Chapter 145 Found, Not Forced

Chapter 145 Found, Not Forced

Yuna vanished before the thought had finished forming, leaving only light-residue and drifting dust where she'd stood a heartbeat ago.

The mountain answered with absolute silence, as though the world itself had gone still in her absence.

Lord Caius lifted his gaze to a dawn that would not break.

"Godspeed, Trivia." His voice was barely more than breath. "Save the world. Save the Darkmoon."

She reappeared at the summit of her own throne, deep inside the Darkmoon pantheon.

The pull had come before she'd chosen to answer it. That was how it always was, with gods, will bent before consent was even asked.

Her gaze swept the vast, echoing dark of the pantheon halls.

"Trivia."

Zuri's voice rolled out behind her like distant thunder, and she turned before the disorientation of the crossing had even cleared, toward the towering shape of the Darkmoon, wearing the body she knew better than her own reflection.

Instinct moved her before thought could catch up. She was on her feet before she'd finished registering who stood there.

"My Lord." Her voice came soft, reverent. "I am your loyal subject. I heed to thy call, above all others."

"On your feet, Hekate of the old tongue." Zuri's voice was layered — his own beneath it, and something vaster underneath that. "You've made me proud. My only subject who withstood the harsh tide of time. You're the sight I've longed to see, after all this while."

Yuna rose. The air hummed around her, charged, alive.

"It's been ages, Trivia. Ammit's body fits you well." He chuckled, low, and opened his arms.
"Come."

She moved forward, cautious at first, until she was folded into his embrace, warm, steady, soothing in a way nothing in this pantheon had been in a long time.

"Feels like forever," he said quietly against her hair.

"My Lord..."

"Ahh. I won't take that." He raised a ringed finger, cutting her off. "Lord. That word tastes like vinegar in my ears. It's me, Zuri. Address me as such. It'll make me feel better."

"You only wear the vessel of your avatar, my Lord. To address you below your rank would be insubordination."

"I allow it." He tilted her chin up. "Besides, you're Trivia, wearing a mortal avatar of your own. That makes us even." A low laugh. "There's no need for all that between us. We are one now. Trivia and the Darkmoon. You complete me, Yuna. I am nothing without my goddess."

"I'm flattered, Zuri. I still can't quite believe it's you in there. Forgive me." Her old goofiness crept back into her voice. "How do you feel now? Feel like saving the world?"

"Like my entire existence depends on it." Zuri's tone sobered instantly. "Erebus is brewing something that will shock even us godheads. I saw it, in the Observatory, where the watchers used to sit and keep vigil. It sits empty now." He drew closer, voice dropping. "Erebus has reached the cosmic phage."

"Impossible." The word left her flat, immediate. "That was locked away in cold nothingness by the Hands of Creation itself. No creature can reach it. Not even Erebus."

"He has." Zuri said it heavier than she'd ever heard him speak. "And it's been activated."

The silence that followed had weight to it.

"It is a weapon of cosmic annihilation," he went on. "Made to correct the errors in creation. In the wrong hands, it will twist reality itself, the way this world's reality was already twisted, once. Taking the daybreak was only a warm-up, Yuna. Erebus rides the Primordial Darkness, the force that existed before time, before light, and he means to use it to usher in a Darkness with no end this time. Total and final."

"Then we need to move." Urgency sharpened her voice. "Look at our own pantheon, your minions have gone missing, thrones and sentinel posts standing empty. The Darkmoon pantheon is crumbling too. We need to act before this takes root."

"I have a plan." Something almost dangerous glinted behind his eyes. "Foolproof. Even Erebus won't see it coming." He exhaled. "But I'm useless in this form. Planetary level isn't enough, not against what's coming. I need to be cosmic level again, and to get there, I need the Temple of Fallen Stars, fast. Khonshu's scepter is the last catalyst for my full resurrection."

"Tomb of Fallen Stars, you mean." She corrected him gently. "It's a graveyard now. Our forces sleep there. Contained."

He looked at her with an expression that bordered on sheepish for a god. "I take it you know where it still lies."

"Of course I do." She didn't pause to wonder why he'd forgotten something so essential. "I visit it every millennium. Standing at the brink, staring at a treasure I can no longer reach. I'll take us there, only your true essence can break the seal, Zuri."

