by SM Reine
“What? Impossible,” she said. “Angels have long been semi-sterile. It’s virtually impossible for any full-blooded female to conceive, and males too often become Fascinated with human females, so—”
“Suzume’s had a baby. A half-human baby. It’s cute, it has nubs.” Benjamin pointed at his back. “So it’s okay. You don’t have to worry about them, Em. You’ll carry on the culture of your people, and Suzume will pass it to her kid, and the next one, and the next. There will be ethereal Gray everywhere and it’ll be fine.”
Marion’s expression didn’t change.
She hadn’t been worried about the angels. Not really. And now she’d stopped walking so that she was on the other side of the Genesis warp where Seth couldn’t reach her.
He couldn’t make her take that lock down.
And the tiny sliver of a warp was barely an arm’s span wide.
The gods shouldn’t have had this faith in him. He wasn’t capable of saving Marion, saving the world, saving anyone. He was a Death god. He was powerless here.
Except…
There was that one thing that nobody had planned for. Not the gods, not Marion, and definitely not Seth.
“Even if the world does reset,” Seth said, “and we are both reborn, and our lives intersect again, I will never be with someone who would rather have me than protect the world.”
He’d have been nicer if he’d gutted her. Marion all but collapsed in on herself. “I thought you trusted me,” she said.
“What we say doesn’t matter.” Seth’s heart was shrinking, shriveling, collapsing in on itself just like the Genesis warp. “Only what we do matters, and the things you’ve done…”
“I’m evil,” Marion said.
Even now, he hated to hear her talking about herself like that. “Not evil. For every bad thing you’ve done, there’s been a hundred good.”
“I wanted to kill the unseelie royalty. I planned to assassinate many people, in fact.”
“You didn’t,” Seth said. “What you say, what you think, doesn’t matter. Only what you do. I love the woman who helps people, who wants to try hard and do better. I love the woman who hand-feeds candy bars to frost giants, and who told me that I couldn’t stop falling in love because one person broke me.”
“You love someone who doesn’t exist,” Marion said.
“She could exist,” he said. “That’s your choice, and if you make that choice…”
Hope flitted through Marion’s eyes, and it was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “You’ll stay?”
The galaxy within his heart pulsed. It was still trying to drag him into the Infinite. “I can’t.”
“Then what is my incentive?”
“Saving the world. And if you want to prove you’re the person I know you are, that’s going to be motivation enough.” He stepped away from the locked Genesis warp, taking the Godslayer’s hand so that he would remain solid for the moment. “I’m not going to interfere again. Make your choice. Show me who you want to be.”
Marion stared into the balefire, even though it must have burned her eyes. Her pupils had gone almost the same shade of white as her irises.
“Would you believe me if I said that I loved you?” Marion asked.
Seth shouldn’t have believed anything she said, but… “Yes.”
She opened her hand.
The fragment of Metaraon’s statue ripped away from the warp and shot into her palm. She flung the rock into the trees.
The warp ripped wide.
It was even brighter than balefire. The air that came out of it smelled like memories Seth had long since forgotten—like his childhood, in many ways. It was the way that the world had smelled before Genesis. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how different the air used to be.
The year 2001 was on the other side. A lifetime of pain was waiting for Benjamin if he passed through, but his pain would let billions survive.
“Go, Benjamin,” Marion said hoarsely.
He shook his head. “I can’t stand. I think you broke something when you picked me up.”
Marion dipped beside him, pulling his arm over her shoulders. “Then I’ll pick you up again.”
The sight of Marion walking toward the Genesis warp made every fragment of Seth tense into knots. But when she reached the edge of it, she gently lifted Benjamin’s arm from around her shoulders again. The two of them were framed by brilliant light, rippling like an emerald ocean.
“We’ll be waiting for your return.” Her lips brushed over his temple. “Godspeed.”
Marion pushed him gently through the warp.
It slammed shut. Balefire vanished.
The world was bloodied, bruised, but whole.
Marion collapsed to her knees.
Seth still couldn’t go to her. The Godslayer was holding him tight, and he knew that she was about to let go. He’d made a bargain with James. He’d gotten his time as a god in the mortal worlds, and now he had to respond in kind.
Gods, it was cruel. Being unable to touch Marion when she was collapsing underneath the weight of all her sacrifices and failed plans.
She’d done it for him.
“Remember what I told you to do?” Seth asked. “About how you should live a life?”
Marion didn’t reply.
“Do it, Marion. You deserve a normal life. You deserve to be happy.”
Her eyes finally lifted from the curling black marks on her knuckles. “How can I ever be happy again?” she asked.
“You’ll figure it out. You’re so goddamn smart.”
He had a thousand other things to say—a whole lifetime’s worth of things to say.
But the Godslayer had just released his hand.
His mass was rejoining the Infinite.
“I love you,” Seth said.
He hoped that she got that message before he left the mortal worlds forever, but he wasn’t sure. Because the next thing he knew, he was in a conservatory next to James Faulkner, and his life was over for the rest of eternity.
