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Privately, Jill was exceptionally glad when a fiery streak broke from between two of the skyscrapers in midtown Rosaria, catching the Sleipnir she’d been fighting and slamming it into the ground. She hadn’t been in much danger, but it had been getting dicey.
In the crater below, she saw that Ifrit was crouched over the Sleipnir, tearing into it with claws and flame. The part of her that was Shiva, the being whose spirit she had been chosen to host, thrilled. On the world the Nine had come from, she and Ifrit had been partners, in every sense of the word. She’d told Jill stories of their lives before the destruction of their planet, before each of them had been torn from their bodies by the massive outburst of energy that shattered their home and flung their spirits far and wide across the universe. Ifrit featured in many, and Jill got the sense that Shiva was quite glad his spirit had made its way to their world at last.
Jill reached into the air currents, manipulating them so she floated gently down to where Ifrit had the Sleipnir pinned down, clawed fingers digging past the synthetic skin covering its body and revealing the bright, almost liquid metal below. Jill shuddered as she landed nearby; Sleipnirs, so close to life and yet so far from it, always made her uneasy.
“We do want him to talk, Ifrit,” she said gently. The man–she couldn’t see his actual features, the alterations gifted by the spirit he bore manifesting as a tough outer skin that looked like lava, a horned cowl of sorts covering his head and extending into an almost dog-like snout–didn’t look up.
“I doubt it’s got much to say,” Ifrit growled, but eased up on his grip and tilted his head, an invitation to start her questioning.
“I’m going to ask this nicely,” she said, addressing the Sleipnir. “ Once . Where has your master taken his base now?”
The Sleipnir grinned at her, some kind of oily fluid leaking from its mouth in a freakish imitation of blood. “Nowhere special, Shiva. Why do you ask, are you in a hurry?”
A low rumble emanated from Ifrit, his flame-bright eyes narrowing. “You know why. Whatever you did to Phoenix–”
“Ah, it’s the bird .” The Sleipnir smiled up at Ifrit. “My master does have a way to heal him.”
“We know ,” Jill said. Shiva made her voice deeper, huskier, and the word came out almost as much a growl as the one coming from Ifrit now. “Which is why we want to find him and come to a deal.”
“My master doesn’t make deals with those who betrayed him.”
In the back of her mind, Shiva radiated disgust, and Jill felt herself scowling as she said, “Is that how he sees it? I don’t think it’s betrayal to stop one’s home from being obliterated, but what do I know?”
“Not just that.” The Sleipnir fixed its eyes on Ifrit now. “ Before .”
A refusal, claw-tipped hands grasping her shoulders and pulling her close as a wave of heat and light and pain washed over her, followed by an ominous sound, the sound of a world beginning to die–
Jill put her rime-covered hand on the Sleipnir’s forehead, locking eyes. “Tell your master I’ll take him to hell myself,” she said calmly, and pushed with her power. From her palm, jagged ice-blue lines spread across the Sleipnir’s body until it shattered. She and Ifrit watched the pieces crumble and scatter to the wind.
“Good talk,” Ifrit said at last. Jill eyed him from under the icy cowl that obscured her own features, wondering again just who he was. Sometimes he seemed so familiar to her, and because of how Shiva and Ifrit had been entwined on their homeworld, it was difficult to tell if the familiarity was her own or that of the spirit she hosted. Something about how he spoke and walked, though…
“It’ll be on its way back to Odin, and we won’t know any more about where he is .”
“Yeah…” Jill swept her boot through the remnants of the drone, sparks of darkness dancing between them as they continued to disintegrate into nothing. “About that,” she said, and grinned.
*
“So,” Ifrit said, crouched beside her, “ That was pretty clever.”
Jill couldn’t help preening a bit, even as she let the binoculars she’d summoned dissolve back into snowflakes. Shiva had been impressed at her ingenuity too, both in applying the tracking magic to the spark in the Sleipnir drone, following it back to the source, and in conjuring the binoculars. Even several years on from accepting Shiva’s offer of power in exchange for a host body, Jill found herself appreciating the praise she’d get sometimes. Compared to humans, these beings were basically gods. It wasn’t easy to impress a god.
