A/N: Chap 50 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed and joined me on this ride. There are approximately twelve chapters left to go.
Chapter Fifty-One: Ecce Venit Cum Nubibus
In time, the region surrounding the Himalayan range would explode in the first fully nuclear war of most ancient Terra. But in those early days of the third millennium, the world was too rocked by the arrival of Scion, Endbringers and parahumans to have yet burned itself to ash with sectarian violence and nuclear wrath.
Sigyn and Loki traveled by train, just like mortals. Taylor had to assume that Loki and Sigyn, both being undying gods, had accumulated mortal wealth over the years and used it now. With her sister-selves on either side and Sunny acting as their guide through the Well of Eternity, they watched as their half-brother and his Aesir companion crossed Eurasia until they reached the small village of Lobuche.
The region around Mount Everest was so high nothing grew. It was a land of stone and snow, surrounded by the first gods of Earth, the mountains themselves. Those few mortals who still thought it worth climbing the mountain despite the chaos in the world gathered at the basic hotels and tea-houses, keeping the small village alive with their tourist money. They had survival and climbing gear to brave the harshest conditions on the planet.
Loki and Sigyn eschewed those preparations and walked past them. With Sigyn's magic, no one noticed.
"This god is at the peak?" Loki asked.
"He is the Sky Father, it is his domain."
Though Taylor did not retain any memories of her divinity, she did remember the many stories her father told her of his and Loki's adventures. She didn't realize at the time, of course, that he was speaking of himself and her half-brother. She just enjoyed the adventures of Kratos and Atreus. One of the things she remembered was that the two were astonishingly good climbers.
She saw it with her own eyes, now. Sigyn simply climbed onto his back, made small next to his height and powerful shoulders, and he began to climb up sometimes sheer rock walls without any equipment at all. He climbed without pause or hesitation, showing no signs of fatigue. Though he carried Olympian blood, his mother's blood was of the Jotuns–the shapers of stone and steel. His divine nature was sufficient to achieve his ascent.
At some point, though, the surrounding, stunning views became blurry. No so much obscured with cloud as just…out of focus.
"They've entered a domain," Sabbat noted.
Still Loki climbed. Taylor couldn't help but notice the contented expression on Sigyn's face as she clung to his back, resting her cheeks between his powerful shoulder blades. Within the vision of the Well of Eternity, the climb lasted only seconds–a blink of an eye. But when Loki reached the summit, it felt as if they'd been watching him climb for hours.
He arrived at a stone circle. Smaller, and more ancient and weathered than the stone circles that dotted northern Europe. Each stone bore ancient hand-paintings of animals and stick people hunting. Some bore shallow carvings, but even so none of the stones were even as tall as Loki. Taylor had no doubt they each weighed a ton or more, but they were not as large as the monoliths she'd come to read about in her ancient days.
A stone brazier burned brightly in the center of the circle. Squatting down before the fire was a man clad only in a single fur kilt. His skin was the color of stained oak, weathered and wrinkled with the ages. White hair and a wispy beard hung almost to his waist. He might have been large and powerful once, but now seemed shrunken and wasted. Most striking, though, were his eyes. Though his skin was dark and rich, his eyes were the color of the sky.
"Dyeus Phater," Sigyn said as she climbed down from Loki's back. She stepped to the ancient being, and though she herself was a goddess, she prostrated herself down all the way to the carved rock of the summit floor.
"YOU DID WELL TO BRING HIM, CHILD."
Even through the vision, Taylor winced in pain and the absurd power of the ancient god's words. Sabbat gasped, while Telos shook her head. "Is that a First Language?"
"It's Enuncia," Taylor said, having learned a few of the words over the millenia. "That god speaks only in the words of Creation."
On the summit, Loki regarded the prostrate Sigyn and the most ancient god with a schooled expression. "You sent her to bring me here?"
'THE CHILD CAME TO ME AFTER YOU DESTROYED HER WORLD, BOY. SHE SOUGHT WISDOM, AND I SHARED SUCH WITH HER. YOU COME SEEKING POWER TO BE MORE THAN YOU ARE. WHY?"
"I wish to defeat the Destroyer of All things."
"AND THEN WHAT?"
The question caught Loki off guard as much as it did Taylor. "Then I will stand guard over humanity should another come."
"AND ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER. WHAT SHALL YOU DO, WAR-SON, WHEN THE NEXT DESTROYER IS HUMANITY ITSELF?"
