Reika felt her Mother accept the duty of the One World, and felt her heart break with it. Not for any petty reasons such as jealousy, that She would choose this path, that She would opt for the path that saved the most people – including Her children, and those not Hers. Nor for knowing Mother put Herself on a path that led to somewhere She didn't want. No, her heart broke because Mother was exactly the person she expected and knew Her to be, and she feared the enemy did too.

  Keilan’s voice echoed in her ears as the spell far outside activated, power swirling and curling, forming what she could only describe as a giant hammer and anvil upon which the formation walls would crack. But first came the artillery in thrice the quantity, the sheer force of all the explosions setting the Four Realms to shuddering. Reika stood, looking skyward, but knew she couldn’t move from her spot. Beside her, Kei rested a hand on her shoulder, her tails swishing as she smiled gently. Reika laid her own hand upon her daughter’s, feeling the tension bleed out of her. She had to be strong for Kei, just as Mother was strong for them.

  "Focus, Kei," Gilles said firmly, the deity of shadows urging her to keep her attention on what was before her, despite the chaos happening outside. Reika tensed as a particularly heavy salvo struck hard enough her Tree shook, leaves rattling. A wave of calm radiated out from her, seeking to reach the mortals, to reassure them. It did very little.

  "Don't worry, mom," Kei whispered, squeezing her shoulder while she idly toyed with the small bits of rot slime with her other hand. It was a translucent red color, and surrounded by a little field of burning silver starlight that burned away any potential spores, courtesy of Astraea. Said goddess of stars watched closely, her eyes gleaming silver as she watched the rot for any foul play, observing to see if it truly effected her daughter in any way. So far, it had not, as Reika expected. Her daughter was far too carefree to be obsessive over something. "It's just a little mushroom, it's nothing to worry about."

  "I know," Reika whispered back, while Gilles moved about her, watching the rot for any movement. It was suspiciously dormant, despite the instinctual intelligence Reika was sensing from it. Like a snake, biding its time. Another rattle shook the Realms and Reika flinched, feeling the power of the formation boot up again, but this time be redirected somewhere else. Outward. The armies of the enemy were closing in, and - Reika stilled, her power tensing as she slowly turned to Astraea. The goddess of stars was no longer observing Kei, shuddering in place as Mother’s Will washed over her.

  "This feels different than expected," she said softly, silver light flowing from her eyes in gentle waves. Gilles stayed perfectly still, shadows wrapping around the rot Kei played, peeling every particle off of her skin and gently depositing it in a sealed, Void-bound container, where it could do no harm. "I feel...better. Less bound." Astraea glanced up, then down, flexing her hands, a soft, sad smile gracing her delicate features.

  "You felt the assimilation happen?" Reika asked rhetorically, already noticing the difference in the woman’s posture. Her shoulders were straighter. Her eyes clearer.

  "I can. More importantly, I can feel your Statera Luotian through it." Astraea sucked in a deep breath, tears glimmering in the corners of her eyes. "You are all fortunate to have a Father such as He. Even I can feel His love." Reika found herself nodding along to her words, even if she didn't fully understand what she meant. Astraea let out a long, slow breath, almost as if she was about to cry. “Our mothers were never so forthcoming with her affections.” Then she froze again, brows furrowing.

  "Is something the matter?" Gilles asked, palming the void-container. Reika eyed it. Gilles was exceedingly careful with the stuff – even in moments of minor distraction, he would make sure to seal every ounce of it away. Something about feeling it necessary; that a moment of carelessness could cost them. Reika felt Mother’s hand in it, and did not doubt. "Or can we resume?"

  "No, nothing is the matter, I just...I thought I felt Curie waking up, but I think I was imagining things. It is too soon for that, yet," she said softly, shaking her head. "Let us continue. I should be able to sense more, now that I am no longer so restricted by the Will of the Four Realms."

  ***

  Atreum snarled as he paced back and forth, impatience finally winning out. The damnable barrier that protected the invader's realm had yet to show an ounce of give, but the necessary pieces to crack it were nearly in place. They just had to wait for the realm itself. His hand gripped his spear tighter, the sword upon his back weighing heavy and itching for blood.

  Some small part of himself knew he was acting oddly, that this was very much unlike him. The anger he felt was so all-consuming...the Trio had fallen largely silent, Yueya only speaking up in a few, broken statements about getting into the Four Realms and taking back what they stole from Lady Curie. Together they had hatched a plan to reach the false-god Statera, but it would mean a full commitment of many of their forces – something he planned to do anyway.