Epilogue
The first morning that Marion woke up alone, without responsibilities, made her feel like she was going to suffocate. She got all the way to the part of her morning where she put milk on the stove to make hot chocolate before she started shaking and had to sit down.
She sank onto the chair in her new dinette. It was a very normal dinette. It had a table with two chairs—an optimistic number, given that Marion would be alone for the foreseeable future—and a window that looked out onto the ocean. An ocean on Earth, in fact. The beach below was mundane, as was the surrounding forest.
This was the former vacation rental where Seth had once taken Marion to speak with Arawn and Lucifer. She’d bought it with all the existing furniture inside, bearskin rug and all, before relieving herself of all other assets.
Somehow, at the time, Marion had thought it would be easiest for her to buy a house she already knew she’d one day own.
She should have given more thought to how she’d feel being there without Seth.
Now she thought about it, on that first morning, sitting in the sunshine while her milk burned. She sat there for a very long time watching boats pass out on the water. All quite normal boats, just as her dinette was normal.
Nobody would be coming for Marion at that house, in part because nobody would expect her to “hide out” on Earth, and in part because she had nothing left to give anyone. Even the marks on her knuckles—hidden by gloves—couldn’t summon a god being held captive by his other gods.
She was without influence, without goal.
Marion had given everything up for a normal life as Seth requested.
After all, she couldn’t apologize for the things she’d done with words. She needed to use actions.
Now she was going to live like this until she got a better idea. Something that did not involve world domination, destroying the universe, or becoming queen of something else.
She didn’t have any ideas on that first day.
It
was a very difficult day.
The second morning was not easier, nor was the third.
But the seventh—the eighth, tenth, fourteenth, thirtieth morning…
Those started to get easier.
She didn’t do much. There was a kayak down by the dock, and she took that out once. But the dock was old and rotten. When she stood on it, it sank into the mud, getting her toes wet. She had no patience for that and abandoned the kayak in the yard.
Sometimes she brewed potions and poured them down the sink before they could mature. Marion didn’t want the magical result. She just wanted something to do.
Mostly she journaled a lot.
Hundreds of pages, dozens of journals. She wrote down every memory she had once forgotten. She wrote the ugly things, the unflattering things. But all of it was true. Slowly, she filled the empty bookshelves with her words, and that felt good. It felt like she had purpose.
To be honest, she felt a little bit like James Faulkner in the Infinite, trying to fill up eternity with words.
Winter rolled in at some point and it didn’t even matter, really, because winter on the Pacific was nothing compared to winter in Niflheimr. She’d brought some of the furs, but they were too hot for the region. She ended up running to a nearby town for some thin fleece, and that was adequate.
Marion returned home from shopping to find the roof leaking in the office. It was an old building. She had declined inspections when buying it, and hadn’t realized the roof needed to be replaced.
The leak had ruined an entire bookshelf of journals. Sixteen sodden books, destroyed.
She sat on the floor in her office and cried for a while.
That was the hardest day since the first.
She went to bed that night while a storm lashed the house. She’d stuck buckets underneath the dripping roof to catch the water. Theoretically she could have repaired the roof with magic, but she’d sworn off magic along with her responsibilities. She feared the temptation to use that power for personal gain was too high.
Yet Marion didn’t know the first thing about fixing a house’s roof. She’d never needed to do it before.
So the house was leaking.
Much like how she hadn’t thought about how miserable it would be to lack Seth in that house, she hadn’t thought about how hard it would be to take care of herself without magic.
Marion took a long time to drift off while she was curled up in bed, pillow hugged to her chest, feeling very sorry for herself.
She woke up the next morning to someone knocking on her door.
“Damn,” she whispered, uncurling from around her pillow. Her mouth was sticky. She had kept the fleece on all night and sweated quite a lot—not dignified at all.
The knocking repeated.
After previous storms, Marion had gotten visits from elderly neighbors who lived a kilometer up the road, and they wouldn’t go away until they knew for a fact she was safe. The Reynoldses were nosy, but kind. She stuffed her hair under a scarf to hide how messy it was and padded to the front door on socked feet.
She opened without looking.
A faceless being stood on her doorstep.
“Gods above!” Marion leaped back, clutching her pounding heart.
It was the Godslayer.
The avatar had vanished that night, after Marion had chosen to open the Genesis warp for Benjamin. She knew that the Godslayer was still around. She’d cleaned up a lot of Hounds and kicked the unseelie out of the forest of Ransom Falls. By the time the sun had risen the next day, there had been no hint of preternaturals in the county.
Marion had assumed that the Godslayer had died. Avatars took a certain amount of godly intervention to run, and Elise surely had business to do now that she was holding Seth captive.
But the Godslayer was alive.
She was at Marion’s door, most likely to attack.
Except the Godslayer didn’t attack.
Marion clutched her hands into fists, gathering lightning bolts between her fingers. “What are you doing here?”
The Godslayer, of course, could not respond.
She opened two of her hands to show that they were empty. The other two arms were hidden inside her jacket. She looked bulky, but aside from the faceless head, she could have passed for normal.