"I will do what I must."
The ancient god regarded Loki in silence, his deeply lined face unreadable. "LOKI LAUFFEYSON STANDS IN THE FIRE."
Loki's body jerked like a puppet on a string. The ancient god spoke with the words of creation. His words were not a command, but rather an inevitability, for with those words the fact of Loki stepping into the fire became an unavoidable truth. God or not, Jotun or not, Loki could not change this new, unavoidable fact that he would stand in the fire.
He did so, moving into the sightly elevated stone brazier. The fire licked around his ankles, but did not appear to burn. Surprisingly, Sigyn stood and joined him, molding herself to his side.
"I do not betray you," she said as she clung to him. "Phater shall do as I told you he would. He spoke it, thus it must be so."
Phater stood from his squatting position–lean and ancient without a hint of fat. He stood examining the stone circle with those startling blue eyes until, somehow, he looked directly at Taylor.
Through time and space, somehow, he saw her. "YOU WILL LEARN."
Loki thought the god spoke to him. Perhaps he did, and Taylor was just imagining it. With that statement, Dyeus Phater raised his hand, and the summit of the mountain dropped.
Sigyn gasped but did not cry out. Loki stood trapped within the fire, as if somehow it held him perfectly still, as the stone circle sank into the granite of Mount Everest. If not for the magical flame at the heart of the ancient god's domain, they would have been cast into absolute darkness.
Abruptly they were in another place–a vast cavern so far under the mountain Taylor could almost feel the heat of the Earth's mantle across the millennia and light years.
"SEE NOW THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE GODS," Phater declared. The magic of the fire released Loki and Sigyn, and booths tumbled from the brazier into the cavern. Just like the stone circle that had carried them down, the nearest walls of the cavern were filled with ancient hand-paintings of primitive animals and beings. Some of the beings had horns, others wings. All the drawings were crude–little more than stick figures.
Loki looked around, obviously wishing to speak, but he held his tongue and waited. Phater, too, waited, until finally he nodded. "IT IS GOOD. SEE. LEARN. SPEAK NOT WITHOUT MEANING OR PURPOSE. IT IS LANGUAGE THAT MAKES MAN HIGHER THAN ANIMAL. IT IS HOLY LANGUAGE THAT MAKES GODS HIGHER THAN MAN. COME, LAUFFEYSON, AND I SHALL SHOW YOU A THING."
The ancient god led Loki and Sigyn down the length of the cavern. The walls, just like the walls of the Well of Eternity, seemed to hold the memory of moonlight. They cast a gentle, dull silver glow across the sands of the cavern, until at last they arrived at another ancient stone structure. It looked, to Taylor, like the base of a tower that had fallen eons ago.
"What is this place?"
"THE FIRST AND GREATEST SIN OF MANKIND," Phater declared. "COME AND YOU SHALL SEE."
Loki followed the eldest god into the chamber. Within were twenty silver columns filled with carved symbols, each one rising to the shattered roof. "What is this place?"
"A PLACE OF SECRETS AND INFINITE DREAMS," Phater said. "WHERE MANKIND STOLE THE FIRE FROM THE GODS."
Within the center of the chamber, Loki saw a vision of the ancient past, just as Taylor and her sister-selves saw him as their own vision. A vision of a vision, back to the dawn of humanity. He saw twenty figures in robes of hand-woven linen and fur in a time before silk was ever harvested by man. They stood with their hands locked together as they spoke Words of Creation never intended for mortal mouths. The words burned them and ruptured the flesh of their throats and bodies. The unleashing of the power by mere mortals caused frost to form along the obsidian floor within the fallen tower base.
The unholy power they harvested was directed against ghostly soldiers in leather armor bearing bronze or stone-tipped spears. The Enuncia caused the floors to melt under their steps; for their bodies to be shattered into goo and sprayed across the walls. For all the harm it caused the casters, it proved a devastating weapon against their enemies.
Into this vision came a younger Dyeus Phater, a god at his prime. He wore armor forged from celestial bronze stronger than any steel, with a circlet of silver the color of the clouds in the sky he held dominion over. He strode into the midst of soldiers being eviscerated by the unleashed divine magic of the shamans, and spoke a word of creation.
"ENOUGH!"
