Amdirlain’s PoV - Deep Planes of the Abyss

  Amdirlain appeared on one side of a Portal that held a thick darkness at bay. An air of menace had settled over the place, yet her senses showed nothing among the surrounding forest of green luminescent mushrooms. As the killing fury crushed down, she stepped across the threshold and slipped hurriedly along the course. The dark waters that had dampened her senses from the outside teemed with life. Swarms of strange, primal creatures swam between temporal pockets in the endless ocean. Down here, the currents and the temporal eddies were what the Sisterhood had used for navigation.

  I’ve passed the Plane where the four fought Leviathan. I’ll go back later and see if I can find traces of Ruithor from there. Though hopefully Tephros is onto the right spot, she strikes me as patient but also unpredictable. It was strange how quickly she took to me when we first met.

  “It wasn’t your winning personality. She has a magical form of Precognition and enough strength to get to Ruithor if she’s careful. With her magical contacts within the Abyss, it was a straightforward extrapolation to see her discovering the potential sites.” Gideon projected. “She uses it almost constantly and was checking to see what insights it provided while you spoke.”

  You can’t help any of us. Giving her answers to a Power being activated isn’t helping but providing something earned?

  Smugness filled Gideon’s response. “Correct.”

  Do you know whether she’s in the right place?

  “No, Ruithor is in a state where he’s even obliterating the knowledge of where he is located. If Tephros doesn’t find him there, she has other sites to search. During the fighting, some of Ruithor’s equipment was flung from him. The energy he invested in those daggers and other items is enough to cause black spots like that mountain gorge she’s searching. How far down are you going to hop before you create your lever?”

  Can you tell me why this trip has been so calm? I expected to be fighting a lot more.

  “You’ve been keeping your senses away from domains, and you’re concealed against anything below a Demi-God’s strength, and even some of them. The only fights you’ve had to deal with are a few young hotheads, and those don’t survive long. Most primordials down here die in their first millennium of existence, so by not sticking your nose in their business, they stay out of your way.”

  Then what was going on with that last Plane?

  “One of your templates woke up after a millennia-long nap. She is hungry, to put it mildly, and her link to the Plane is such that her evolved version of Dragon Fear echoed from the landscape. If you’d like to go back and say hello and have dinner, that’s up to you. You’ve gone deeper than you should need unless you’re going to be grossly inefficient in setting the gear moving.”

  The minimum requirement will consume the most strength from the Eldritch hordes we have on ice. How about I conserve those energy reserves for mending the wound? It’s not just the nearly five thousand years of inertia, but also what will happen once Di Yu is in place.

  “Are you sure about the other changes caused by bringing them into line? It's going to upset lots of gods.”

  Only those gods who aren’t worth following.

  A third hop put her near the next Portal without a response from Gideon, and Amdirlain stepped through before the current swept her away. Beyond it was a rolling terrain covered in thick grasses, inhabited by wild beasts and primal species that existed nowhere else in the realm. The wild potential of the place meant they wouldn’t exist here in a few generations either. With energies continually pushing them forward, they shifted further in a few hundred years than equivalent species changed over millions of years of evolution on Earth-like worlds.

  Amdirlain opened a cavern under a mountain range and teleported to it. A circle of Eldritch prisons appeared around her, continually replaced as she fueled her project. In the back of her thoughts, she was aware of shifting armies and mounting tension in the Outlands, but there hadn’t been even a light probe against the Domain. Though the planar lever she was constructing was a larger project than the gear assembly, its simplistic nature didn’t provide her with any new insights. The wireframe reached invisibly across planes to brace against the side of the Spire; beyond that fulcrum, it slotted into the mechanism she’d constructed. She worked upwards from the weakest Eldritch and burned through thousands a millisecond and soon blew past the million mark. Though none of their strengths equalled named demons, they provided a far greater source of raw energy than their combat capabilities represented.

  She’d been working for days when a claw stabbed out from the cavern wall, and Amdirlain met it with a needle strand of the energy. The strike ripped through kilometres of bedrock as it deflected her foe’s strike, but they swooped through the stone ahead of her response.

  I could turn the empty shackles into bombs or try something else.

  As soon as she finished the set of petrified Eldritch she’d been working on, she reduced the number to a trickle barely above the minimum to prevent her framework from unravelling.

  “I’ll give you some of this energy if you let me finish.” Amdirlain pulsed towards the alien mind. “The raw energy to match a Demon Lord in a form you can ingest if you stand guard.”

