Without someone on the other end holding the spear up, I found myself falling forward onto a soggy puddle of slush, staring down into a galaxy of starry pinpricks slowly turning redder the longer I watched. The edge of the implement scraped along its surface, pushing at my insides at a sharp angle and eliciting a faltering whimper which didn’t do nearly enough justice to the intensity of the pain I was in.

Things got hazy from there. At some point hands grabbed me, turned me over and pulled out the obstruction, pressing down on the wound in a way that hurt almost as much as the spear.

“Heal yourself,” a voice registered dimly in my ears. I wasn’t sure who it was and I didn’t care. “We don’t have Apollo anymore to do it for you.”

Something was still wrong with my shifting, and it would have been too much to claim I was in any state to focus, but I managed to slip through enough of a change to start replenishing my blood and oxygen supplies and hold onto whatever little consciousness remained.

“Where did he go?” the voice asked insistently. Or perhaps a different voice. It wasn’t clear. “Did we get him?”

“Ungh,” I replied.

Hands gripped my shoulders and shook slightly. “Where did he go? We need to give chase before he brings the whole company down on us.”

Now that I wasn’t going to drown in a pool of my own blood, the ability to think was starting to return. “Won’t,” I managed. “Loop.”

“What do you mean, ‘loop’?”

“Time loop,” I wheezed, and giggled a bit, only to cough up the equivalent of half an internal organ. “Gone. He’s gone.”

“As in dead?” insisted the voice. “Or – in an actual repeating loop? Wouldn’t he escape? How would you even arrange that?”

“He means the one in the office,” Tez elaborated. He knelt beside me, pressing his hands onto the hole in my chest.

“Oh,” said Durga. “I can see how that would make a difference.” She took her hands off my shoulders and lowered my upper body back down. Turning my head, I realised I’d been moved at some point to the top of the ziggurat, the plinth where the spear mount had been. A little too ‘ritualistic sacrifice’ for my taste, but the view was nice even if it did look like giant moles had been tearing up the landscape.

I was healing now, but far too slowly. At this rate it would be days before I’d be at peak performance again, and that was assuming no sleep and a lack of distractions. The scar reminded me of the wrongness I’d felt when dealing with Tez’s foot.

A foot the Tez beside me didn’t possess, I realised, squinting over the edge of the platform, squinting at the obsidian prosthetic.

“Yeah,” he said in a tired voice, following my gaze. “I’m the reflection. Odin got the other me good.”

If Tez’s line to the pact was to be believed, he wasn’t dead. Not quite. But it didn’t look good; the thread barely hanging on. By contrast, his double appeared to have gotten through the ordeal unscathed.

Come to think of it, Durga’s didn’t feel crash hot either. With some effort, I manoeuvred my head so I could see her properly. The arm punctured by Gung – by the spear – hung limp at her side, bound in the pallu of her sari to stem the bleeding. Like me, it seemed she was having trouble shifting away the injury.

That I’d expected. Less so, the exhaustion. Durga seemed to have aged fifteen years in the space of an afternoon, not only in physical appearance but also in the way she carried herself. New wrinkles dotted the corners of her eyes and mouth and an almost imperceptible hesitance shadowed her movements, few as they were at the moment. I thought I could make out a hint of grey in her hair.

Whatever it was Lucy had given us, it wasn’t a cheap counterfeit. The spear lay now flat on the platform, where Durga’s cat was standing over it batting it ever closer to the edge. I could still feel the hum of divine energy radiating off of it.

“So what happens now?” Mayari’s terse voice asked from somewhere behind me. I hadn’t even realised she was there. “Do you just… fizzle out once this dimension deconstructs? Can we save him?”

Mirror Tez’s mouth curled upwards in a way that failed to indicate any humour had been achieved. “No,” he said. “We do not.”

“But –”

“What would be worse?” he suggested, interrupting. “A quick, merciful death? Or an indefinite extension of suffering? To be a reflection is to be birthed with the knowledge of one’s own fleeting existence. Death is always imminent. Tezcatlipoca understands this, and I think he would agree. As he is now – I doubt he even comprehends what’s going on. So the decision falls to me.” He eyed Mayari, the stare passing over my head.

“Tez isn’t a reflection,” she argued back. “I can’t believe you’re considering killing a thousand year old god – your own creator, no less – when there could be better options available.”

Mirror Tez continued to stare back at her.

There was silence for a few moments. Then: “Oh,” Mayari said. “Oh. This has happened before.”

“Do you think,” the reflection uttered quietly, “about what happens to people like me, born to fulfill some menial task and discarded shortly after? I might resemble Tezcatlipoca, and I might have his memories and knowledge, but I’m not him. And I don’t want to be erased. I don’t even get the luxury of the void. For me, it really is final.”

“But you have to,” said Durga. She looked sad.