Such was the stolen power of the shamans that somehow they resisted what even gods might not have been able to fight. Phater did not stop with that lone setback, though. As the shamans spoke their un-words and made their nil-song of the Words of Creation, the air solidified and grew as hot as a star. Dyeus Phater winced but pushed on against the power arrayed against him. Fire billowed around him as his celestial bronze armor began to grow hot with the fire of Chaos unleashed.
Solid shadows took form across the walls, while rainbows burst and streaked. Under that light and shadow, Taylor saw ancient symbols of Enuncia script. Not godly runes, but the forebearers of divine runes themselves. The first written language on earth, from a time when all spoken human language was known to all men in a single tongue.
The ancient god in the silver crown of leaves surged forward through the magical assault, and lashed out with a burst of pure divine power. Those shamans in the circle nearest him were tossed bodily into the air. He drew a short sword that caught fire in his hands, and behind him more soldiers poured into the chamber unopposed by the Chaotic magic of the shamans.
In the face of the single god's wrath and his army behind him, the surviving Shamans panicked, and in that moment lost control of the Words they spoke. The power they attempted to harness quickly overcame them and burned them from within so intensely they fell to the floor in clouds of ash and burned linen.
A second figure stepped into the vision. Taylor gasped. "Oll?"
"Who?" Sabbat asked.
"I met that man, during some of my lifetimes," Taylor said. "He went by Oll at the time. But he was born Enkidu. Not a god, but a divine creation."
"Enkidu, as in the companion of Gilgamesh?" Telos asked.
The long-ago figure in the finely wrought bronze armor stepped into the chamber beside the younger, powerful god Dyeus Phater. It's over, the vision of the ancient man said to the god. Do whatever you need to do to grind this this stuff into dust and it's done.
The long-ago vision of Phater shook his crowned head. "NOT YET."
It was obvious the two disagreed. As they argued, Taylor felt a strange sense of dread.
"Do you understand now, girly-child?" Sunny said softly.
"Yes." Taylor whispered the word.
"Understand what?" Telos asked.
"Look at the symbols on those pillars," Sabbat said. She, too, understood. "Every word of creation. Somehow, the ancient shamans captured every single word. Enochian, it was called. Those pillars hold the power of the most ancient gods. Odin probably did come here to learn. So would have Zeus, and the Ennead of Egypt. Erda. Every god would have had to come to Dyeus Phater to learn the Words of Creation. He was the father…"
"Of all the modern gods," Sunny finished. "Even me, in a way."
Phater and Enkidu continued to argue. "YOU CANNOT SEE THE FUTURE, MY FRIEND. BUT I CAN." Phater turned and looked not to Loki and his future self, but somehow, once again, even this far more ancient incarnation of Phater seemed to lock eyes with Taylor across the ages. "BUT I… I CAN SEE IT. I CAN SEE THE FUTURE'S SHADOW."
The long-ago vision of Enkidu stomped his foot in frustration. This place must become dust, and its secrets with it!
"THERE ARE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE IMAGINED COMING," Phater declared. And because he spoke the Words of Creation, it was a statement of fact that could not be argued. "THE SORCERERS AND GODS AND HORRORS OF TODAY ARE NOTHING. THE TIDE WILL RISE, AND WITH IT POWERS THAT WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING. THE WORLD OF HUMANITY IS SMALL, BUT ONE DAY IT WILL NOT BE, AND WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TOPPLE A SINGLE TOWER TO SAVE HUMANITY. WE WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO DO MORE."
As the ancient vision within a vision of Phater spoke, Telos took Taylor's free hand and slowly pointed to one of the silver columns. Taylor followed her pointing finger and saw it–the ancient symbol that she, and she alone, bore on the small of her back.
"Sunny, is that…?"
"Yup," Sunny said, nodding somberly. "Brigid came here, too, when she lost her son to the Formians eons ago. She learned the first words so that she might craft the lands of the Tuatha De. She shared that knowledge with yah mum."
The rune that Brigid the Smith provided to their mother to ensure that Telos did not suffer the same fate as Baldur was, itself, a Word of Creation. A symbol of life itself imprinted in the small of Taylor's back.
Within the vision, Loki turned on the ancient one. "Why are you showing me this?" Loki asked. "How will this help me defeat the Destroyer?"
The vision within the vision, of the far ancient past, faded. Taylor couldn't help but wonder if what they saw was the basis for the Tower of Babel itself. Did Phater assume the role of Gilgamesh, if Enkidu was his companion during that war?
"YOU HAVE EYES TO SEE, BOY. YOU HAVE A MIND TO THINK, AND MAGIC TO WIELD. WHY DO YOU THINK I BROUGHT YOU HERE?"
