Return

After the Epic Quest is completed, our heroine contemplates her future, and her world's.

With a final effort, Astra forced the Blade of Annihilation through the Dread King’s obsidian breastplate and into his heart. A last wail, strangely pathetic for all that it echoed across the battlefield like an avalanche, escaped his discoloured lips. Then the Blade’s arcanum bit, and he was gone. Not even a corpse.

All around them, the clashing armies went still. Starting with those closest to the King, the darklings—who still outnumbered her own forces more than two to one—melted away, their bodies no longer capable of holding together naturally. God’s Strength released its chokehold on the dragon Erun, who sensed his master’s demise and promptly fled the site of his enslavement. The Dread King’s small number of human followers began to throw down their weapons. Astra resisted the inclination to chase those who ran; they were no serious threat without their leader and his magic.

It’s over.

It was unreal. Impossible.

God’s Strength itself came jogging towards her, grinning an unsettlingly wide grin, as she stood unmoving on the spot where she had fulfilled her destiny. Astra found herself faintly surprised. She realised she had expected it to die, or whatever it was angels did. She’d come to enjoy God’s Strength’s company between battles just as much as its aid in war, but it seemed somehow incongruous for it to continue to exist now that the very last battle was behind them.

What an odd thought.

With the decisiveness of one who recognises she’s going into shock, she laid the flat of the Blade across her armored knee and leaned on it, carefully, until it snapped.

God’s Strength nodded approvingly as it came level with her. “Good thinking,” it said.

“Not my idea,” said Astra distantly. “God’s Mystery reminded me to tie up loose ends once I was done.” Probably the last piece of its wisdom that she’d ever use, other than the arcana themselves. How strange.

“Only sensible,” concurred God’s Strength. “I could swear half my work has been the result of people leaving some damn artifact lying around.”

Astra laughed, and then found she couldn’t stop.

God’s Strength raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t that funny.”

This only set Astra off again. After some time, she managed to get enough air back to ask, “It’s finished, isn’t it? The whole thing.”

The angel’s smile, which had faded a bit as it watched its friend struggle to breathe, came right back. “It is! Done and done, seven times done.”

Astra rolled her shoulders, and the dread she’d been wearing like a cloak until she no longer felt it slipped off and fell to the ground. She allowed herself a solid minute to bask in her victory. God’s Strength, being infinitely patient, waited for her.

At the count of sixty-one—because it really was a special occasion—she came back to Earth to address her responsibilities. With God’s Strength at her side, she made her way back to her command post, such as it was.

Even the prospect of compiling a list of the dead had a silver lining right then. The last time, thought Astra. Once more, and then never again.

Frankly, they had been fortunate. Less than a thousand dead, and about twice as many wounded. Astra’s friend Laican had been among the former, and Oroud had lost most of a leg to some kind of giant centipede. The mortal members of her inner circle cried together for Laican even as they worked on the other things. God’s Strength could not weep, but quietly shouldered a little more than its fair share of the chores.

Only after they had counted the casualties and taken stock of their supplies, organized treatment for the wounded and last rites for the dead, did God’s Strength return to the command tent. It reported on the business of the day with its usual efficiency, but once it was done it flopped down in a chair and adopted a considerably more casual tone.

“What’s next?”

It wasn’t asking about post-battle duties, she knew. Astra blew out her cheeks and marshalled her fantasies into words.

“Home first, I think.” She hadn’t seen her father or sisters in three years, or her childhood home in almost seven. “Then I figure I’ll spend about six months lazing about and attending feasts in my own honour before I get bored. Then a job. I think I’d like to teach—magic or bladework or strategy, maybe all three. I’ll take a post with whichever king makes me the best offer.” They’d probably be disappointed she didn’t want a more active role as a general or court magician, but just having her around would be a massive prestige boost.

“Once I’ve had some time to settle in,” Astra went on, since God’s Strength was nodding interestedly but not saying anything, “I figure I’ll want to find a husband, start a family. I thought maybe I could take a year off and go incognito while travelling, see if I can meet anyone who likes me for me, you know?”

