”So let me get this straight. You lot have managed to plot and use diplomacy and some clever tactics to corner one of the most dangerous communities in the second circle, but now you’re stuck. And the reason you’re stuck, is because there’s a literal avatar of a deity present at the sanctum, and no one figured this out before now? And now we’re all boned because of that?” Dee asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her eyes closed. She could sense a headache coming.

“Well…yes.” Shioko replied a little ashamed. “We only found out about the avatar today when the leader of the Threads of Fate informed us. I’m still not entirely sure how she knew and how long she has known.” She nodded towards the seer.

“I had one of my subordinates scout the sanctum out. I trust his judgement. As a result, I only just found out myself. I have to admit this is all due to a gap in my plans. I have little experience with deities themselves and have thus far only dealt with their servants.” The empress decided it might be a good idea to change the subject for now to minimize the damage to her reputation. “By the way, are you sure that it’s alright to leave things with the Meilin be? I was not overly fond of Ushas and would hate to see her return. I have no doubt she’s out there making a fuss.”

Nyx nodded with a confident look. “It’s alright. Moirai has this handled. My daughter is often overly serious, but she is competent to a fault. I hate to admit this, but most of the time she keeps things running and all the Meilin know it. The only reason she hasn’t been made the representative is because she lacked the power. Even when I had her posted in as a Guardian in a sub-community to make her relax, she still handled many things remotely. She’s almost disgustingly competent and most of our people would crawl over a field of shards of glass if she told them it was a good idea. I’m pretty sure she will take my place quite soon. In fact, I’m counting on it.”

Kawhena, the Dagon representative grunted his agreement. “The only reason Ushas even tried anything was because both Moirai and Nyx were gone. Nyx here is right about Moirai, but she’s not giving herself the credit she is due. Nyx might look lazy, but she gets more things done than the rest of us, and Moirai is even better at such things. They just do it in such a short time that it leaves them time for other things. Personally, I think part of the reason Nyx got to be so efficient is because she likes her lazing around time. If just Moirai had remained here, things would have gone much different. I hate to admit it, but half the reason things kept running smoothly while the three of you were gone is because the honored seer here picked up the slack.”

Part of the reason the representatives had been so quick to agree to Dee’s rather bold declaration earlier was because they also disliked Ushas and were glad to see her gone. If Dee had tried to oust Shioko for example, they would not have gone along with things. Besides, it was a fact that Dee had done a lot for the community, and with her increased power, it was obvious her word also carried a lot of weight. Even though Dee didn’t have an official position in the community, they would likely consult her anyway if one of them needed a replacement. She didn’t get to pick the replacement by herself, but she did get a say. This was something unspoken though and wasn’t something they had particularly agreed on. Partly because Dee might be gone before a representative needed to be replaced.

“Returning to the earlier subject. Dee. Do you think you are capable of harming the avatar? It is my theory that you do have that ability, but I’d like to hear your take on it.” Now that they had moved on from who was responsible for the failing plan, the empress felt secure in returning to the original topic.

“I’m honestly not entirely sure.” Dee replied in thought. The embodiment of the Flames of Beginning had said Dee’s flames could end even gods, but it was not like she could take those words as the unchanging truth. Maybe her flames could do so in the future, but not now? Also, how much of her power would be necessary if it did work? Did she have to use the flames in a particular way? And perhaps more importantly, what would the consequences be if she used her flames against an avatar like this? “But I think I know of a way to find out. Give me a bit of time.”

Dee didn’t feel like kneeling or doing anything that would count as real supplication to reach the gods, but she supposed certain concessions had to be made. So, she shifted to her fox form and laid on the ground as if she was sleeping and made a small prayer. “Eternity, Death, Umbra, Lumen, yadda yadda, grace me with your knowledge, blahdy blah.”

She quickly found herself near a familiar campfire. It seemed there was no need to trudge through the thick grey fog anymore. Three familiar deities were sitting around the fire on simple logs that somehow seemed to look extremely comfortable. Or at least three of those logs did, specifically those under Umbra and Death, and the one Lumen usually occupied. Seems like the goddesses had made themselves more comfortable.

“No Lumen this time?” Dee asked with a raised eyebrow. The Goddess of Light was rather obviously missing.