  “An ongoing Primordial flame whose strength matches your desperate deflection while you work.” The words hissed and clicked from the cavern walls.

  “Where do you want it?”

  “At the end of the tunnel you just made.” The surrounding rocks pulsed with their greed, but she couldn’t catch their location.

  Amdirlain set about transforming one out of each set of the Eldritch that she incinerated into a pilot flame at the end of the tunnel and continued to work. Listening to the ongoing greed, she pushed to consume the Eldritch faster, trying to isolate the Primordial entity from her surroundings. With no sign of its presence, she flared the pilot flame brighter, and the nearby bedrock glowed from the ongoing onslaught of power. The thing’s appetite drew in the stone’s blistering heat and the flame of creation at different rates, causing a ripple that flowed out like a sonar wave and painted the form of a reptilian beast swimming within the rock.

  At irregular intervals over the following days, she pulsed the flame again, and every time it crept fractionally closer, eager to draw in every speck of the surplus. Based on the song within the void it left, she made adjustments to the closest end of the lever wireframe and its dimensional folds. The construction of the lever blended her essence with the raw energy provided by burning the petrified Eldritch.

  When she completed the lever, she deliberately leaked her intention to wind down. The thing lunged out of the rock towards her, and Amdirlain melded with the cavern floor and tripped the lever in one move. It materialised within the physical, along with the dimensions that the being had been moving through, sealing around her stalker. The substance of the Plane gripped that lever tight. For less than a millisecond, the mountain range held, yet the tiny shift yanked on the starter of the new assembly. With the assembly bracing the Jade Court axis now in motion, the lever slipped free from the notch that had held it. Still braced between Plane and Spire, the momentum of the Plane’s rotation around the Spire yanked the closest end of the lever upwards. Its force obliterating the mountain range it had run through, crushing the stealthy Primordial and millions of beings that had called the region home.

  [Refined shards:

  Creation: +1

  Destruction: +5

  Energy: +2

  Transformation: +2

  Primordial Will [S](19->22)]

  Amdirlain winced at the devastation and restored the primal beings to life before she focused on the wounded Primordial still trapped within the lever’s multi-dimensional material. While it struggled and fought to free itself from the ordered materials, she compressed the lever’s width and then used songs to wrap it together like a ribbon. Only when the enormous ball sat at the core of the destroyed range did she Planar Shift away. Staggering and bleeding, she appeared in the Outlands and found the staging caverns that held Tingeth’s forces now filled with a swirling battle. Naamah’s succubi had sealed the passage to the surface, and their spells and blades had already slain thousands of devils. The portals at that site and others were no longer present.

  “Horizó also reshuffled some planes.” Gideon projected. “Yet I’m sure hampering those seeking you wasn’t part of their plan at all. The harmony between what the Jade Court did to have souls look at their deeds and Judgement is in place, and Alethia is ready to use it. You know the consequences will be swift once it's activated.”

  As the Aspect of Truth, I’m sure Alethia will allow the Souls to find understanding. If someone wants to warn a certain Pantheon, that's fine.

  “Nicholaus and Maker have been discussing the formithians. I’ll see what they say before it switches on. Anyway, all your demi-planes and those created by other beings are now in a nice little orbital setup. Other pantheons had similar arrangements to the Jade Court, and Horizó implemented other changes so that in future we can align them without the same impact.”

  How long will it take them to find the new portals into the Outlands?

  “That won’t take them long; the dark powers aligned with Tingeth have those whose focus is on thievery, and part of that is slipping into secured places. The Outlands is simply another treasure vault to be cracked open.”

  That’s fine. Delays are nice, but not essential. How is Di Yu settling in?

  “The sub-levels it introduced into Hades are expanding into full planes. Do you intend to name them or just use the Di Yu references?”

  Someone else can name them. Let's not use the Di Yu names outside the Yomi King’s Domain. You never shared your thoughts about the placement with me.

  “There are pros and cons. An upside is that you never asked about the population of Di Yu. There are more demons in there than you’d believe, as those snake mothers’ clutches can get quite large. They’re not inclined to play nice with Devils or other demons. While on the downside, it gives Asmodeus additional foes to help keep Hell unified. You should get some rest.”

  The two works had left a meagre trickle of reserves to call on, and Amdirlain headed home.

  Essence: 204,916 / 4,513,937

  That’s not going to recover overnight, so I guess I’ll need to let folks call on their allies.