  As for Alala, after the impact, she had all but vanished. The explosion had sent her tumbling through the afterlife, and he was not in charge of searching for her, only making sure the invaders were properly punished for their crimes. Atreum ground his teeth.

  If Lady Alala were here, it would make breaking open this nut so much easier. With her strength, she could have easily pried open their defenses, and allowed them to swarm inside. Atreum raised his hand in the air, power swirling about him. All across the open air of the afterlife, his men, his troops, readied themselves in their various war machines; ships, magic constructs, whatever let them traverse this distance at the necessary speed and fueled by his power. Mages poured power into the spell formation, various deities under his command working the spell formation. Magic swirled about them, the kind of power unseen since the dawn of creation, when he was first made by Yueya as a fellow practitioner of the arts.

  Once again, he felt a disconnect. Something stirred in his mind, telling him he was focusing too hard on one thing - war was more than just attack, attack, attack. It was also negotiation, like that fellow Xing Wu had attempted...Atreum paused, his anger stilling for a heartbeat.

  That was a true man. What he wouldn't give to have an honest match with an honorable warrior like that.

  A twitch ran up his spine, vicious and cruel, and his anger reasserted itself with a red-hot vengeance. Honorable or not, they had betrayed the One World, and for that they would pay the price. Unfortunately he could not employ his more devious tactics. The Art of War was not just about frontal assaults and bloodshed, after all, it was also about winning the fight before it started. Unfortunately here, it was not an option. He would have to make due with a few smaller schemes, many of which were already in motion.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Some small part of his mind told him that was not the case, that he had options. Then he felt it. The Authority, Lady Curie's Authority, that the enemies had taken, that the traitor had delivered, snapped into place. He squashed that traitorous part of his brain with vicious force, and dropped his hand.

  The spell activated. The siege engines fired with malicious force. And the nut, cracked in the chaos of their false god accepting dominion of the One World.

  A voice spoke in his head. It wasn't a voice he really knew, but it was one he half listened to all the same.

  'That is not their god,' the voice said, sounding suspiciously like Curie, but oddly tinny and distorted. 'The gods are its children. Their creator is the Heavens itself.'

  Atreum did not pause, but the meaning echoed in his brain nonetheless. Heaven was not a god. It was a place.

  Just like the One World was. How did you fight something like that, besides scorched earth?

  ***

  It was one thing to say they were going to aid the gods. It was entirely another for the Celestial Empress to see exactly what was arrayed against them, and the power of the gods involved.

  When the enemy spell activated, a surge of purple power radiating through the afterlife, driving souls in a wave toward the Four Realms, it cracked the formation that protected it. Combined with the artillery fire - massive, haunting machines that were taller than any mountain she had ever seen in her life, visible only thanks to techniques of the gods themselves, it would have fallen to pieces, shattered like a stained glass window. Alanna had expected that. The gods had too. But it had been her idea to weaponize the fall.

  "Do not resist the barrier's fall," she had said. "When the spell goes off and if it cracks, ignite the formation. Let it explode outward in a destructive wave, and annihilate the first wave of troops." It was destructive. It was deadly. It was the kind of cruel tactic she had learned from the devil cultivator terrorists, when they had been attempting to build their own nation, or tear down her rule.

  It was a perfectly valid strategy.

  And for a moment, when the barrier cracked and Thyia, destructive, chaotic, Thyia, the goddess of catastrophe, cackled her way to the formation, imbuing it with her power and sending a wave of crackling black lightning hurtling out at the massive wave of troops flooding in from all sides, she had hoped that it would be an easier fight than she had expected, or the gods had made it out to be. That the wave would annihilate the enemy.

  But it was only for a moment she felt that way.

  The Mad Scientist reached over and grabbed her hand as they stood together, hundreds of thousands of her own troops - an admittedly small percentage of her total soldier count, spread out across the entirety of the Four Realms' and the 'battlements,' a secondary, energetic wall just within the shell of Primordial Chao s, as they were - shifting nervously before her. The wave of crackling black lightning shot out, vaporizing millions of screaming soldiers in an instant.

  "That worked better than I expected." she had whispered as the dust began to settle.

  "It is far from over." she whispered back.

  It was then, and only then, that Alanna truly beheld the scope of what they faced. And how truly small she was in the face of an entire universe.

  Tens of billions, if not trillions to tens of trillions, of soldiers came screaming at them, weapons raised and bloodlust visible as a red mist in the air. Giants of bone and creatures she had never dreamed of clad in gleaming silver armor charged forth, fortresses built upon their backs. Galleon ships the size of planets hurtled through space, each containing billions more souls and protected by strange, runic magics of a foreign world. Gods led the charge; as she watched, what could only be a god of the sea hurtled forward on a crashing wave, trident raised high, screaming bloody murder.