“She had business to deal with. Another challenge.” Umbra replied with a complicated look. On one hand, it was in her interest to see the light gods at each other’s throats, but on the other hand, Lumen was still her sister and currently her ally. Better a known enemy she liked than one of the other sanctimonious bastards that occupied the seats for light gods. “Last time she made it clear she would not tolerate such nonsense without a heavy cost, but it seems Order has been busy.”

“I’m fairly certain Order finally figured out that there’s an alliance between all of us. The poor bastard has been gathering allies as well. I think Sol Invictus might be tilting towards joining forces with him. That might lure in some willing to challenge your sister.” Death pointed out.

That caught Dee’s attention. Death didn’t usually refer to the other deities by name. “Sol Invictus? That sounds like a name to me. What’s the reason for the sudden honor?”

Death gave a small smile. She was pleased that Dee was so sharp. “Sol is a bit of an…anomaly. In simple terms, she is the primary sun god, but she is a bit more complicated than that. Somewhere along the lines she also became known as the primary Goddess of Life, similar to how our little Goddess of Darkness also represents Chaos. Being the life goddess doesn’t really suit Sol’s personality, to be honest. I think that’s just farmers associating the sun with life because of crops and all that nonsense. Sol would be much better suited as a war goddess in my opinion.”

“That’s just your bias talking.” Eternity suddenly interjected, not elaborating further.

Dee grinned. “A little hostility towards your opposite element?”

Death shook her head. “Not really, although this old bastard might argue otherwise. I have a grudging respect for Sol, but people seem to misunderstand her. Or him as the case might be today, as the sun deity tends to be a little fluid, while everyone agrees the deities of life should be female for some reason I never quite understood. The reason I use her name is because her role is not simple. Besides, life and death are both important parts of the cycle. I have no hate for the element as a whole. Or should I say that there are things I dislike much more than life.”

“The life deity being female is rather obvious. I think the bigger question is: why is Death female?” Umbra pointed out with a small chuckle.

“That’s how I was when I came into being, and that’s how I am.” Death stated with a great deal of finality in her tone. And when Death had finality in her tone, that really meant something.

Lumen appeared almost simultaneously with Death’s words and looked quite exhausted. “Looks like you had a rough time sister dearest.” Umbra commented.

“Not with the challenge itself. That was easy enough this time as the challenger barely qualified. The problem is that the other gods were less than pleased with me draining my opponent as punishment and wanted to censure my actions. I didn’t feel like listening to their piffle, so I forcefully exited. That took a bit more effort than I thought.” Lumen explained. She didn’t have that much trouble, but it wasn’t exactly simple either.

“Should I be worried as the future Champion?” Dee asked, a little unsure about how she should feel about the whole thing.

“Well, I doubt you will be massively popular once you do assume the role, but I think there was little chance of that anyway. What brings you here? I heard your sorry excuse of a prayer but was a little busy to really pay attention. Besides, as usual, you weren’t really providing me with much detail.” Lumen questioned.

“Right. That. I need to know if my flames can hurt the avatar of the Spider Goddess, and what the ramifications might be.” Dee was actually pleased to get to the point. She had no idea how time worked here, and for all she knew this little meeting was taking hours back at Pantheon.

“To answer the take the first question, the short answer is yes.” Death replied as she and Umbra were actually the most familiar with Dee’s flames. “The long answer is that it depends. Will it be able to harm the avatar? Most certainly. Will you be able to kill the goddess? Now that is a more complicated question.”

“Well, I was more interested in just harming the avatar and not really killing the goddess.” Dee pointed out. She wasn’t sure if going around killing deities was such a good idea.

“Oh, the flames will accomplish that, rather easily in fact.” Umbra pointed out. “I’m not sure if you’ll want to do that without killing the goddess though. Having one of the more influential dark deities carry a grudge, especially that one, might be a bad thing. The Great Mother is a rather vengeful deity, and while she doesn’t excel in direct confrontation, she does excel in causing more indirect harm. If you destroy her avatar, it will most certainly anger her, but it will likely also make her scared. Instead of taking revenge on you personally, she might strike at your friends and associates when your guard is down. You might manage to scare her badly enough to stay away though. She’s not exactly known for her bravery either.”

“Right. That sounds pretty bad. So can I kill her then? And what would the consequences of killing a god be anyway? Killing her just to spare myself her ire would be counterproductive if I just attract the ire of a hundred other gods.” Dee pointed out.