Loki drifted to the columns. He looked up at the first and quickly scanned it, walking around the twenty-foot structure as he took in every symbol as only a divine being might. He glanced at Sigyn. "You have learned this tongue?"
"A few words only," she admitted. "Idunn's spell was nothing of the kind, but rather words of healing on the third column. I do not wield the power to speak them as the Sky Father could, or as a grandson of Zeus and son of Lauffey might."
Loki drifted on to the next column, and the next. Taylor, Sabbat and Telos moved with him with Sunny guiding them the whole time.
His eyes were the same shade of green as Taylor's were–as their father's. He studied the columns intently, learning and mouthing the words though he did not dare speak them aloud for fear they could bring down the mountain itself. And Taylor and her sister-selves learned right along with him.
Dyeus Phater said nothing; he squatted down on the obsidian floor and watched, patiently, as Loki learned. As Taylor and her sister-selves learned.
"You understand them?" Sigyn asked.
"I've always had a knack for language," Loki said.
"YOU SPOKE THE TONGUE OF THE WORLD SERPENT," Phater noted from his squatting position. He turned as if to glance over his shoulder, speaking to Loki but looking back at where Taylor and her sister-selves watched. "YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN THE LANGUAGE OF APOPHIS. OF TYPHON. THIS YOUR MOTHER GIFTED YOU. IT IS WHY YOU ARE HERE."
Loki moved intently, not rushing as he studied each of the symbols. Somehow, he just knew how to speak the words the symbols represented. Taylor wondered if Sabbat, with her Vanir magic, could do the same.
Finally, Loki returned to the center of the floor where the ancient god squatted. He sank down into a sitting position himself. "The Destroyer of All things encompasses many realities," he noted. "Does it know these words?"
"THE WORDS PREDATE THIS WORLD. THEY ARE THE SOUNDS OF CREATION ITSELF. THE DESTROYER OF ALL THINGS IS A RELIC FROM THAT EARLIEST TIME. IT CAME INTO CREATION BEFORE THIS WORLD FORMED FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FIRES. IT SPOKE WORDS, AND REALITY HERE WAS SPLIT INTO A MULTITUDE OF REALMS. WHEN IT PERISHES, THOSE REALMS SHALL PERISH WITH IT, JUST AS THE NINE REALMS OF THE CHILD'S PEOPLE PERISHED."
"You offer me a weapon the enemy already possesses, then," Loki said.
"I OFFER YOU WISDOM. I CANNOT MAKE YOU WISE."
"If the Destroyer wins, the earth will be finished," Loki said, showing the first sign of agitation since arriving. His carefully wrought control cracked in the implacable face of the most ancient of gods. "Not just humanity, but the planet itself will cease. And you give me riddles and clues?"
"POWER MUST BE EARNED, BOY. KNOWLEDGE MUST BE LEARNED. YOU CANNOT STEAL TRUTH. YOU CANNOT FORCE UNDERSTANDING. IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU ARE HERE, THEN YOU ARE NOT THE ONE THIS CAVERN IS MEANT FOR. OTHER CHAMPIONS WILL COME. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY CHILD OF WAR."
For the first time, Loki's eyes flashed with rage. "I lost my wife. I lost my children. I gave everything to fight that…that damned dragon from the stars. They all died! Almost two thousand years of laughter and love lost in the flash of mortal fire, and you tell me other champions will come? My father remained hidden like a coward. Don't you dare tell me I am not the champion!"
Loki's rage and anguish was so intense he rose to his feet as he raged; the air shimmered hotly around him, as if his skin burned. He'd seemed so calm and collected when Sigyn healed him; only now did Taylor see how terribly he hurt from the loss of his family and the crushing defeat he and the other gods suffered.
Dyeus Phater did not bother to rise as he regarded the younger god. "YOUR ANGER AND PAIN DOES NOTHING. YOU EITHER ARE, OR YOU ARE NOT. YOU HAVE FAILED HERE, AND SO LOKI LAUFFEYSON SHALL…"
"SILENCE!" Loki's voice whipped with power as he spoke a Word of Creation as well. "Tell me how to defeat the Destroyer!"