  He was met by a glowing green gust of wind, no mere zephyr, but a maelstrom that would tear the Physical Realm asunder if it so much as touched it – Aeriel, matching an enemy god at a distance. Alanna swallowed, the clash, so distant yet still far too close, rattled deep in her bones. Fire from the sun and lunar star lanced out in streaks of flaming arrows, striking down some of the enemy constructs, yet most being blocked by the enemy gods. Still the explosions rocked the sky, easily enough to consume the whole of Pangaea in one, single explosion.

  "Be ready," Fu Hao, the Creator's Angel, said, appearing beside them, cracking her fists. "When they arrive - and they will arrive - we must repel them. Do not let the red rot touch you. If you are touched, remember, fight until you can, then head to the triage centers for examination. We will protect you as best we can," she said, then vanished in a flash of light. Alanna swallowed thickly; they were supposed to fight this? All this? Aeriel sent out another wave of green, glowing wind, a slash of a sword – it was met by a giant, flaming shield the size of the Realm Sun.

  How small she felt, in the face of this. It had been years since she’d been face to face with her own mortality, immortal as she was, but here? She could not imagine a scenario where she was guaranteed to walk away alive.

  The Mad Scientist squeezed her shoulder, and she turned her gaze to her men, her people, the brave soldiers who had answered her call to join the gods' war. If she felt like this, what must they be feeling? What looking horrors did they believe awaited them?

  The enemy inched closer, yet Alanna felt the urge to speak all the same, for the first time ever silently thanking the eons of political theatre she endured for keeping her own fear out of her voice.

  "The enemy is at the gates," she boomed across the field, her men shifting, bracing themselves upon the ships and platforms they inhabited, hastily erected by the Spirit Dragon. But the rest of the words died on her lips, for just a moment. That was wrong. They were already beating upon the gates, and her men turned to look at her in one, cohesive moment. The wind touched her throat, bidding her continue, that her words would be carried to all who needed to hear it. "My people – no. Today you are not my people. Today we are the same, mortal and immortal, Dao Progenitor and simple soldier. The enemy is at the gates, and we are what stands between them, and everything we hold dear.

  "Today, we stand together not as one nation, not as a group of separate peoples or sects or any such thing. Fae, Avian, Elemental, Draconian, Karae - even Arachaeon stand united for one purpose, one cause. To send those who seek to deny us our right to live, back to the gates of oblivion! We fight today under the light of the gods themselves. So, if you find yourself swimming the river alongside your fellows, do not fear, for you are already dead and Lord Keilan has you!" That got a little chuckle from those in the army, some of the tension bleeding from their shoulders. These were people who fought and struggled against death all their lives in the act of cultivating, yet they were no stranger to the concept of death.

  "And how can one die better?" She asked, stillness echoing across the plains as she stepped forward, golden light radiating from her, her will reaching up to the skies itself to declare no matter how fierce the forces arrayed against her, she would not give an inch. Not one. Single. Inch. "Our fathers and mothers lay behind us. Our children and our lovers. Our futures and our pasts, everything we might have been and might ever be. How can we die better, than for the love of our parents? For the ashes of the past, and the hope of the future?

  “How can one die better, than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of our Father, and the temples of our Gods? Let us show these people the might of those who defy the heavens, who claw our way to immortality! Let us show them the might of those who fight alongside it! Let our deeds be wrought in the echoes of eternity, even if our souls return to the cycle! Let it be known, we shall not fall!" She roared, raising her fist skyward, a pounding, echoing cheer tearing up through the entirety of the Realms – a roar joined in by all the gods, all the spirits, down to the simplest of beings.

  Statera Luotian smiled down upon them, as always, as in one voice, Their children shouted their defiance to the Heavens – they would not let Them down.

  Reika: Goddess of Change. Has her role. Has incarnations in charge of the triage centers.

  Kei: Pillar of Freedom. Unaffected by the rot, as seen before when the rot first made its appearance. You can't make someone care about something.

  Gilles: Pillar of the Mountain, Deity of Shadows. Being extra careful.

  Astraea: Goddess of Stars, native of the One World. Is this what a loving god feels like? She almost forgot...

  Atreum: God of War. Native of the One World. War isn't all front-on bloodshed. Has schemes.

  The Celestial Empress: Alanna. Rules almost the entirety of the known world. Has trillions of troops spread out across the Four Realms' border, in key locations. Lots of practice public speaking. She didn't hear SL say "Ashes of our Fathers."

  The Mad Scientist: Serial Reincarnator. Not the first war she's been in.