“It would take a certain disregard for intelligent life to create it only to throw it away,” said the reflection. “It’s a crappy situation nobody likes, but we make the best of it.”

To be fair, I cut in, trying to conserve oxygen while my lungs were still full of holes – or, to be more accurate, one big hole. Where the spear had burned through, my form remained obstinately static. I was starting to have more luck moving things around a bit and rebuilding elsewhere. But it was slow going. If we’re talking creator gods, the main example we have to go on is Yahweh, and he isn’t exactly the definition of role model material.

A metallic clatter rang out below us as Counterfeit Gungnir toppled to the next tier of the ziggurat. Dawon put down his paw and swished his tail once, then settled down on his stomach, rested his chin on his paws and appeared to go to sleep.

Mirror Tez pursed his lips. “Some of us have a conscience. But Tezcatlipoca’s time was running short enough already. I’m just taking over a few months in advance.”

“Come again?” Durga’s tone was incredulous.

“You heard me,” said the reflection. “You, who trampled all over your sisters to save them. My line takes a different approach to achieve the same end." He cleared his throat. "From the many, one is chosen. His life is short but decadent, standing above all others. In the end, he is sacrificed to make room for someone new, and the cycle begins again. One dies so the many live.” He grinned, facing down the warrior goddess. “Whereas you? You chose to sever the many to serve the one. Selfish of you.”

Durga’s face darkened. “You have no concept of what I had to endure.”

“Oh, I think I do,” said Mirror Tez. He shrugged. “Either way, we’re all just waiting for a time when no one needs saving.”

If anything, I was inclined to think Tez had stopped waiting for hope to arrive. I’d been wondering why he’d been prepared to jump into action now, after so many years of idle, if reluctant, complacency. But if he’d been planning to throw himself off the figurative cliff, his behaviour started to make a whole lot more sense. Nothing quite like staring down your own imminent annihilation to make you reconsider your goals in life.

“We should check for a body,” Mayari chipped in, deflecting the subject. “Odin might have had a way to escape the loop.”

“Doubt it,” I croaked. By now I’d fixed most of the lung problem by making new ones in places that would give an x-ray technician major conniptions, although there was still the small matter of the conspicuous hole in my chest. “Runes cover a lot of loose ends, but messing with time isn’t their strong suit. It’s why the old bootlicker is always tiptoeing around Vishnu whenever they have to be in a room together. Which you’ll note isn’t often.”

“Ha,” said Mayari, finally stepping around the edge of the plinth into my line of sight. “I always thought it was because he couldn’t take the bureaucracy.” The wry grimace dropped from her face a moment later as she glanced in Durga’s direction. “Well, I mean –”

“It’s fine,” said the warrior. “It’s true. And we should check for a body. In case you’ve forgotten, Apollo’s dead, and it wasn’t Gungnir or runes that did it.” Her voice was calm and level, but she was clenching and unclenching one of her fists in a rhythmic pattern, tucked away at her side. “He has other tools at his disposal,” she continued. “Who knows what else he had hidden away?”

If only Gungnir had been the real deal, I would have taken it and warped right in to stab every dram of red fluid I was sure would be staining the office carpet, just to make sure it didn’t come back.

“Well, we can’t walk in like this,” I said, raising myself up onto my elbows with some difficulty. The movement of my muscles sent agonising spasms shooting through my chest, and I wasn’t able to turn off the pain. Even Mayari and Mirror Tez looked like they’d had front-row tickets to a chainsaw murder. As we were now, the only one who came close to meeting the office dress code was the cat.

I had a bad feeling about the spear wound, aside from the obvious. It felt like an anchor nailing that part of my body into permanence, tugging my chest back into alignment with its broken tear. I was probably going to be limited to humanoid forms for a while until I got it fixed.

“You know it’s not Gungnir, right?” said Mirror Tez, eyeing me up even as he spoke the words in Durga’s direction. “Loki not being dead and all. It’s a fake.”

The two women glanced at each other. “That is not a fake,” declared Durga. Under its supporting fabric, the wounded arm twitched.

“Well, what is it, then?” Mayari followed up, eyebrow raised. “It can’t be both. Do tell.”

Mirror Tez opened his mouth, then closed it again with a troubled expression. He was clearly still struggling with the loss of his counterpart, mitigated somewhat by that insufferable look seers tended to get when peering into the future.

“I think,” he said at last, “we should have that conversation with Lucifer around. He should be the one to explain what this is.”

Mayari’s eyes widened in incredulity. “Excuse me? Oh no. No. What possible reason do you have to start getting cagey with the truth now?”

“Two members of this group have died. I don’t want there to be a third,” he replied.

“Deadly conversation,” I remarked. “Count me intrigued.”

“We should go. As far as birthplaces go, this is one I’d really rather not see again.”

Mayari looked angry, but she didn’t push him any further.