Phater rose to his feet, and as he did so he seemed to expand as his own body flickered with elemental power. Rainbows and shadows flittered against the silver columns an the obsidian walls around them. "NO GOD OF THIS WORLD ALONE CAN DEFEAT THE DESTROYER OF ALL THINGS WITHOUT SACRIFICE. NO CHAMPION SHALL SLAY THE DRAGON WITHOUT THEIR OWN LIFE'S BLOOD.'
"Then I'll die, damn it all!" Loki roared the words. "Every god to ever live will die if that's what it takes to avenge my family!"
"AND THAT, LOKI LAUFFEYSON, IS WHY YOU ARE NOT THE CHAMPION TO DEFEAT THE DESTROYER."
Loki stood frozen, his face a rictus of pain, regret and rage. Sigyn moved closer to the far wall, her beautiful features torn between the most ancient of all human gods, and one of the youngest.
Taylor and her sister-selves waited for the Sky Father to speak the words that would command Loki to leave. To eject him from this domain. He did not. The most ancient of human gods stood with a blank expression on his weathered, oaken face, as if waiting.
When Loki struck, he did so with divine speed and power, but he used an ancient, mortally-crafted knife of shaped obsidian. The knife simply appeared in his hand as he surged across the floor.
Dyeus Phater did not defend himself. He obviously expected the attack, but made no move to stop it despite his own prodigious power. The knife slammed home into his once broad chest, and the power of the blow was such that it lifted the ancient god wholly off his feet before Loki crushed him down against the floor.
"I will show you what can be taken!" Loki shouted through tears of rage and anger. He began to speak ancient Jotun words, soul-magic that in future ages would be considered the darkest and most evil of magics.
"I never knew," Taylor whispered. "I never understood."
"What's he doing?" Telos asked, horrified.
Sabbat, with her bifrost eyes, understood the exact details better than anyone. "Oh, Atreus," she whispered in dismay.
To Taylor's mortal eyes, a cloud of ephemeral blue smoke hung between the gasping ancient and Loki. The younger god knelt with his eyes closed, his lips moving in a constant litany of the Jotun spell of souls. Taylor remembered her father's stories, of how the Jotun had hidden themselves away from Odin's reach by hiding their souls in receptacles. It was a unique aspect of their divinity.
What Loki was doing was not just hiding Dyeus Phater's ancient, divine soul–he was consuming it.
As they watched, the reddish mane of Loki's hair, restored by Sigyn's magic after Moscow, began to darken to a deep black color. It was the same color as Phater's hair when the god was young at the dawn of humanity.
His pale, Norse skin tone grew more tanned as he absorbed more and more traits from the Ancient One. All the time Phater made no move to fight back or resist. He turned his head slightly, until he could see Taylor and her sister-selves from the corner of his eyes. He continued to stare at them until, finally, the color faded from his eyes entirely and they sank back into his skull.
Soon, even that disappeared as the body of the ancient good dissolved into a cloud of stars that Loki absorbed, just like everything else.
When it was over, Loki fell back until he sat on the obsidian floor and stared into the space around them. Sigyn cautiously approached him, her face set.
"I remember so much now," Loki whispered. Taylor couldn't tell if he spoke to Sigyn, or to himself. "I remember the dawn of sentience. The first thoughts. The first prayers. I remember Odin when he was young. Zeus begging for power to defend himself and his brothers from Cronus.'
"You are the Phater?" Sigyn drifted closer, fascinated.
"I am…more," he whispered. As if rousing himself, he looked up and studied her intently. "You thought this might happen. The Sky Father told you to fetch me. You knew I might do this."
"He said it was necessary. For hope."
Loki stood, and as Taylor watched the already physically perfect Jotun seemed to grow before her eyes as he became more. He held out his hand, and without hesitation Sigyn took it. "You are mine."
"I am," she said simply.
Whatever else he might have said was lost in a terrible, roaring sound like a thousand typhoons lashing at the cave around them. Rainbow light glinted painfully across the carved, painted walls as space itself shattered, and suddenly the previously empty domain of the sky father was filled with something…else.
A mountain of flesh filled the cavern. Gray, and lifeless, the mass defied any better description. Under the unsparing light neither Taylor nor the others could see any lines or features at all over the mountain of soft gray tissue.
At first, anyway. After a few moments of concentration, Taylor could see protruding body parts. Arms, hands, legs. The outlines of torsos both feminine and male. A forest of them came into detail, as if her eyes refused to see them at first. Each body part was exquisitely formed, like hand or foot models. Each torso was sculpted and perfect, the feminine with beautifully shaped breasts, the masculine with sculpted abs and broad shoulders.