“We’ve all got our moments,” she replied. “It looks like he’s tunneled into the cliffside.”
“So we go find the door,” Ifrit began, but Shiva gripped his arm. The rough plates shifted under her hand, and she was surprised to find them pliant, to feel him leaning into her touch as he turned into her.
“I don’t think knocking at the front door is going to get us very far. Is shapeshifting something you can do?”
“No… so that’s out.” Ifrit’s flamebright eyes narrowed. “Unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless,” and Jill raised an eyebrow as she saw him grinning. “We make our own door.”
“How…”
Ifrit put his hand against a nearby rock. They both watched as it began to glow, getting brighter and brighter until the stone began to drop into the snow, great globs of melted rock sizzling. She had no choice but to nod slowly, a grin spreading across her own face.
“Okay then.”
It took them a bit to climb down one side of the glacier-carved valley and then a bit longer for her to help Ifrit scale the cliff face on the other side, judicious application of ice aiding him in reaching a ledge that, based on what they’d seen, was just on the other side of the cliff face from a service tunnel in Odin’s base. Ifrit looked at her as he spread his clawed hands across the rock.
“Do you think you could give me some cover?” he asked. “This will take some time. I don’t want you getting hurt waiting for me to make the opening.”
Her stomach fluttered as she began reaching out into the air around them, and she felt Shiva responding the same way. “Worried about me, are you,” she murmured as she began freezing and thawing the water in the air around them, filling the area with mist and extending it out so it didn’t look too suspicious. “Touching.”
When she looked back, she was surprised to see Ifrit regarding her seriously. “I do worry for you,” he said, voice gravelly and low, and this time the flutter inside her was for completely different reasons. Jill cleared her throat.
“Well,” she said, a bit too high-pitched. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Thankfully, Ifrit turned to the cliff face and began to melt through it, and Jill took the steam that the process made and added it to her mist until the valley seemed to fill with a magical haze, the tops of trees poking out of it and only occasional glimpses at the river that flowed along the valley floor sparkling in the dying sunlight. Every so often she’d sneak a look at Ifrit, deep in focus, admiring how the cracks in the rocky armor that covered his skin glowed brighter the closer to his hands they got, tracing the curve of a flame-limned horn arching back from his head. Shiva whispered, sounding very amused, that she was glad they both found the same things attractive about him, that it was quite fitting, and that she and Ifrit fit together in other ways as well. Jill mentally shushed her, but sensed that Shiva had only retreated to a corner of her mind, giggling to herself.
Pest , she thought.
It took about ten minutes for Ifrit to break through and make a hole wide enough to accommodate them both. He insisted on going through first, and Jill hovered in midair as she watched him pace the corridor they’d broken into. When he was certain it was clear, he held out a clawed hand to help her through the entrance.
The base was only marginally warmer than the outside, and as they pressed inward, Jill grew suspicious. Odin had an army of Sleipnir drones at his command, constructs that respawned and divided endlessly as he willed. She’d expected his base of operations to be crawling with them, but instead it was deserted, only the distant hum of machinery and far-off sounds of movement and habitation that seemed to come from every direction at once reaching their ears.
“I don’t like this,” she said after they had crept up a staircase into what seemed to be a huge hangar, rows of smaller drones lined up neatly. “Where is everyone?”
Ifrit crouched, nostrils flaring, then froze in place. “Something’s here,” he said, and a low growl accompanied the words, the flames licking off his body growing in size and intensity. “I don’t recognize it, but– he does. Ifrit does.”
That was worrying. Of the Nine, only Odin had turned from the path fully. Leviathan had isolated herself, and the others had taken up the fight in their own ways, on the worlds they’d found themselves residing on after the destruction of their own world. Carefully, just to be sure, Jill asked, “It’s not Odin?”
“Not just Odin.” Another growl, blue eyes narrowed. “Someone else. Ifrit hates him.”