The angel nodded again, but she wasn’t sure it really did know. She doubted it had much experience with romance.

“You seem to have thought about this a lot,” it remarked.

“Mostly it was a way to keep my mind off the Dread King,” confessed Astra, provoking a chuckle. “I don’t know how much of it will pan out. You never do. Or we never do, I should say.”

It was strange, to put that wall back up between them. Yesterday, God’s Strength had been guided by its purpose, and Astra by prophecy, bestowed directly by God’s Light. And now the angel was still an angel, but the future was as dark to her as to any mortal.

It was a bit frightening, but—she tried to tell herself—a little exciting as well.

God’s Strength was still looking at her with characteristic intensity. It had assured her it could not read her mind.

“What about you?” she asked. “Any plans?” She wasn’t sure whether she was joking.

It smiled at her. “Home for me too, I think.”

Astra took a moment to grasp its meaning.

“You’ll...”

Don’t say ‘die’.

“... leave?” she finished, uncertainly.

It nodded enthusiastically.

“’Return’ is the word we use. No offence, but I’m looking forward to it. The work has been long.”

“What, you think the world’s got no more battles left?” She’d intended the remark to sound cynical and world-weary, but to her embarrassment it came out tinged with pleading. Of all the angels she’d met, God’s Strength was the only one she would call a friend.

“Loads and loads. But I expect they’ll be messier.”

Astra gestured at the battle map still pinned to one wall of the tent. “Not exactly neat.” Even by the standards of battlefields, which was saying something. The desperate push to get Astra into single combat with the Dread King himself had left the battle lines in shambles.

“I mean...” the pause was more unsettling than the smile had been. “Spiritually messier. Not the kind of battle in which God’s strength would be lent to either side.”

“Oh.” That kind of battle. She’d fought in those too, once. She didn’t think she could go back to them now.

“Don’t worry about it,” said God’s Strength. “Your kings have about half an army left between them. It’ll be a little while before they’re back to warring over something.” With a wink, it added, “With any luck, we’ll both be gone by then.”

Astra had once taken some offence at how casually angels spoke of mortal tragedies. She’d learned to take comfort in it instead.

God’s Strength’s Return felt like a tragedy too, but it seemed to be rather pleased at the prospect, so she tried her best to see the situation the same way. “How does it work?” she asked, as casually as she could manage. “The Return, I mean. Do you just... Poof?”

The angel laughed, like merry and distant thunder. “’Poof!’ Ha. Well, we can, but for preference, there’s a special spot. It’s traditional.”

Traditional. Astra, who had learned how far back some mortal traditions reached, wondered how old the traditions of angels were. Old as the world, perhaps. She’d probably never know.

“Come see me off?” it proposed, with exaggerated casualness.

She was momentarily stunned. An enormous honour, unprecedented as far as Astra knew. She nearly turned it down anyway, the call of home too strong to ignore after all this time. At the last moment, something prompted her to wonder if, along with its mortal semblance, her friend had borrowed the mortal fear of leaving the world. God’s Strength had been a source of courage to her often enough.

“All right,” she agreed.

A couple of days later, with her army in good order and halfway back across the Dreadlands, Astra and God’s Strength split from the rest of the force with as little fanfare as could be managed. The two of them walked for days, talking all the while, about the past and future—Astra’s future, at any rate.

They followed a persistent uphill grade as they travelled, which steepened until they were climbing a veritable mountain, stony and lifeless but for a scattering of bare trees. It was cold on the mountainside, and the path up wasn’t much of one, but Astra had faced a good deal worse.

They crested the mountaintop at dusk. At its peak was a small plateau, maybe thirty feet across, almost featureless but for a handful of small rocks and a single enormous tree near the center. Its naked branches were raised upwards, as if reaching towards the sky.