“Well, gods are rarely killed, because there’s only a handful of ways to accomplish that without going after the worshippers. There are certain godslayer Authorities, a few weapons and spells especially designed for that particular purpose and so on. Still, only a small number of gods actually die violently. That said, many gods fade away and disappear when their worshippers are either conquered, killed, or just move on to other faiths. If there’s a lot of faith to go around like in this case, another will take her place eventually. There are no direct consequences, but the god that eventually takes her place might react negatively. That god might appreciate the promotion, or they might find it a sacrilege against the position. If you do manage to kill the Great Mother with your flames though, most gods will stay far away from you. For obvious reasons most gods aren’t fond of godslayers, so there’s that. Still, as far as deities go, very few will miss that particular one. Most will actually be glad to see her go.” Death explained. This was her area of expertise after all.

“So the word will get out?” Dee asked. She had been hoping the whole thing would stay a secret.

“To an extent. The Spider Goddess is something of an edge case because of her avatars. Word will get out, but how much the other deities will find out about you is unknown even to me.” Death replied with a small shrug. “As to how to kill her, that’s a bit tricky. Try to direct your flames at her soul specifically. If just one of her avatars falls, then she will survive due to having others, but if you manage to do enough damage to her soul then that’s another matter.”

“I thought it was impossible to actually damage the soul with an attack? I’m fairly sure you mentioned something to that effect when we talked about me consuming souls to help them pass on.” Dee pointed out.

“You wouldn’t actually be damaging the soul, as much as you would just be forcing it to move on by cutting its connection with the goddess. It’s similar to how the malignant spell you removed from those mages of the Mystic’s guild worked. It’s not that the soul would suffer, but it would no longer be able to prevent the pull of what comes after. If you want a more concrete method, then it might also work if you drop the sun inside your Domain on the avatar. Your flames can attack the power inside the target, so it might burn enough of her power for the backlash to kill the goddess. In both cases, the other avatars would turn into nothing but empty husks. To be perfectly honest, this is somewhat unexplored territory for everyone. I’d have better answers if you wanted to for example, and I’m not necessarily making suggestions here, attack Lumen inside her realm and strike at her directly. In fact, I could tell you exactly how to accomplish that successfully.” No one was entirely sure if Death was joking or not.

“Behave.” Lumen chided the other goddess. “My Champion would never do that to me. Right?” There was almost a hopeful tone in her voice at the end.

“Right.” Dee replied in a tone indicating that the answer might change if necessary.

“She’s not your Champion just yet.” Umbra pointed out, before turning back to Dee. “There’s something you should be aware of. You most likely won’t be able to use your holy power to fight the avatar. One of the upsides of having an avatar is that the power of other deities doesn’t really work in her presence. As we are higher ranked deities than her, your powers will work to an extent, but not to a point where they will make a big difference. The upside is that if you do manage to kill her, you get to add a large chunk of her holy power into your own. Also, her followers will most likely suffer greatly from her death, so the fight afterward should be much easier. There’s also a large chance that her Champion is present within the sanctum. You might not want to fight both of them at the same time.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll take what I can get.” Dee sighed before her form disappeared from the campsite.

“You do realize you might as well declare her your Champion if she kills the spider bitch, right? The title might actually protect her at that point.” Death pointedly looked at Lumen before turning to Umbra. “That goes for you too, although I suppose you’re still holding out until she becomes the focus.”

“Well, as it happens, I might not want to hold out much longer. In fact, her killing the Champion of one of the most influential deities might be the perfect time to make things official. The deed of killing the spider and her Champion would also go a long way towards the position of the focus. I would have preferred if she went after the light side gods instead, but the spider happens to be one of my enemies so it counts.” Umbra stated rather pleased with herself. In fact, killing a Champion of one of the top deities would be an excellent show of devotion from her new Champion, at least in the eyes of other gods. That would raise Umbra’s prestige greatly.

Lumen was less interested in the possible glory or prestige, as she knew Dee was her best shot at making things right again. Glory was nice and all, but she was fighting for her very existence, unlike her sister. Might as well support Dee fully. She had already made the preparations for Dee becoming her Champion if she faced the spider’s favorite toy. Besides, if it stole some of Umbra’s thunder, then all the better.

-----

Dee had relayed the important points to the representatives and left them to plan the exact nature of the assault. They would need at least a few days to get all the pieces in the right place, the exact time depending on the other communities in the coalition. The other communities should be gratified to know that the Five Winds had a plan for the avatar, assuming they even found out about it in the first place. There was enough trust in the Five Winds that while the other communities might question a secret plan a bit, they would do so quietly and privately.