Past the perfect parts she saw the imperfect, the in-progress. In some spots, she saw limbs connected to each other in grotesque fashions, in other places she could see only stretches of skin, veins, muscles or exposed bone, as if something had been experimenting or building those various parts.
"Oh gods," Sabbat said. "It's…Scion! Is this where his body fell?"
Taylor, though, understood. Her father explained it all decades later during her second life, and she realized then what had happened. Time moved differently in the realms of the gods.
When she looked at Sunny, the goddess nodded in silent confirmation.
"It's not Scion," she explained to the others. "There were two Destroyers–they traveled in pairs. One was injured by the aegis of the gods that protected Earth. Scion was the other. This? This was Eden, the one injured upon arriving. She's appeared like this because we just killed Scion, and the realms they created collapsed. Telos has been shattered. In his quest to get powerful enough to save the Earth from Scion, Loki missed the fight entirely."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
"Wait," Sunny said.
"What for what?" Telos asked.
"Understanding," the ancient goddess said.
The sound of rocks crumbling echoed through the cavern. The three aspects of Telos-that-was turned as one, and saw a powerful-looking, rugged figure walking through the cavern. Telos gasped, while Sabbat helped her hands to her mouth. Time had passed, the dust from Eden's collapse had long since settled.
"Dad," Taylor whispered.
He wore a khaki uniform with the insignia of the Saharan Confederation. Bearded and bald, but with a physique to rival a space marine, the figure moved with calm assurance through this strange, shadowy realm they found themselves in. He looked exactly how he used to, when they all lived their first life. This was not Malcador the old Psyker–this was Kratos as they knew him, strong and powerful.
A shimmering, strikingly beautiful woman followed. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and shimmering eyes the color of freshly cut emeralds. Where the strong figure wore simple fatigues, this woman wore exquisite armor that moved with her as if alive, which included wings so perfectly made they might have been alive.
"It's close, I can feel it," the woman said.
"Is that…Glastig Uaine?" Telos gasped.
Taylor, though, understood. From her studies of that second life, she knew who she was looking at. "Not by this time. Her name is Ciara, the demigod daughter of Brigid. She was corrupted by a parahuman power, but regained Brigid's grace. She died on Mars, just a few years after my first rebirth. Dad never told me how."
Their father and his young-seeming companion made their way through the cavern with sure but cautious steps. "Sunny, when is this?" Taylor whispered as if those within the vision might hear her.
"Forty or so years after yah died," Sunny said. "He's been hunting. Cleansing tah world."
Kratos and his stunning companion turned through the shadows until they came to the impossible sight of the fallen Entity. "Exactly as you said," their long-dead father said. His voice sounded deep and commanding, and Taylor craved to hang on to every syllable of it.
"It's contained, but I don't know how." The woman, Ciera, stepped to father's side and raised a hand, eyes closed, as she seemed to search for something. "We're not alone."
A new figure stepped out of the shadows, and Kratos instantly went on alert. A massive, shimmering ax virtually flew into his hands from a cradle he'd worn across his back. "Name yourself!"
Loki/Phater looked nothing like Atreus. He stood now as tall as a space marine, with stern, powerful features on a long face. Sabbat almost fell to her knee, because despite everything she had gone through conditioning and now looked upon the youthful face she knew so well. "The Emperor. Our brother is the Emperor of Mankind."
The ancient vision spoke to Kratos. "You may call me Nari. As the child has noted, the destroyer's body has been contained for now. But it cannot remain on this world."
"I should know you, but I do not," Kratos said. "You are the god of this mountain?"
"Yes. I was coming to fight the first dragon from beyond, but…was not in time."
"Many gods died in that fight," Kratos said. "Many more powerful than even us. Your death would have done little."
"Would that have mattered? We don't do what we do because it is written, we do it because it is the right thing to do."
Kratos froze. His ax actually slipped from his fingers until its heavy blade rested against the stone of the cavern floor. "Where did you hear those words?"
"From you." The tall, powerful figure moved closer, easily a foot taller than Kratos himself. "I was at Moscow. Angrboda, my children. My entire tribe joined with the Wild Hunt and other gods. We fought, and we failed. You should have been there."
"Atreus," Kratos whispered.
"Why did you not fight at my side, father?"
Kratos ground his teeth. "Your sister was newly born. Six days old. Her mother had been rendered mortal. I had to protect my child."
"Was I not your child as well?"