Past the tree, on the other edge of the plateau, a humanoid figure stood with its back to them. Without thinking she reached for where the Blade of Annihilation no longer hung at her side. When her hand found nothing, she grabbed God’s Strength and yanked it back and down, to lie on the slope beside her.

“There’s someone there,” she whispered urgently.

“Friend or foe?” whispered God’s Strength back. It didn’t really sound worried, but then it never did. “Because—”

“I don’t know. Stay down.” There was literally no one better to have at one’s side in a fight, but God’s Strength wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

Cautiously, Astra raised her head above the lip of the plateau. The figure still wasn’t looking in their direction, which was a stroke of luck, but it made it difficult to identify. Humanoid, wearing rich black robes in the noble style. Its hands were very pale, and its hair was white-gold cut neatly to shoulder length.

Belatedly, she noticed the loose strip of dark cloth tucked into its belt. A kerchief?

A blindfold.

Surely there were a limited number of people with that coloring and that particular affectation. The last time she’d seen one, for example, he’d been standing at the Dread King’s side crafting deadly enchantments. The time before that she’d been scrying through the eyes of a friend who, it had turned out, was being tortured.

She ducked back down again. “It’s the Whisperer,” she hissed. How had they missed him? Had he not been at the final engagement? Intended as a reserve, perhaps, that never had a chance to deploy?

There was certain ugly joy in finding him there, waiting to ambush them. He would have something nasty prepared, she had no doubt, but she had spotted him first, and that would make all the difference. Astra had not been willing to risk the lives of her followers for mere vengeance, but that didn’t mean she had no hunger for it. Quite the opposite.

Astra considered the arcana that remained to her with the Blade destroyed. God’s Strength grinned, which Astra took to mean they were on the same wavelength, but a moment later it sprang to its feet and called, “Ho, friend!”

Charmed, Astra realized. She hadn’t known that was even possible; God’s Mystery had been vague on the nature of angels. If anyone could do it, however, it would be the Whisperer.

Her old enemy turned to them, smiling quite pleasantly. Astra had seen him smile equally pleasantly when he’d had Laican strapped to a chair.

God’s Mystery had not been vague on the nature of enchantments. They did not outlive their casters.

Without speaking a word or moving a muscle, Astra brought the Arcanum of Destruction to the forefront of her mind. It flared in her like a tiny sun, casting shadows of her inner self in all directions.

“No!” shouted God’s Strength. Astra ignored it; if it wasn’t enchanted that could be a grave mistake, but if it was then its words were meaningless and any hesitation would mean death or worse. She evoked the arcanum.

The last time she’d seen anyone else evoke Destruction, they’d left a smoking crater around their target half a mile wide. Astra had learned from no mortal, and her control was far better. Her crater was only a couple of yards in diameter.

The Whisperer was still there, in exactly the same spot he had been, which was to say a few inches above the bottom of the crater. Hovering. Even his clothes were untouched.

A ghost? It looked quite solid, but they did sometimes. She prepared the Arcanum of Binding.

“Astra,” began God’s Strength. She ignored it again. As far as she knew, it was a metaphysical impossibility for ghosts to maintain enchantments, but—again—if any could manage it it would be this one. She evoked the second arcanum. Nothing happened.

“Astra, please,” tried her companion for the third time.

Only after she had launched the Arcanum of Dispelling at it, once again to no apparent effect, did she stand up and take a second look at her enemy. For the first time, she noticed his eyes. They were mirrored, without whites or pupils, like two ovals of polished silver. Astra saw her own shocked face looking back at her.

That sure as hell explained the blindfold. Nothing had eyes like that. That the Whisperer had decided to reveal the secret now, after Astra thought she had won, boded poorly.

“Astra,” said God’s Strength, in a slightly strained tone that she personally felt was most un-angelic. “That’s not the Whisperer.”

She looked at the ghost, or whatever it was. It looked exactly like the Whisperer, down to the sinister smile that—now that it was facing them—appeared downright amused.

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

“No,” it said, in a voice that sounded exactly like the Whisperer’s. “No longer.”