  No sooner than she appeared by the wellspring than Kadaklan was at the border, projecting a request to meet.

  With an image of her location sent his way, Amdirlain sprawled on the lake’s edge and gently stirred her depleted energies. The weird echo effect of seeing the Domain through two sets of reduced senses at the same time drew a snort.

  It’s not too bad, but it’s a slight echo chamber effect. Maybe I should loiter somewhere else while I recover.

  Clad in a set of loose orange and yellow robes, Kadaklan stood out from the forest’s greenery. He regarded her with a critical healer’s eye and knelt by the water’s edge where she could see him without moving.

  “You look worn down,” Kadaklan noted. “How far did you push yourself?”

  “I perhaps should have held off advancing to this tier a touch longer, since I could have done with a slightly larger essence reserve.”

  “Have you converted your various energies to essence yet?”

  “Nope, for reasons.” Amdirlain waved absently. “What brings you hurrying over here without the family? Truly shocking.”

  “We visit you frequently.”

  Amdirlain’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “I know. It’s handy having two avatars here, I’ve been able to meet and greet people even while I work. It makes me feel less of an antisocial hermit.”

  “A frequent hermit, but I’d say mostly only the Lóm? get a lot of avoidance from you,” Kadaklan copied her earlier vague wave. “For reasons.”

  “Reasons indeed.”

  “Amdirlain, did you change anything related to the mantles?”

  “How would I have changed anything related to baby deities?” Amdirlain affected a wide-eyed innocence.

  Kadaklan let out an exasperated sigh. “Change comes to you naturally.”

  “It wasn’t so much what I did but the precedence of accomplishment that applied by aligning the Jade Court with the primary axis. For you, the existing advancements you’d achieved within the scope of the Jade Court first apply, and then the Mantle comes into effect. Since the Jade Court’s Immortal path is a route to becoming a Primordial, the Mantle can’t grip you as tightly. Also, if you achieve Primordial by the Jade Court’s method, it will absorb the Mantle. It doesn’t help Livia or Sarah, but it will at least stop any others from being messed up by it.”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Livia had Immortal Spirit but not full immortality, whereas Sarah hadn’t the time to gain either,” Kadaklan noted. “I don’t know if she started the Tao Enchanter Class looking to gain Immortal Spirit, but the Qil Tris Mantle got in first. Is that the reason you moved the Jade Court, so my Mantle wouldn’t interfere with me?”

  “I had dozens of reasons for the relocation, and that wasn’t in the top ten, so don’t feel responsible. Why is your Domain still in this region, Kadaklan? It would be safer if you moved it elsewhere.”

  “We’ve spoken about it, and you’re trying to change the subject.”

  “Yes to both. You’ve given different excuses to me through my avatars for your Domain, but I still don’t think you’ve given the real reason.”

  “Do you think just because my focus is healing and alchemy that we can’t contribute?” Kadaklan regarded her serenely. “The healer’s oath doesn’t protect demons, nor devils. There are lots of concoctions we’ve come up with that will make them regret sticking their noses out of their holes. There, you can now also put an end to any feelings of responsibility. Our lives are vastly different from anything we might have expected.”

  “I’m sitting here observing while twelve succubi massacre over two hundred thousand devils.” Amdirlain tipped her head thoughtfully. “I’d count that as different.”

  “With your strange eyes, it’s hard to get a proper feel for how you’re doing. Do you feel like sharing now that one of your tasks for Maker is done?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve been chatting to Sarah and not bottling up my emotions. She has most of the memories I relived.”

  “Is part of those memories to do with the being that visited here recently? I thought she was a dark power in Hell.”

  “Primordial, the ultimate rebel against unfair rules, but she likes knowing what the rules are all the same. In my first life, she taught me how to fight and love. That love should be blind, curious, and accepting of differences. Without her guidance, I would never have accepted Sarah’s love in my first lifetime. I made her, and as Phaedra, I’d grown up on stories of the Greek gods abusing the mortals they created. There were many tales of gods taking mortals as lovers, and then the mortals suffering for it. Without Lilith’s song, I would have declined Shindraithra’s advances, even though I didn’t think of myself as a goddess.”

  “Then you destroyed a species after she died,” Kadaklan noted. “Those daemons, correct?”

  “Yes, I balanced the hurt and pain they’d caused me against their existence and if they’d been a trillion more, still every Daemon would have died. Daemons were not good beings. Their purpose was to torment particular types of damned souls. They instead tortured me by taking Shindraithra from me early, and so I refused to let them torture anyone else. Yes, they were replaced, but they weren’t the same species. I excluded the pleasure they received, something I had originally based on the Kyton.”