"You were a man grown. A god in your own right, and powerful, my son. You did not need my protection. Taylor did."
"Didn't I? Scion burned the Ironwood, father. He drove us out of our realm and into the mortal plane. We lost our domain. But we fought. If you had been with us in Moscow…"
"I would have died, and Scion would have won," Kratos said. "What have you done, Atreus? Why do you look this way?"
The younger god's eyes flashed. "I did what I had to do! Because it was right! Because I was willing to do what I had to!" He turned and regarded the obscene wall of flesh. "It's not over, father. Now you have to choose again. Your son, or the memory of your lost daughter. Help me save the world, Father. Together, we can save them all. Just like she did."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The visions of the past faded. All that remained were three living aspects of a long-dead god, and the ghost of another.
In some indeterminable distance, they saw the silhouette of two trees, and a figure standing between them in an umbra of golden light. In Telos' name…
"Brace yahselves, now," Sunny warned them. "Theah's one last thing yah need to see. This ain't no easy thing to behold."
In the distance, another vision rose. Of the Emperor of Mankind dying on his Golden Throne. With his mortal shell crumbling under the weight of ten thousand years of psychic power, at long last the soul within–suborned and twisted and shaped by the pain and death of ten millennia–ascended into the godhood not of humanity, but of the Warp Itself.
His ephemeral body rose from the golden throne as the doomsday weapon built within it triggered. Just like Scion would have used the destruction of Earth to power his flight to his next world, the death of Terra, and the reaping of quadrillions of souls, empowered the Emperor beyond what even dread Slanesh enjoyed during his birth pains.
As the Fifth Warp God was born from death and despair, the entire Terran star system was obliterated in a new Eye of Terror larger and more destructive than that which brought the Aeldari Empire down. A Dark King rose to enslave humanity beyond even the worst nightmares of an already dark and destructive Imperium.
This time, Taylor knew, there was no Ollanius Persson to remind the remnant of Dyeus Phater within the Emperor of his links to humanity. No Malcador the Sigillite to pull on the lingering loyalty of the son within the Emperor. Ten thousand years of consuming the souls of psykers to power the Astronomicon–ten thousand years straddling the line between true death and not-life–removed all traces of compassion and humanity from within the god.
His rise was flanked by hordes of winged Saints and ghostly gray Astartes, swarming as his new army of warpspawn to secure his Domain within the Warp. The Dark King quickly became everywhere and everything, fusing and burning everything around him with the scorching radiance of his power.
Whole star systems turned to ash. The four lesser gods of Chaos were consumed in his rage. The entire galaxy burned as he swept through all of creation in order to establish perfect, eternal, unending and unyielding ORDER.
Taylor was crying. She didn't realize it at first, until she felt her own tears on her hands. Beside her, Sabbat sunk down into a squatting position, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer.
Telos simply stared, dumbfounded. "I don't understand. He's destroying everything. I thought… Why…?"
"'Every god to ever live will die if that's what it takes to avenge my family.' That's what he said, remember?" Sabbat spoke softly as the three of them watched the end of all things. Their brother had become, more than Scion, the Destroyer of All Things.
Taylor, though, was thinking about something else they saw here at the Well of Eternity. The words Dyeus Phater spoke to Enkidu, even as he seemed to stare across time and space at Taylor.
THE SORCERERS AND GODS AND HORRORS OF TODAY ARE NOTHING. THE TIDE WILL RISE, AND WITH IT POWERS THAT WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING. THE WORLD OF HUMANITY IS SMALL, BUT ONE DAY IT WILL NOT BE, AND WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TOPPLE A SINGLE TOWER TO SAVE HUMANITY. WE WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO DO MORE.
"Do you see, now, Taylor?"
Taylor blinked back her tears. A glance to either side showed Sabbat and Telos both enthralled and horrified of the vision of the future. Sunny spoke to her, and her alone.
"Why me?"
The goddess stepped forward and gently took both Taylor's hands in hers, pulling her down until she was kneeling before the much shorter Inuit goddess. Again, neither Sabbat nor Telos seemed to notice, or hear.
Sunny changed before her eyes. The ancient wrinkles smoothed, and the light of her eyes took on the golden-orange glow of dawn. This was her true form, the goddess who brought joy to the hearts of men. She spoke not in her accented English, but in her ancient tongue of Inuktitut. Somehow, in this place beyond reality, Taylor still understood her.
