ideas from.”

“Eden is gone. Leave it in its grave.”

“Are you an angel or a dog to run straight from one master to the next?”

Sebastian ignored the jape. “Angel or demon, we treasure this world. We tread lightly. We live as mortals might. Let this be a place of harmony. We…I…have forsworn the old wars.”

Jörmungandr finished plucking the tree bare and flicked it towards the cliffs. It crashed across the headstone for Alice Mishkan, tore that stone free, and tumbled into the waters.

“Show me the man you used to be,” the Wyrm ordered.

“You are welcome in harmony,” the angel of witness continued. “Here there is peace. Hylas found service here. Verdandi found peace. Even the Stormmother begins anew. Sin is not an absolute. Even filth like us can–”

The Wyrm snatched a pillar of Light in his claws and snapped it with the same ease as the tree.

Sebastian felt a piece of himself snap as well.

“I have heard this speech before,” drawled the creature.

Sebastian bit back a scream.

“Wait…That hurt you?! You?! The Arm of the Tyrant?!”

The Witness strove to find his center. To see this through.

“Have you fallen asleep on your feet?!” The Wyrm flared Knowing brighter yet, demanding answers. “What history is this? A charade of servitude? Lawn work and limousines? Your greatest achievement in a thousand years is a pheasant recipe?!”

Sebastian smiled wryly to himself. “I seek to understand the Song. To find God.”

That rune brings knowledge, but never wisdom.

As one might Witness and yet never see.

“For all the good that will do!” retorted Jörmungandr.

The pillars of Light began to creep higher.

“I would apologize in my own voice,” Sebastian admitted.

Predictably, the Wyrm roared. “Apologize?! You would grovel?!”

The pillars of Light reached for each other like bars on a cage.

“I would understand,” Sebastian whispered.

“Is that the limit of eternity?” spat Jörmungandr.

Sebastian squeezed the seed tight.

The pillars of Light snapped shut like a vice.

“And you think this paltry trap is enough? Now this is just insulting!” Jörmungandr ignored the approaching Light and inhaled deeply. “Such ignorance for one gifted the eyes to See. Such negligence in your search…”

Knowing.

Fire.

Death.

“You never know what you might find.”

The dragon exhaled a cloud of dread and misery, churning black with the dying grief of countless dead. Mothers, fathers, children, worlds. They gasped their lasts, whimpered against the inevitable, wept and railed and begged for an uncaring God. They lit fires that darkness smothered and told themselves mythic lies to justify the yawning abyss waiting just beneath their feet.

The burning gasp of inevitable decay slithered and wormed and rotted his Light just like it clogged the gears in a universe of random, stupid matter that sputtered towards a pathetic, whimpering end.

It was the nature of the Witness to See.

Entropy and dust and silence poured through his eyes like a river poured through a straw.

Sebastian collapsed, and his Work unraveled.

A tiny glint of Light shot from his last twitching finger towards the heavens, and even a keen-eyed monster would miss that flicker.

As he sank into Reverie and despair, Sebastian heard the dragon spit. “Pathetic. Now then! Lumia…”

Gabriel…

Hurry…

***

The Wyrm chose for his perch the Cathedral of Fire. He alighted atop the towers, claws anchored against the balustrade outside Tura’s office and tail smashed across the plaza to the downtown offices. He spread himself wide, the better to be admired, and announced himself in a voice of thunder.

“Let all who walk this world with waking eyes heed my call! I am Jörmungandr, Lord of Hellfire, Keeper of Decay, Wyrm waiting at the end of time! Hear me and rejoice. Your Conclave lusted for God, and I have arrived!”

Above the Conclave, the cloud of phoenix banked, screaming, and flew east like warriors for the final battle.

In House Mishkan, a shadow panther in a linen closet dove for the pile of towels and hid like a whimpering kitten.

On the highway into Lumia, Oliver Oshton swore – his grief forgotten for a terrified instant. “Is that a dragon?!”

Freshly docked in the harbor, Belle and Louise held each other tight, and the priestesses wept. Where was the Stormmother to confront this foe?

On the ninth floor of House Visage’s skyscraper, Mirielle Visage watched the dragon preen, her arms crossed. Her fingers digging into the fabric of her dress. She turned to her companion and softly asked, “What are our options?”

Thea the Illuminated shook her head.

“A threat from beyond the Known,” Mirielle agreed.

A remnant of Eden.

Then, in the harbor, the waves erupted into a furious geyser, and a woman with wings of mist burst onto the paving stones.

“Dragon!” she screamed, the words from her lips casting lightning into the ocean. “We are not done here!”

Jörmungandr tilted his head, assaying the woman. Clinically, he noted the holy magic of the Cathedral attempting to scour his claws, but the soft pulse of Life easily fixed such trifling damage. What fool trusted in the faith of mortals to power a Great Work?

“I have tasted what you have to offer,” he noted. “Though if you need to vent, don’t let me stop you! While we’re at it, if you don’t mind, I have a few critiques for your philosophy. For example…”

“Dead monsters have no philosophy!” she retorted, drawing her lance from the air. “I will not be mocked!”

He paused.

Considered her words and their implications carefully.

“Very well,” the Wyrm assented. “Then I promise to take this seriously starting…”

Life.

Death.

Fire.

Shadow.

Power.

He grinned. “…now.”

The sun snuffed out.