“Reformed, have you?” asked Astra. Sarcastic banter wasn’t her usual method of dispatching her enemies, but nothing else seemed to be working. Maybe if she distracted him long enough she could get close enough to stab him with her belt knife. It was worth a shot.

“You may call me God’s Blindness,” said the one who wasn’t the Whisperer.

That threw her.

“You’re... an angel?” she managed. But surely no angels had names that sinister. “An evil angel?”

At her side, she could have sworn she heard God’s Strength, a being with no lungs or throat or evolved social instincts, give an embarrassed cough.

“An angel, yes,” said God’s Blindness. “No more ‘an evil angel’ than God’s Strength is ‘a warrior angel’.”

Which clarified nothing, as Astra would have thought that a perfectly apt description. If anything, the incomprehensible analogy made the first part more plausible, as she’d always found angels—with the exception of God’s Mystery, whose purpose was to teach—were terrible at explaining things.

“Did you know about this?” she asked God’s Strength, not bothering not to sound accusing. “That the Whisperer was an angel this whole time?”

It shrugged, something she’d never seen another angel do. “I suspected one of the Dread King’s lieutenants would be. Honestly, my money would have been on the Viper, until we killed her in the final battle. The blindfolded one was a bit too obvious.”

“And you never thought this was tactically relevant information?”

“Not really,” it admitted, “and I assumed you knew it was possible.”

Astra didn’t know where to start with that. She was reduced to staring at it like an idiot until God’s Blindness chuckled, in exactly the same superior way it had chuckled when it had been the Whisperer, or pretending to be the Whisperer, or whatever the arrangement had been.

“You overestimated her,” said God’s Blindness. “A hero could not comprehend this. It is not in their nature.”

Fuck off, is what Astra would have said if it weren’t an angel. Since it was, she got a grip on herself and tried to think. The angels, as was their wont, gave her time.

Eventually, she said, “God’s Strength told me that angels have a tradition to Return from this mountaintop.”

God’s Blindness said nothing, but its smile was a tiny bit less supercilious than it had been, which made her think she was on the right track.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Not to ambush us. To Return as well.”

It still said nothing, but the smile vanished entirely, which she took as confirmation.

It made a perverse kind of sense. God’s Strength was leaving because there would be no more battles where it would be needed. God’s Blindness was in some sense its opposite number, standing at the Dread King’s left hand just as God’s Strength had stood at Astra’s right, so it was Returning as well.

“Good riddance,” said Astra, almost without being conscious of it. Mostly her mind was still on the implications of God’s Blindness having existed, let alone its Return. An evil angel, or rather, an angel that was to evil as God’s Strength was to righteous battle. How—no, angels didn’t need a How. Ask instead: Why?

“Astra,” said God’s Strength, laying a hand gently on her forearm. “Be civil to my colleagues, please.”

“Civil?” demanded Astra with some indignation. “It tortured my friends. And hundreds of other people! Why should—”

Wait. ‘Colleagues,’ it had said. Plural.

She interrupted herself. “How many ‘colleagues’ are you expecting?”

God’s Strength indicated the path behind them. Feeling foolish, Astra turned to look down the slope.

The second thing she noticed was the beast.

An enormous... carnivore, of some kind, that much was clear. Astra’s head would just have brushed its belly had she stood directly underneath it. It wasn’t quite feline or canine: long-muzzled like a wolf, but with the liquid grace of a great cat and a magnificent black mane around its head. The rest of its hide was a reddish brown and strangely textured, seeming somewhere between fur and scales, or perhaps a mixture of both. Two great horns curved from its forehead. Its lips were drawn back in a silent snarl, revealing six-inch teeth, and behind them the smoldering cherry-red of dragonfire.

She noted all these things carefully, because they kept her attention from the first thing she had noticed, which was the light. Atop the beast’s back was a glowing figure. The glow was pure white, and quite gentle—not bright so much as deep. Like the depth of the night sky, Astra had once thought, if it was white instead of black.