"I know. Which is why I meant to go through the Olive Peaks first, to Lord Caius's scrolls on the scepter."

"You don't need any of that, Zuri." Her scepter was already rising between them, catching a light that seemed to come from nowhere. "Every word written into those scrolls, I gave to them myself. What's the use of the channel when you already have the source?"

She studied him, the god standing several ranks above her own station, and still, somehow, unready.

"Even at your current state, you're not prepared to face Erebus. Take my Night-Bringer. It still carries the full essence of the Darkmoon inside it. It will serve you better than it's ever served me."

She held the scepter out to him.

"I'm only lending it," she added, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Be sure you return it."

He took it from her, matching her humor, and closed his grip around it. Power coiled visibly along his arm.

"This is..." He went quiet a moment, eyes half-closing. "I'd forgotten what real power feels like. It's sweet. Like wine distilled in the cellars of the old spirits."

"You're looking strong, by the way." She stepped in closer, studying the lines of his armor like she hadn't had the chance to before. "This form suits you. Stronger. More handsome, carved out of solid mountain. This is the face of a god."

"And you're looking no less lovely. Even Aphrodite would be jealous." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You're radiant, Yuna. More than the stars themselves. I could look at this face and forget that reality is unraveling at its edges."

"Please." She laughed, soft. "Save the compliments for after, prove them to me when this is all over, Zuri."

"How would I prove my words to such radiance, Trivia?"

"Will you marry me?" Her eyes caught the light and held it.

"Will you be my bride, Trivia — not just you, but all of you. Yuna. Ammit. Hekate. The goddess, the goofy girl who flinches at her own jokes, the sweet apprentice who..."

"Please, stop talking." She pressed two fingers to his lips. "And let me say yes."

Zuri's eyes went wide.

"Really?"

"Is it not obvious, Zuri? We were fated before either of us was born. This isn't forced. It's found." She rested her head against his chest and let herself, for one breath, be more human than godhead. "But that can all wait. We have a world to save."

"Reality, you mean," he corrected gently, smiling down at her. "We have a reality to save. And after, the Hands of Creation owe us more than a handful. Perhaps we should simply claim this reality for ourselves."

"Of course not, Zuri." She lifted her head. "The Darkmoon is the strongest, but it isn't the only pantheon walking this reality. The Norse, the pantheon of Olympus. There are planes here that don't acknowledge the Darkmoon as their head. We should be lenient with them. Even if we stand above them."

"I hear you. My queen has spoken." He was teasing now. "Perhaps we settle for custodian instead. Better?"

"Much better. We should lean into being kind to our subordinates." A small, correcting smile. "And I'm Priestess, not queen yet. You'll have to earn that title from me."

"I will. Definitely." His jaw set. "Now I have every reason to beat Erebus to a pulp and push the Primordial Darkness back where it belongs. For your sake. For Earth's sake."

"I love you, Zuri. Don't ever stop being the Zuri I know and adore." Her three faces steadied as she said it, an aura bleeding out of her skin rather than the air around her.

Love. Pure, unadulterated.

"I won't. My love, for your sake." He held her a moment longer.

Then, on cue, the godly weight returned to his bearing, his eyes flaring back to full power.

"Now then. Onward. Let's save this world, Trivia." A pause, softer. "And that face, take it off. It's grieving, and my senses can't carry it any further."

"I am indeed grieving, Zuri." Her expression tightened. "I lost something that mattered to me. Someone left a hole in me that hasn't closed."

"Then we will make up for every loss the Darkness has taken from us. Those lives will not have been for nothing. Let's avenge them. For the Darkmoon."

"For the Darkmoon." Yuna said it like a decree, her three faces settling into something colder, harder, resolved.

The air answered. Light tore open around them in a violent vortex, smoke coiling thick at their feet, the pantheon itself groaning under the pressure of what was about to move through it.

"Where to next, Zuri?" she asked, and felt it before she understood it: a tremor, faint, running up through the scepter still glowing in his hand. Not from him.

From somewhere far beneath them. From the direction of a tomb she had sworn, for a thousand years, was sealed.