  “You speak of Orhêthurin’s deeds as if they were your own.”

  “I’ve lived every second of those years. We told Lilith we’d never punish someone for misusing a rule, and I won’t. Yet the loophole of discernment is about to close. Gods of ‘light’ who direct their mortals towards deeds fitting of demons will quickly find themselves among the demons.”

  “Accountability?”

  “Yes.” Amdirlain’s smile was wintry. “The very nature of their homes will allow them to start a path of redemption, but they’ll have to admit their guilt.”

  ? ? ? ? ? ?

  Nexus’s PoV - Forge Room

  Olive groves and garden beds stretched out through a rolling countryside that had been present in the Spire before Ourania’s arrival. The path they’d taken led back to a simple cottage that Ourania insisted on keeping even though she had the strength herself now to build something grander. Cuineth crouched near a wildflower to inhale its scent, an unnecessary act given that Nexus knew that Cuineth intimately knew the state of every plant.

  The Spire’s boundary shook as the mechanism linked to the Jade Court jumped into motion. A little yank from Amdirlain’s perspective had set off the force of a dozen supernovas to align the involved axis. Nexus felt the strain through countless portals, gates, and rifts, keeping those with people in them stable until they exited to prevent deaths like she’d caused with Hell’s Portal. The new ones, she let Kháos and Kairos help her decide where they should grow. That Chaos and Opportunity got a say while Law was ignored set Theinas grumbling. Yet, since the rigid Theinas couldn’t understand the inherent wildness involved when different forces—even different laws—met, he could continue to grumble unheard.

  As Di Yu shifted into position, the massive pit Amdirlain’s black-hole had left in Hades filled with the first of its Planes. Yet it was only the first to align as it slid into the corrected axis, its lower planes pushed downwards. For the first time, Hades gained additional Planes, and not just sub-areas within a Domain. The upper planes held by the Jade Court Pantheon aligned with suitable regions, and an umbrella of planes unfolded above Elysium, extending out from Utopia to the Beastlands.

  Ourania stopped, eyes taking in the shift of Nexus’s expression. “You seem distracted, dear.”

  “I had a sudden rush of activity that needed attention. Gideon and others have been keeping secrets.”

  “Is there an Aspect for those as well?”

  “If there were, that would be a secret, wouldn’t it? They might get grumpy if I named them,” Nexus quipped.

  “Nexus, you still don’t wear flesh often enough to get away with fibbing.” Ourania crouched and added a tie to support a growing sapling.

  “Why do you bother growing food?” Nexus blurted. “None of us need it.”

  “It brings me comfort.”

  “Others also find comfort in distinct elements of it. It’s good to have living things. You don’t seem to be upset about some other pointless activities,” Cuineth murmured.

  Nexus blushed and stammered.

  “Intimacy is a point in itself, dear,” Ourania stood and patted Nexus’s shoulder. “I hope the wonder of each other’s love never grows old. However, the pair of you shouldn’t try to distract me from the topic. What secrets were they keeping?”

  “Amdirlain planned a shift in the realm. A change they could have told me about in advance,” Nexus grumbled.

  “Life needs to be lived, and sometimes a surge of activity helps clear one’s thoughts,” Cuineth said. “Though I’m sure that isn’t the reason they didn’t tell you, it’s a better way to look at it.”

  “Was there a bet going on?” Ourania asked.

  Cuineth laughed. “Maybe.”

  Nexus impulsively hugged Ourania. “Protect me from these bullies.”

  It drew laughter from the others, and when the laughter eased, the trio resumed their walk.

  As much as they were physically present, Nexus could feel the mental connections as she and Cuineth took care of other matters inside the Spire and without.

  “Is Amdirlain well?”

  “She is changing and achieving healthier growth,” Cuineth murmured.

  Ourania sighed. “It seems I need to be direct. Is Amdirlain in danger?”

  Cuineth and Nexus glanced at each other and laughed helplessly.

  “She’s a magnet for trouble,” Cuineth offered.

  “Many foes are forming connections and alliances, and your daughter likes to stand on her own feet,” Nexus said. “While she has allies willing to help, she doesn’t seek them enough.”