In the back of her mind, Shiva began to feel alarmed, and then to demand Jill let her speak with surprising intensity, a level Jill wasn’t used to at all. Stunned, Jill closed her eyes and felt Shiva move to the fore of her mind, the being’s power flooding through her at a much higher level.
“Is it him?” she heard herself say. Her voice had that low resonance again, and she watched as Ifrit’s eyes flickered briefly to yellow-orange.
“It is,” he responded, low and angry and– afraid. “We have to find him, Shiva. We have to find him before he turns this world into another Origin.”
The alien being was close in her mind as they sped along the corridors, climbing ever higher in the base. Several times Jill pressed her on what she and Ifrit were talking about, what Origin was, but all Shiva would tell her was that they would speak later and to keep her eyes open, that the being they could be facing was terrifying even to the Nine, that they were persuasive enough to bring Odin to their side, that if they were here their world was in terrible danger.
She was so deep in thought that she nearly ran into Ifrit, who had stopped dead and was crouched down, tail whipping angrily back and forth. When she stepped forward he moved to put himself between her and the two beings who stood opposite them, in front of windows offering a panoramic view of the mountain range that Odin had set up shop in. Jill watched as the spikes and plates on Ifrit’s body seemed to flex, making him appear bigger. She’d never seen Ifrit like this, not even confronting Odin–one of the beings, the shorter one, armored head to toe in plate that seemed to flow organically over his body. Beside him, one of the Sleipnir drones shifted from its humanoid form, becoming the eight-legged horse that Odin often rode through the skies. Odin didn’t terrify her, even the deadly blade he carried didn’t. But the other being…
Her gut coiled up in fear that was not at all borne of Shiva, but all her own. Looking at the four-armed humanoid being, Jill felt sick; it was as though every cell in her body and every iota of Shiva’s being were screaming at her that the being was wrong , that it was unnatural , that it was their end if they didn’t run. Jill planted her feet, and did not run.
“You’ve finally come,” the being said, gesturing with one of their arms at Ifrit. “My Mythos.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Ifrit snarled. “But I know you’re not going to be long for this world.”
She saw it a split-second after Ifrit launched himself at the strange being. A flash of violet light rippled out from them, and Ifrit was flung backward, hitting the wall. She held her breath until he stumbled to his feet, but Odin and the other being had already turned their attention to her.
“Shiva,” Odin said. “I told my lord you would be here too. Thank you for being so predictable.”
“I go where there’s trouble,” she said, ice sliding down her arm to form a glacial-blue sword. “And I know that’s what the two of you are.”
The four-armed being regarded her with something that seemed like pity. “I am not trouble, Shiva,” they said. “I am come to be a savior to this world.”
She paced closer, hefting the sword in her hand. “Not its destruction?”
“Well,” the being said, “Only if it rejects me. But it is fortuitous I have found where Mythos has come to. Where he goes, so too go his two greatest weaknesses.”
Before she could ask, they struck at her with that same violet light. Jill skidded across the floor but it caught her a glancing blow, and she screamed in pain as she dropped to a knee. Her right arm almost looked burned .
A roar of anger made her look up from her blistered skin, and Jill felt her heart drop as Ifrit gathered himself and leaped for the strange being, a weapon of his own forming in his hand out of what appeared to be fresh lava–-a wickedly spiked maul, one he brought up in front of him when the being casually waved a hand, sending darts of violet toward Ifrit. He blocked them, but only just.
“This will all go so much easier, Mythos, if you stop struggling.”
“What the hell are you calling me that for? I’m Ifrit .”
“You are an incomplete thing, a vessel for so much more.”
Jill gathered herself and leaped but this time it was Odin getting in her way, sword raised. Without any effort at all his blade sliced through hers, and she narrowly avoided its edge when he slashed at her , flinging up a wall of ice just in time for Odin to bury his sword in it. The edge of it cut through, but it was slowed down enough that Jill had time to get out of the way. Odin was advancing on her, swinging his sword and leaving glowing cuts in the decking.