Without warning, Durga turned and started descending the steps of the ziggurat, Dawon leaping to his feet and trotting after her. I thought she was going to retrieve the spear from where it had fallen, but she paid it no notice, leaving it where it lay discarded on the terrace below.

“Durga?” I prompted.

She didn’t respond. One of her fists was still clenching and unclenching. Not a good sign.

I raised my eyebrows at Mayari, who shrugged back at me. Mirror Tez was strangely quiet and made no indication that he was worried.

I secreted anaesthetic onto my wound, waiting until the screaming pain dulled into an uncomfortable numbness, and sat up properly, dangling my legs over the edge of the plinth. Slowly, I made my way down to the second terrace and picked up the spear, its thrum of energy singing in my hand. Holding it was difficult, the weapon heavier than it should have been as the muscles around my chest strained at the weight.

This injury was going to be a problem.

Mayari reached around my arm and tapped the spear with a fingertip. She’d followed me down. The weight lifted.

“Maybe I needed that for rehabilitative physiotherapy,” I commented.

“It’s going to take more than that to fix your condition,” she said. One slender finger gestured towards her glass eye.

Durga hadn’t quickened her pace, but nor had she looked back. In the absence of conversation, we fell in line behind her. Perhaps she needed the walk. Or perhaps she was stalling for time.

The landscape below the ziggurat looked like someone had commissioned an Escher painting in three dimensions and only stopped when physics had complained it was being physically violated. Durga picked her way past the whorls, waves, and jutting stones to arrive where Apollo’s corpse still lay. She hesitated for a long moment, but reached down with two good arms and gently gathered it up, like it would break if she wasn’t careful enough. Cradled in her embrace, Apollo looked so much smaller than he had been in life.

Gods rarely died, the outlier of Providence’s long and bloody wars notwithstanding. So we were not particularly well equipped for grieving our own.

“Durga,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We should leave the body here.”

“I’m bringing him,” she said.

“If we have the corpse, it’ll implicate us,” explained Mayari. “The mirror dimension collapsing gives us a neat, elegant means of disposal.”

Durga looked up, and something uncharacteristically dangerous flashed in her eyes, just for a moment.

“I’m bringing him,” she repeated.

Mayari looked over at Mirror Tez for support, but he only gave a small shake of his head.

“I’m taking him back,” Durga said, her words coming out calm and distant. “I’m done here.” A moment later her form flickered out of sight.

His mistress gone, Dawon looked from side to side and fixed his gaze on Mirror Tez, letting out a petulant meow.

“You shouldn’t even be able to meow,” I told it. “What kind of lion are you?”

I received another meow for my troubles.

Around us, the world shuddered, the broken surface of the lake cracking beneath us. The rock I was standing on jolted to the side, tilting at a hard angle and sending fresh pain coursing through my wound.

Before I could say anything, a second jolt punctured the landscape, starting at a point midair off to the left of the ziggurat and spreading outward, rending the air like cracks in a mirror. I turned my head to watch Mirror Tez and I found him hard to look at; split into a dozen independent fragments offset and overlapping each other.

When I glanced down at my own hand, it looked much the same.

It lasted for an instant; then we were back in Salar de Uyuni in the real world, falling onto our wet bottoms in front of a towering salt wall. For one split second the beautiful night sky was reflected back at us - until the whole thing was ruined by a tidal wave of salt water crashing down on our heads, knocking us flat. At least until Mayari put up a hand and deflected the tsunami, where it pelted down at a diagonal angle above our heads in a roar of noise and rebounding grit.

It was one way to put new meaning into the phrase ‘rubbing salt into the wound’. I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes as my chest reminded me in no uncertain terms it wanted to die. Next to me, resembling a wretched hairball, Dawon issued mournful noises and scrabbled to his feet, frantically attempting to lick salt off his paws.

“It’s done,” said Mirror Tez, spitting salt out of his mouth. His hair and clothes were as soaked as the rest of us, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the look on his face.

In my head, Tez’s original thread of the pact was gone. But there were still six, and if I hadn’t seen the changeover first-hand I couldn’t have spotted the difference. We’d lost two members and gained one.

“Damn,” said Mayari, her voice faltering for the first time since I’d known her. She let out a ragged breath.

The reflection leant forward, supporting his forehead with the palm of one shaking hand. “I’ll carry on your memory,” he muttered at the now-barren white wall. Clumps of salt dripped from it, landing here and there among us with sodden, squishy plops.

“I’m sorry,” said Mayari. “I’m so sorry. It was never meant to end this way.” She rose to her feet and took a single step towards him, then stopped. “What should we call you? Do you… have a name?”

Through splayed fingers, Mirror Tez’s expression slowly transformed into a wide grin. “Call me by my name, of course,” he replied. “Tezcatlipoca, the one and true." The hand lifted from his forehead, and he nodded; to himself more than anything, I suspected. "The one and true.”