  Cuineth nodded before she added her viewpoint. “Not only that, if Amdirlain continues to push her growth, she’ll come into conflict with those who insist the balance of forces must favour them. Entities like that exist on all the outer planes, and Amdirlain has lost the rose-tinted glasses that she had towards most of the heavens from her past life.”

  “Most?” Ourania questioned.

  Cuineth smiled sadly. “Well, she already had some targeted, and they’ve been trying to find the source of their recent troubles. Maker and Nicholaus are trying to avoid annihilating their species. Yet, part of the overlap Amdirlain set up also brought the capabilities of Truth and Understanding to Judgement.”

  “When Alethia gets the go-ahead, mortals arriving in Judgement will see the truth behind the tenets espoused by their gods and decide if they’ll go with them or not.”

  “Yes, I remember Alethia is the Aspect for those concepts. How will that punish the gods?”

  “Amdirlain’s gears did more than align the axis of the Jade Court. It set balance plates in place that are now individually underpinning domains. She lacks the strength to get into domains, so now it's their dead who’ll get the knowledge to judge them accurately.”

  Ourania paused as she reached for another plant. “What did she do?”

  “The discernment of a deity’s alignment occurs as the Soul moves from Judgement to the Deity’s Domain. Her shift in the planes will ensure the waiting souls are aware of the truth behind their orders. Thus, each can accurately assess their life and deities, all while being safely and immediately delivered to the deity’s Domain,” Nexus smiled coldly. “Her targets have let trillions of souls linger in Judgement, despite the impact on them. Those deceived and neglected souls can now have their say about such goodness.”

  ? ? ? ? ? ?

  Aogruco’s PoV - Utopia

  The other fourteen members of the Formithian Pantheon flanked Aogruco as she regarded the two beings outside their Domain with distaste. Though the first was clearly an artificial construct, it spoke as if it were her equal. The metal body that Theinas controlled was equally insulting, with them not even bothering to appear in their hideous bipedal form. Her fury at the lecture they’d endured made the tendrils surrounding her primary hands tremble.

  “A place perfectly balanced for your species is possible. One whose rules can handle the focus you’ve set into them, which is among the mass of changes you made from the Songbird’s original creation.”

  “We will remain here,” Aogruco snapped yet again.

  “Though you refuse to see it, your short-sighted focus on having the mortals you guide propagate has caused them to become an unwelcome aberration in this realm. A parasitic, consuming lifeform intent on killing its host. Will you allow me to move your species to a realm suitable for it?”

  “Do you believe us fools to accept such an offer?” Aogruco’s crest of stalks swayed towards Theinas’s mechanical figure. “And you! I’m sure when the Titan hears of one of his aspects going behind his back, there will be repercussions.”

  “Are you in the grip of denial? I already told you that Nicholaus assigned me this duty. This is an envoy of Maker, a realm creator older than the Titan and his Songbird. You should listen to their offer closely and be respectful.”

  “I know your kind can lie.”

  “You’re not worth lying to,” Theinas retorted coldly. “You’ve broken the spirit of every agreement you’ve entered. While your people believe you’ve acted only for their good, you’re the one who has become lost in your own lies and dragged them with you. You’ve been abusing the rule of discernment, which the Songbird set. Yet there is a way to correct that loophole. Under other agreements, we can’t punish you for what you’ve done in the past. Yet once we close it, the mortals will judge you by their lives, and that will have consequences.”

  “Get away from my Domain.”

  “This is not for you to judge alone, Aogruco,” Dizoklas interjected. “Yet I agree.”

  The others murmured affirmations, and Theinas flicked his fingers dismissively. “You’ve let her lead and ruin worlds for countless species. Since you’ve refused the relocation, we’ll let the laws of the realm run their course. Danu has you on the back foot, but you’re about to experience worse.”

  Dizoklas’s claws clacked in contempt. “Danu has cost us less than one world in millions; we will yet destroy that fey, her minions and reclaim what is ours.”

  “We are the eldest of the species.” Aogruco snapped.

  “No, the dragons came into being before all but one Aspect. The formithians are recorded as the ninth sapient species. However, your genocidal purges have eliminated two of them since.” Theinas wagged a finger reprovingly, and the other members of the Pantheon stiffened.

  “I withdraw the offer.” Maker’s construct turned to Theinas, and power pounded through it as Maker’s attention focused on the place. The energy crushed down on the clearing and even across the Domain’s boundary, dropping all the Pantheon to their bellies. Yet Theinas stood untouched. “I’ll tell my student to clean up the mess she created. Since she has started on a fix, she needs to arrange the rest herself through whatever alliances she can arrange. I deem that to be a suitable lesson in balance.”