Dee had not gone far before she felt two immortals approaching her from the north. She had sensed their presence a long time ago and had been expecting them. Those would be the agent of the Celestial Court. She was rather intrigued by the fact that there was also a third immortal approaching from another direction, namely from the place where the Crimson Witches had their quarters at. All three must have gotten the message at the same time as they also arrived simultaneously. Over such a short distance, it didn’t take long for immortals to arrive.

“Dee. You’re back. You’ve grown.” Teresa said as she arrived. Dee was surprised to see the leader of the Crimson Path here.

“Are you saying I’m getting fat?” Dee asked playfully, making a small swing of her hips for emphasis. If anything, the time in the elemental planes had caused her to lose weight as she didn’t have time to indulge her gluttony. Not that eating actually made much of a difference to her appearance at this point. One of the main advantages of being an immortal, for Dee at least.

“Well, I didn’t want to be the one to point it out but…” Teresa replied with a playful tone of her own, pointedly ignoring the two members of the Celestial Court.

The two immortals finally had enough and one of them got closer. “You are the one known as Haydee, yes? You are to come with us to report to the Celestial Court.”

“No.” Dee stated once again. She found it interesting that the situation was so similar to the one with Ushas before. That simple answer had power.

Even the reaction of the two immortals was similar. Disbelief and anger. “We weren’t asking.”

“No you weren’t and that was your first mistake.” Teresa interjected. “Not that either of us would have gone along with a polite request either. Still, we might have reacted better.”

Dee looked at Teresa. “They’re still haranguing you? I would have thought they’d get the message by now.”

“They are unused to people not doing exactly what they say.” Teresa replied with a faint smile still on her face. “Now they have a similar problem with you as they have with me. The agents they send don’t have the power to force either of us to comply and it would be humiliating for them to send a large group of immortal after us. Incidentally, I found out that while the number of immortals the court commands is the largest in Day city, they aren’t generally the strongest immortals. Interesting little detail isn’t it?”

“Teresa, we have tolerated your refusals to comply so far because the emperor is patient and because putting you in your place was not worth it. There’s a limit though, and I would avoid being disrespectful. We might decide that we’ve been patient long enough.” The immortal said, turning back to Dee. “As for you, you don’t have the benefit of patience on our part.”

“Well, I’m not one of your lackeys and I don’t take commands from anyone. However, I’m not completely unreasonable. I know what the Celestial Emperor wants. Tell him that Xinglong didn’t leave a body behind. As for the mountain, well there’s a reason it is called the Living Mountain. It decides where it goes, and the mountain decided not to go to the Celestial Court. If the emperor wants that to change, he can come and make his case to the mountain personally, but I doubt that will change the outcome. Oh, and just in case the emperor decides he needs to check the veracity of my claims by force, I’m pretty sure the mountain will join in the defense. And while Xinglong is gone, he did leave me something in case the emperor ever decided to get hostile.” Dee decided to add a small bluff to her words. While she didn’t plan on obeying the emperor, she didn’t feel the need to antagonize him too badly either. That might end badly all things considered. Dee’s words were brusque, but her tone was not one where she was attacking the emperor.

Just the might of the mountain should deter the emperor to an extent, especially in combination with Teresa being here, and an invisible threat of retaliation from Xinglong would only add to it. It was actually a rather brilliant solution from Teresa to stay here. She was staying out of sight of the first circle, thus not flaunting her lack of respect towards the emperor and avoiding a situation where the emperor had to force the issue. It also combined the interest of Teresa and Dee, making it easy for them to cover for each other. Separately they were easier to deal with, but together they were another matter entirely. It also made them stronger allies.

The agent frowned. He didn’t actually know why the Celestial Emperor wanted Dee to be delivered to him, but this seemed like something worth passing on. Dee’s words might change things. Besides, he was well aware that he could not force Dee to come along. He might bluster and threaten, but the fact was that he didn’t have the power necessary. Just Teresa alone was enough to ensure that, and that was without considering all the other immortals present here. He also couldn’t feel how powerful Dee was, but something told him it might not be a wise idea to fight her. “I will pass on the message, but I doubt the emperor will be happy.”

“His happiness is not my concern. He must have others dedicated to that task. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have family to meet and a debt to pay. I believe I need to be in a painting.” Dee shook her head. Eilian might be mad it took her this long to repay the debt, and there might be some accrued interest.