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Beta'd by Sesparra

Making a weapon that Susan could reliably use and reliably keep on hand wasn't particularly hard, which was why I'd decided to do it first. Initially, I was going to make a club, given what she'd done to the table, but the more I thought about it, the more the idea of a length of chain appealed to me.

It would require more of a learning curve, yes, but she could patch over skill issues with supernatural speed, and it could serve as a set of restraints in a pinch to boot.

That took slightly longer than a simple club would have, and then I was facing down the herbs I'd gained.

There was something about the image of a garden's worth of plants just… abutting onto the Future Witness' hangar bay that simply struck me as absurd, but the gravity of the situation threw a pall over even that.

These herbs were connected to a god.

Now, to be fair, so was I, but being someone's kid was very much a different story from inviting some god that I couldn't pick out of a lineup into my spirit. I knew, somehow, that the herb was from some African micronation called Wakanda, but since we didn't have a Wakanda on our Earth, that was entirely too many gods to try and narrow down in the time I had- and that's assuming that there was a version of that god in this parallel.

"Nothing to it, I suppose," I said. "Aine, keep an eye out for Nick and the other nickelheads, just in case."

"Will do, Doctor," she said, making a token holographic appearance to give the impression that she was watching over me, which… I was thankful for, to be fair, but I'd long since gotten used to being watched, especially on the Future Witness.

I burrowed down into the sandy area within the garden set aside for the rite, allowed my Unseen Servants to pour the ground-up herb, in all its gently glowing glory, into my mouth, and then, as they were brushing more of the sand over me, I felt-

"Well, this is a new one," said a deep, resonating voice, and I opened my eyes to see a silhouette of a panther, picked out in violet light, all but looming over my recumbent form.

"I'm sorry for any trespass, ma'am, I just-"

She snorted, sounding much more amused now that I could actually pay attention to her body language, such as it was, and tone. "Not at all, dear girl. I just wasn't expecting to play host to such a… distinguished guest, let alone more than one of you."

She stepped back, and with her out of the way, I could see the aurora spreading across the whole starry sky, blue and green and violet light trailing in ribbons from horizon to horizon, stars glimmering between.

"It's… beautiful," said Lasciel, from right behind me somehow, and if anyone asks, no, I didn't squeak and jump as I whirled around.

She looked… different, here, than she did in the Forge, less like the stereotypical Greco-Roman beauty that she portrayed herself as and more like a patchwork. Her hands and forearms were strong, with the calluses and musculature of a veteran blacksmith's and yet no less slender and graceful for them, whereas her legs from the knees down were covered in military-green armored boots that reminded me of some variants of MJOLNIR armor that I'd seen from the IVs that spent time on Infinity every now and again. Her face was the same moonlight-pale shade that mine was, in the form I'd inherited from Selûne, though hers was shot through with veins of jade instead of gold, and in her torso there was… it wasn't exactly physically present, but I could sense a conflict, as if someone were trying to force two magnets together, north pole to north pole. One smelled like sulfur, and the other ozone, and it took a moment for me to place them as Hellfire and Soulfire warring inside her.

"You look… odd," I said, frowning. "Are you okay?"

She waved a hand. "Tis of no concern," she lied, and I could all but feel as the intensity of the imbalance in her torso, between the two different fires of power, surged.

"No, you're not," I said, and she seemed to almost deflate-

For a moment, the moon seemed to glow like Arizona's summer sun. By the time I blinked my eyes clear of spots, the Moonmaiden stood before us in all her divine splendor.

She was tall, perhaps an inch or two shorter than Harry, and wore a simple tunic over well-worn scale mail. At her side was belted a mace, and though her long arm rested just so that her hand was a hairsbreadth away from it, it was clear that she had no intent to draw it, which did a good deal to reassure Lasciel, who had tensed up, losing the facsimile of angelic grace and composure that she had on display, at her appearance. She smiled at us, lime-green eyes seeming to sparkle with moonlight, before turning her head to the panther and inclining it.

"Bast," she said, her voice higher and clearer but no less regal than the panther's. "You have my gratitude for allowing me this time to connect to my daughter despite the lack of Argentil."

"Think nothing of it, Elah," the panther goddess replied. "Were the Watchman available, he would be here as well, but his shadow has overreached his remit and he must act now to oppose it."

Lasciel was struck dumb. "He would come for one such as me?"

"Oh, indeed he would," said Selûne. "Of all the interactions the Celestial Forge has had with Yahweh's hosts, this is by far preferable to the last, and Uriel would welcome the child of the Webweaver as his sister had he the chance."

"I…" Lasciel wobbled as she trailed off, and the scent of ozone grew more dominant as the Hellfire receded. "Child?"

"The Celestial Forge works in mysterious ways," said Bast, looking about as smug as it was physically possible for a leopard's muzzle to. "You are the essence of Lasciel impressed onto a human soul, or at least partially human, and you cannot remain a part of the Fallen you're descended from after being changed as the Forge has changed the two of you."

I looked at her with fresh eyes, and now that I knew what I was looking at I could see where some of the features had come from- the hands were from the distillation of Goibnu's mastery of his craft, and her complexion was obviously from my connection with Selûne, but…

"What's with the boots?" I asked, drawing Bast's and Selûne's attention but not Lasciel's, still reeling over the revelation that she wasn't just a shadow of Lasciel- okay, that was gonna get confusing fast.

Selûne smiled. "She is as much Reclaimer as you are, and though the Precursors' Neural Physics doesn't quite match up with the way that metaphysics and souls exist in this world, it does have an effect on your soul, and hers as well. It makes her more… hopeful is the closest I can come to the concept without getting into talking about the nature of souls, which would take far more time than we have available to us at present, so suffice it to say that she is more capable of making a better future for herself."