  With that, the construct vanished.

  “Has the Titan handed over the realm to another?” Krerzas spat accusingly.

  Theinas turned to the Formithian Deity of protectors and scouts. “In recent millennia, you’ve received chances to reflect on your errors and spurned all of them. Worse than spurning all of them, Aogruco even threatened one who had the full right to chastise her. One thing this Pantheon should know: you disgust the Titan’s Songbird with what you’ve become.”

  Dizoklas maws’ bit off the words of his rebuke. “You’ve no right to speak for the Songbird.”

  “Aogruco didn’t even recognise her when they recently spoke.”

  “I’ve not spoken to her in billions of years,” Aogruco snarled, but Theinas continued.

  “You are soon to have one last chance to change your ways, or your days in the light are at an end. The Songbird has no mercy in her heart for this Pantheon. You took from this realm, and you stole from her directly. You had the chance to make things right and apologise, and yet you cast it aside. Now your repayment will begin, for the eyes of the souls in Judgement will open. Let’s see how it affects all of you, and how soon your fall comes.”

  Aogruco felt a new awareness of their lives pulse through every unclaimed Formithian Soul. Both those just reaching Judgement, along with those she and her kin hadn’t bothered to collect for centuries. First came revulsion from those who had spent their lifetimes harvesting Orc flesh. She quickly noticed other truths shared with them, which revealed the deliberate lies within her teachings—lies that she had long since come to believe herself, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

  While those they’d already ensconced in their Domain weren’t affected, the horde they’d procrastinated over had grown to vast numbers. The price of their neglect now threatened to be a tidal wave. Before she could reach out to snatch them in, she experienced the weight of the deceptions shaking the masses. A bitter, noxious betrayal radiated to her through their links of faith. The souls’ discernment of their god’s goodness was the linchpin of heavenly powers to remain in the upper planes; with this mass’s perspective shifted so dramatically, Aogruco's grip on Utopia shivered.

  The waiting dead now credited her need for control, instead of concern for the well-being of the hive, as a reason for her rejection of lesser beings. That was the first lie they understood, but more followed. Their belief in her shifted from beneficial queen to intolerant tyrant. This became edged in sharp panic when the awareness that reincarnation might place them among such persecuted creatures.

  Through the threads linking them, she heard screams of despair and outrage shake Judgement as countless trillions of formithians received the knowledge necessary to assess their gods’ teachings. While perhaps a hundredth of them were unaffected, they were also the same souls damned by their gods’ hypocritical measures. The shockwaves piled up as the souls reeled between every other vile act the Pantheon’s contempt for other species had encouraged among their Mortal followers. Where the atrocities were in the mortals' control, there were no consequences for their deities, but so very many were not in the mortals' control.

  Trillions of souls left waiting in Judgement were placed directly at their Domain’s Wellspring. As they arrived, they screamed in outrage at their deities' betrayal. The faith they’d offered in life became poisoned seeds nurtured by the Wellspring. Souls that had been drifting towards dissolution to strengthen the Domain got startled from their dreaming slumber, and the disruptive seeds drove them to flee for a new life.

  Poisonous seeds germinated rapidly, fertilised by Aogruco's intolerance echoing through outbound blessings granted by the Domain. Although the strength of each individual was of no consequence to Aogruco, they arrived in the Domain as a single group.

  The energy they and the faithful of her fellow deities should have provided was instead a destructive body blow that caused their combined Domain to shudder. Though inertia held it in the heavens, the impact severely disrupted that hold. Aogruco felt it when the essence of Utopia offered her the chance to repent and atone, and together with those around her, she rejected what she saw as an insult.

  Billions of tunnels creaked and groaned, and the light within the Domain’s border dimmed. Aogruco screamed at her fellow deities, “Don’t let go of my place here. We’ll have our revenge.”

  “What can we do?” Krerzas's claws clacked sharply, as if ready to render a foe.

  “I’ll rip whoever was involved in this interference apart,” Aogruco spat, her acidic outrage gouging deep tracks through the established solidarity of the hive.

  “Your place?” Dizoklas straightened as the flood of poisoned knowledge from his followers made him question beliefs he’d long held. “Are we nothing to you, Mother?”

  “You’ll do as I say.” Aogruco roared.

  Dizoklas wasn’t the only one gripped by spite as Aogruco raged.