“Stay out of the way while our master works.”
“He’s not my master.” Jill flung ice at Odin, but he swatted the projectiles away almost casually, fingers twitching on his other hand. A lattice of sparking, angry darkness sprung into being around her, shrinking until she could barely move in any direction without touching it and slicing into her skin. Odin’s glowing eyes fixed on her through his helmet.
“He will be soon enough.”
Helpless, Jill watched as Ifrit and the four-armed being fought, though it was horribly one-sided. Every time her–friend, her partner–attacked, it was countered, then repaid twice over in blows that had her flinching, then clenching her fists as she saw the being grasp Ifrit by the throat, lifting him off his feet.
“I think you need to see,” the being said quietly. “Yes, I think I need to make you see the futility of fighting this time. Then you will come to me willingly, Mythos, you and your brother. You’ll even bring your love.” Its eyes flicked over to Jill. “You’ll bring them and rejoice.”
Despite everything, the wounds trailing lava-like ichor down his limbs, Ifrit still managed to grind out a response. “Never,” he hissed. “I’ll never bring them, not the way you want, I’ll never let you have them, I won’t let you take Joshua, I won’t let you take Ji–”
The being closed their fist tighter and tighter, slowly cutting off Ifrit’s voice and his air. When he hung limp in the being’s grip, he was let go and landed on the floor in a heap. “Disappointing, but you were always stubborn, Mythos,” the being said. “But I am patient. I can wait.”
“My lord,” Odin said, ignoring Jill’s choked sobs from behind him. “It’s no longer secure here. I have an alternative location for us where the work can continue.”
“Very well.” The being waved their arms, and a portal of inky black ringed with blue opened beside them. Their eyes rested on Jill.
“You were always a terrible influence on him,” they said. “I shall enjoy seeing you broken.”
Then he and Odin were gone through the portal, and though she tried, she could not make it through herself when the net of darkness around her vanished. Jill fell to her knees, angry tears freezing on her cheeks even as her mind spun with questions.
We can tell you , Shiva said, louder and more clearly than her usual impressions and feelings. But you need to go to him. You need to go to Ifrit .
Vision still blurry with tears, Jill crawled across the floor and gently rolled Ifrit onto his back, cradling his head in her lap. His cowl hadn’t retreated but his eyes were dim, barely even embers, and the glow tracing lines along his body was barely visible. Jill ran her thumbs along the jagged lines of the doglike cowl.
“I need to get to your host,” she whispered. “Ifrit, I need to make sure he’s all right.” When the cowl didn’t move, she felt Shiva push in front.
“Ifrit, let him go, my love,” she purred, in a voice that cracked with stress. “Let her tend to him.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the cowl retreated and melted back into the skin of Ifrit’s host, and that was when Jill felt the bottom drop out.
“Clive?” she whispered, her thumbs stroking his face. “ Clive ?”
He mumbled something, and with Shiva’s prodding, Jill began methodically caring for him. Vitals were okay, neck and back weren’t broken–
He is exhausted , Shiva supplied, her voice soft. Ifrit demanded much when confronting Ultima.
“Ultima,” Clive murmured, eyelashes fluttering. Jill could have laughed, because since she was young she’d dreamed about watching Clive wake up like this, but here they were, and she was cowled, and she had had no idea and he was hurt and–
Focus, Shiva instructed harshly. Jill took one breath, then another, and then set to work arranging for transport, calling in the base to the planetary authority, debriefing on the comms line to the officer coordinating the response. That only occupied her for a time, though, and when she finally ended the transmission, she sighed and pulled Clive’s head into her lap. Years of knowing him, three months of dating, and he hadn’t said a word. Now, they were both in the middle of something bigger, somehow, than alien spirits and superpowers.
She was confident that together, they’d be able to figure this out. Whatever Ultima was, whatever he meant by calling Clive Mythos… they’d figure it out together. Still…
“Damn it, Clive,” she muttered, stroking sweat-damp hair back from his face. “When you wake up, we’re going to have a talk .”