She kept her gaze on the beast rather than the light or the being it emanated from. The last time she’d met that one’s eyes, it had been to obtain the prophecy that had cost her seven years, several friends, and many kinds of innocence. With her own future finally within reach, Astra had no desire to receive another destiny.

“Hail, God’s Light,” she greeted it formally. She couldn’t name its mount; God’s Light had been alone the only previous time Astra had met it. In fact, she’d never seen an angel mounted before at all. God’s Strength could outpace any cavalry charge.

“Hail, Astra,” returned God’s Light politely.

The beast growled.

Astra had faced the Dread King and all his monsters. She had been closer to a living dragon than any other mortal who still drew breath. She was not without fear, but she had learned from experience how to make the fear serve her rather than vice versa.

The growl made all that irrelevant. It vibrated through her and touched a bundle of primal instincts which told her that if she dallied for a single second, she would die. The sound of it on the ears was like touching a flame: the reflex that comes even before the pain, drawing the hand back before the brain has registered what’s happening.

Astra actually tried to flee, but God’s Strength’s hand had closed around her forearm, and it might as well have been embedded in the mountaintop. She drew the knife from her belt with her other hand, fully intending to cut through her own elbow joint to make her escape—but then the growl subsided, and the madness passed, and she realized what she had just heard.

“Be not afraid,” said God’s Light, in a voice that had haunted Astra’s dreams for years. “This is—”

But Astra had already figured it out. “God’s Ferocity,” she finished. The angel of the wilds, and the great beasts that dwelt there: dragons and unicorns and leviathans and all the rest. Why shouldn’t it be beast-shaped, if the others deigned to be humanoid?

God’s Strength nodded. If God’s Light did the same, she didn’t see it.

“Right, right,” she said. “That’s fine. I’m fine.” She resheathed her weapon to demonstrate how fine she was. Then she added, “You can let go of me.”

God’s Strength did so, with a reassuring smile. It didn’t work, but she appreciated the effort.

Only once her arm and higher brain functions were returned to her did Astra really register what it meant that two more angels had joined them.

They’re Returning too. No more prophecy. No more great beasts.

Well... possibly. In Astra’s limited understanding, the angels’ exact relationship with their domains varied. God’s Light was the source of prophecy, but God’s Strength was not the origin of noble struggle, just an enthusiastic participant. She didn’t know the details of God’s Ferocity’s stewardship over the wild beasts; stories about it among humans were sparse.

Astra backed away, still keeping her eyes down, to make room for the newcomers to come up on to the plateau. As they passed, God’s Ferocity lowered its muzzle to sniff the top of her head, more curious than threatening. She squeezed God’s Strength’s arm in a white-knuckled grip until the bestial angel moved on with a snort of disinterest. The growl, she realized, had probably just been a greeting.

Only once they had attained level ground did God’s Light dismount, though it remained standing next to God’s Ferocity. Astra watched it out of the corner of her eye, and by the shadows it cast as it moved, and the reflections in God’s Blindness’s eyes.

Perhaps they’re friends, Astra thought. Angels could be friends; after all, God’s Strength was one of hers.

As if echoing her thoughts, God’s Strength greeted the newcomers as well, with what Astra felt to be slightly forced joviality. “Well met, friends! It’s good to be back together, especially for our Return.”

“It is good,” agreed God’s Light. Astra thought that would be all, angels being rather laconic in her experience, but to her surprise it added, “and with no offense to you, God’s Strength, I am particularly pleased to see God’s Blindness, after all this time. How long has it been?”

“Since last we met?” asked God’s Blindness. “Twelve-odd centuries, I believe. An unusual confluence of circumstances.”

Astra found herself gripped by a kind of vertigo which had nothing to do with their elevation. Everyone knew angels were ancient, but the way they spoke about it, like... well, colleagues. Making small talk.

“Indeed, indeed,” confirmed God’s Light conversationally. “The prophecy was to be delivered to two mortals at once, but you had already got to one of them! And I never noticed until the whole business was resolved some twenty years later. A masterful play, I must say.”