That sounded… to be honest I wasn't entirely sure what to feel about all of this. I'd been mostly ignoring the fact that I'd picked up a fragment of one of the Fallen so far, what with both Nicodemus and the Forge as a whole being much more immediate as well as the protection it could offer me being an assurance that I could handle having her in my head in the short term without her trying to get me killed by walking into the road or something. The revelation that she wasn't just one of the Fallen, that she was actually growing and developing with me as the Forge stuck its oar in was… well, to be frank it was more than I had the emotional bandwidth or time to deal with today.

"That sounds like a whole lot of tomorrow's problem," I said, sounding a lot more tired than I actually was between divine constitution and having thoroughly fucked my sleep schedule over. "Right now I'm up to my eyeballs in alligators, Lasciel- fuck it, Lash will keep better than the sack of cats who has his hands on a big-time divine relic."

Lash jolted like I'd just stuck her under a defibrillator, and Selûne gave me a considering look before nodding. "Indeed," she said. "The Master of Shadows may be on the back foot, but if you do not seize the initiative, he will still be able to use the Shroud for his fell purpose."

"Can't have that, can we." I chuckled mirthlessly as I cracked my knuckles. "I'll see what I can't shake loose when I mug Nicky and the Nickelheads for their lunch money."

Bast huffed out a laugh. "I like you, godling. I just…" She trailed off, almost mournfully. "I hope you don't end up like the other Chosen of the Forge and Grimoire. Powerful though they may be, but the Adversary was cunning enough to overcome them despite all the power they accumulated and all the more dangerous for it."

I took a moment to measure my words before replying. "Is this an Oblivion War thing, or something else?"

"It's not… entirely unrelated, but-" Bast lowered her voice, here, and wasn't that just terrifying, something so powerful that just invoking their name could make a god in the heart of their own domain wary- "-He Who Walks Beside is much more insidious than any half-conscious rabble of elder gods, no matter how many there might be or how much it may open the path for them."

I felt a chill run down my spine. Before I'd died, the Walkers had played entirely too big a role in the fate of our world, between offering support to the Red Court, paving the way for Ethniu to attack Chicago, and ultimately tying up the Archive and her Venatori for long enough that she missed enough of the more insidious old gods slipping into our world that they could invade first Winter and then the Outer Gates themselves. With the three Knights of the Cross and myself among their number, hopefully we'd be able to patch that over and make sure that the Adversary wouldn't be able to tear down the Outer Gates, but… well, time would tell, on that front.

"I'm… familiar, yes," I said, fists clenching on thin air. Then, I looked down with no small degree of confusion, because while my left hand had closed around nothing, there was the sensation of leather wrappings inside my right hand.

"What the hell kind of sword is this?" I asked, hefting what looked to be a Greek-style leaf-shaped sword of solid silver, decorated with intricate filigree picking out winglike shapes and approximately half the length of one of my outstretched wings- in other words, too damn big, at least if not for the fact that I could feel it almost like I could my fingernails. It wasn't, strictly speaking, a part of me, but it had a strong enough connection to me that I could sort of tell physics to screw off, like when I really needed to fly around fast. Above all, though, looking at it made the rest of the world seem washed out and out of focus in comparison, with the exception of myself, the two goddesses, and Lash.

"The magic kind," said Bast, sounding more than mildly amused at the nonplussed expression on my face.

"It's a daiklave," Selûne offered. "If you pay attention, you should be able to feel the… depth of essence in the weapon, how deeply entwined with your own nature as my daughter it is."

I only reached out with my more arcane senses for a moment before slamming back into my body hard, overwhelmed by the raw pressure that was Bast's presence within her own realm, but she was right- the sword was all but bursting with the kind of inner moonlight that both she and I were.

"Okay," I said, rubbing at the headache that was treating the inside of my head like a trampoline, "anything else for the good of the cause? I don't mean to be rude, but being here is… I'm a little bit overwhelmed by how much of Bast I'm feeling and I'm hoping that once I turn off the connection that her herb is facilitating, that's gonna hurt less."

I hadn't known that a giant spectral panther was capable of looking sheepish, but apparently Bast could. "You have my apologies, young one. And…" She turned to Lash. "You, I have a feeling I will see you again."

Selûne pulled me into a hug that I took just a moment too long to return. "Take care of yourself, Molly. I'll hopefully have Argentil reestablished within this world's Astral Sea soon, and I hope to be able to invite both you and your family to visit."

"Thank you," I said, feeling a little awkward in the embrace of my kind of-mother– even if I did have the memories from a version of me who had grown up knowing she was my mother, I had a very limited amount of them, and my time as Charity Carpenter's daughter was much longer, but… I'd hopefully be able to reconcile the memories sooner than not.

She pulled away, offering me a knowing, too-sad look, before going to embrace Lash, whispering in her ear as she did so.

"Alrighty," I said, once she'd relinquished Lash. "Time to get this show on the road."

Bast's maw split open into what was perhaps the most terrifying grin I'd ever seen in person. "Kick some ass for me, young ones!"

And I shot upright, shedding sand as I took in a massive breath, one last hint of the half-acrid, half-metallic scent of the herb lingering before it vanished completely.

"Dr. Carpenter, are you okay?" asked Aine, concern visible on her hologram's face.

"Better than okay," I said, bringing my knees up to my chest and then kipping up with languid, feline grace that I definitely hadn't had earlier today. "I'm ready to introduce myself to Nicodemus properly."

And that's that!

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