The Godslayer wasn’t armed.
Marion’s heart slowed. “If you’re coming to make sure I behave myself, that’s not necessary. I’ve committed to giving myself a time out from life. There is nothing dangerous in this house. No magecraft.”
The avatar stepped into the house and shut the door. She shed her jacket, hung it up on a hook beside Marion’s oiled selkie-skin cloak, and rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt. She had cut holes into it so that her bottom arms could move around.
Marion stood awkwardly by as the avatar of a deity got comfortable. “I feel repetitive, but what in the world are you doing?”
The Godslayer slid serenely past her.
Marion found her sister’s avatar in the study, all four hands planted on her hips, looking up at the roof. It was still dripping. Several buckets had overflowed.
“You want my journals?” Marion asked.
The Godslayer walked out of the room, and out the back door to the tool shed. Marion gaped from the dinette window. She didn’t have to wait long for the Godslayer to find a toolbox and ladder, the latter of which she set against the house’s exterior wall before scaling the rungs to get to the roof.
Marion stepped out back.
“Are you…fixing my roof?”
The avatar leaned over the edge and beckoned. She wanted Marion to come too.
The ladder looked very wobbly.
And a little muddy.
And also like if Marion got on it, then one hard push would make her fall and break her neck.
“I’m fine down here,” she said.
The Godslayer gestured more insistently with her empty hand. She had a hammer in one hand, nails clutched in another, and some kind of bucket in the third.
When Marion didn’t immediately move, the Godslayer only got more insistent. She knocked her fourth fist on the roof in a clearly demanding gesture.
“Okay, okay,” Marion said.
She put on her rain boots and climbed up.
The Godslayer put a hammer in Marion’s hand. And she showed Marion how to fix the roof.
It was not easy to learn from someone who could not speak. Elise had never been a patient teacher and this avatar was no different. She was riddled with Elise’s personality, and she managed to get her exasperation with Marion across rather forcefully, mostly by stomping her foot and clapping loudly and sometimes grabbing Marion’s hands to physically force her to do things.
But learn Marion did. It was not all that different from when Elise and James had been teaching her as a child.
Except that had been magical stuff, not roofing.
Magic would have been a much faster way to get the roof done, though. Marion could have surely come up with some permanent shield to place over the structure to block out rain. Or she could have encouraged fresh wood to grow over the holes. Or something.
Gods, but manual labor was not fun.
“I’m tired,” Marion said. “And hungry, and cold, and…”
The Godslayer clapped her hands in Marion’s face.
That was the end of that discussion.
By the time the Godslayer allowed Marion off the roof, they’d patched up half the holes (some more messily than others), and Marion was sweaty and covered in all sorts of slimy disgusting substances that existed on top of roofs. Moss, mildew, tar.
The Godslayer pushed Marion into the shower and walked off.
Marion peeled off her gloves so that she could bathe. It was the most awkward, suspicious shower she’d ever taken, since she was still half-convinced that a blade would shove through the curtain to gut her.
She emerged unscathed to find the Godslayer microwaving a frozen dinner in the dinette.
“You brought food from town?” Marion peeked through the curtains to look for a car. She found none. “You could have at least brought something fresh.”
The Godslayer shoved Marion into a chair. Clearly, she was saying, Eat it up, buttercup.
“I’m not hungry.” She pushed it away and her sister pushed it back. When Marion tried to do it again, the Godslayer slapped the table, making the silverware jump, and Marion lost the urge to argue.
The Godslayer watched her eat that foul, flavorless frozen food, four arms folded.
And then Marion was put to bed.
Like a child.
“Are you going to kill me at some point?” Marion asked, laying uncomfortably in bed while the Godslayer dragged a chair into the corner. “You don’t have to wait until I’m asleep. I’d prefer to take care of it now.”
The Godslayer sat down and stared as much as she could without eyes. All night long.
Needless to say, Marion did not sleep.
How much she did or did not rest was irrelevant to an avatar of God. The Godslayer dragged Marion out of bed at dawn, forced her to eat and shower again, and then took her back on the roof for yet another long day of fixing.
By the end of it, Marion was physically wrecked and very annoyed. But her roof was no longer dripping. The Godslayer even let Marion sit down occasionally while they worked to remove destroyed journals from the office.
Marion’s proto-memoirs made a merry fire when burned in the wood stove. All for the best. They’d been too smeared to read anyway.
“Can you kill me now, please?” Marion asked.
The Godslayer fed her dinner and put her to bed.
She was too exhausted not to sleep that time.
If she’d thought that fixing the roof would be enough to make the Godslayer get to the point, she’d been terribly, sadly mistaken. Because there was a lot else broken in the house, too.
The Godslayer woke Marion up again the next day, and once Marion deigned to eat, she was dragged into the crawl space under the first floor. The avatar took her through dust and cobwebs to a spot identifiable from its many pipes. They were underneath the bathroom.
One at a time, the Godslayer pointed at a leaking pipe, and then the mildew around it, and a place where termites had been gnawing on a wooden joist.