"It was you, Taylor. The human daughter of Daniel and Annette Hebert. You were always the key to the future. We gods…we foolish, broken gods…always and without fail lost sight of our role. Our purpose was never to rule over humanity. It was never to control their will. It was, always and forever, to protect them. And the only way to do that is to understand them. And the only way to understand them is to have been them."
Beyond Sunny, the vision of the Dark King continued to sweep across the cosmos. The four lesser gods of Chaos were long gone, consumed in the Dark King's rage and unstoppable determination. The Warp ceased, as did true space, while his power swept out from the galaxy itself to the surrounding void. He had no physical form any more, and moved beyond the speed of thought and life.
"You have been every human," Ataksak continued. "Mother. Daughter. Aunt and teacher. Lover and wife. Soldier and refugee. You have given birth to entire peoples. You've led in faith, and been worshiped not as a god, but as your own mortal self. You are the mother of humanity, and it is only a mother that can deliver humanity from its darkness. I believe some small part of your brother remains within the whole, and knows this to be true. It is why, in his own way, he has helped you to this point."
"I've suffered so much," Taylor whispered as tears poured down her cheeks.
"As has humanity, now and in the future," Ataksak agreed. "Which is why it had to be you. Your brother thought he loved humanity, but he never loved any one human. You…you love them all, each and every one."
The Inuit goddess turned until she stood at Taylor's side, holding her hand. She pointed not to the numbing vision of the End of All Things, but to the silhouette of the woman between the trees, calling them home.
"Your father and mother are waiting for you. Lisa, and Marie and Shaquelle. All of them have waited these many, many eons for you to return. It is time to go home, not as conqueror, but as a savior."
Taylor blinked back her tears and looked down at her empty hands. She could feel the lingering warmth, but Sunny herself was gone–returned to the Well.
The vision of the Dark King was fading in a dull red glow as the accelerated heat death of the Universe took the last shards of his vengeance into the dark of final entropy. Sabbat and Telos still stood dumbfounded by the vision, and ignorant of the exchange she just experienced.
Taylor reached out and took both their hands in hers. "It's time to go home," she said, echoing Sunny.
"We have to choose now?" their youngest version asked. "I mean…it feels like we'd be killing ourselves to make someone else. Like what that Fater dude did."
Sabbat didn't bother correcting Telos intentional mispronunciation. "Not killing ourselves. Joining. I am you, Telos. And we are Taylor. We are parts of the same being; we always have been."
"You'll be able to fly again, under your own power," Taylor said. From what she'd seen, Telos' mind was astonishingly powerful, almost like a cogitator. But she was, despite her powerful intellect, still a teenager. "As fast as before. Maybe faster. And you'll have all of the magic we used to have."
"But I won't be me anymore," Telos said.
"No. We'll be us," Sabbat said. "Together as we were always meant to be. The scars on my back will be filled with your wings. And we will know all the history that Taylor has seen. We'll be one again, as it was always meant to be." She smiled at her younger self. "And yes, you'll be able to fly again just like we remember."
"Father's waiting for us," Taylor said softly, sure of it now. "And mother. Lisa and the rest. He told us to return to him, don't you remember?"
That broke Telos out of her spiraling thoughts. "It was the last thing he told us, before Scion."
"He's waiting. He's in the trees, waiting for us."
For the first time, Telos herself blinked back a tear. "Is he, Taylor? Are you sure? Is he really waiting?"
"I know he is. We carry the souls of those we love with us, don't you remember? I have faith. I think…I think I've found my faith again. My own hope. It's time. Let's go home."
Together, hand-in-hand, the three shards of Telos crossed the empty Well of Eternity. No gods of chaos threatened them; no Dark King tried to stop them. They walked toward the silhouette of the woman standing between the trees. As they moved closer, more details became clear. The woman bore Lisa's face, despite her power armor. She had tears in her own eyes and cried out in pain at what must have been terrible pressure, but still she stood her ground and called out for Telos.
The three of them stopped on the edge of the light.
"I'm scared," Telos admitted.
Taylor laughed through her own tears. "When has that ever stopped the daughter of Danny and Annette Hebert?"
Telos laughed herself, wiping her own eyes. "It hasn't, yet."
"And it won't now," Sabbat said. "Are we ready, my sisters?"
"We're ready," Taylor said.
Together, hand in hand, they entered the light.
Come back to me, child.
*The scenes of Oll and Dyaus Phater were inspired heavily on Mortis, by John French.