“Yes,” said God’s Blindness blithely. “One of my better ones. I don’t believe they have quite trusted any ‘prophet’ since.”

“What about the time your man fielded an entire army of shapeshifters?” God’s Strength chimed in. “What a battle that was! I hadn’t the slightest idea what was happening for most of it.”

Astra felt like she’d been punched, with all the angel’s earth-shaking power. She had known, in theory, that God’s Strength did not—could not—weep for its comrades, or even feel grief in the same way mortals did. She had even taken some comfort in that Heavenly perspective, wherein all things passed anyway, and all things were for the best. But to hear it talk like this, like it had all been a big game...

Maybe it had been, to them.

“Kind of you to say so,” acknowledged God’s Blindness. “I have done my best, of course. I don’t imagine it’s been easy for any of us.”

A murmur of assent from the other two, and even a low rumbling sound from God’s Ferocity, who Astra hadn’t been sure could understand speech.

Not a game, she corrected herself. A job, a ‘work’. The angels’ work was to... what? To keep the world turning, of course, but to what end? What did it mean to say that such a task had been completed?

“Certainly not for you, God’s Strength,” added God’s Blindness, “being at the side of so many righteous champions. Seems rather wearying.”

It was the kind of thing the Whisperer would have said, which made sense. Astra’s hand went to her knife again, but she didn’t draw it.

“I rather liked them, actually,” said God’s Strength. Then it added, “Most of them, anyway.” Even Astra smiled weakly at that. “Surely being at the side of the wicked champion is no greater joy?”

“Oh, no,” agreed God’s Blindness, “but you see, the wicked don’t even have to pretend to like each other. It ended in outright betrayal as often as not.”

Astra’s sense of vertigo only grew stronger as the angels exchanged anecdotes from across the millennia. The urge to punish God’s Blindness somehow, for the things it had done as the Whisperer, had not diminished either. Part of her deeply regretted coming; surely no mortal was meant to hear this.

But she was there, and the more she thought about it the more she realized that the mass Return of angels was probably an event at least as significant, and as frightening, as the rise of the Dread King had been.

When God’s Strength finished an anecdote about the disastrous failure of an experimental magical superweapon—one Astra had heard before, though she hadn’t realised it had been almost nine hundred years before—she gathered up her courage and inserted herself into the conversation. Heroism was a difficult habit to shake, apparently.

“It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? To have it over with, I mean. You spend so long working towards something and then all of a sudden it’s behind you.”

A pause. Astra couldn’t tell whether it was awkward or sympathetic.

It was God’s Blindness who eventually said, archly, “Your thoughts are not our thoughts, and our ways are not your ways.”

“Oh, knock it off,” said God’s Strength flippantly. “You can see where she’s coming from.”

“Indeed,” concurred God’s Light, sounding thoughtful. “The work; the quest. Interesting similarities and contrasts.”

God’s Light never elaborated as much as one would wish, as anyone who’d ever received a prophecy from it could say, but Astra thought she knew what it was getting at.

“I existed for twenty years before I learned my destiny,” she hazarded, “and hopefully I’ll live a good bit longer now that it’s fulfilled. Whereas you have been at this... work since you were created, and are leaving the world as soon as it’s complete. You have no existence before or after your purpose.”

“That,” remarked God’s Blindness quietly, “and you had a choice.”

“Not much of one,” she objected. “God’s Light said—it said no-one else could do it. My world would have been lost otherwise, to a monstrous tyrant.” She was paraphrasing, but that had been the gist of it.

“You had a choice,” repeated God’s Blindness more forcefully.

Astra had to concede the point. “I did,” she said, “and I’m grateful for it, I really am, but... if I understand you all, I’m the last one who’ll ever have a choice like that. Right? Those moments of...”

She trailed off, momentarily struggling to find the right word.

“... moments of significance,” she tried, “the trials of good against evil. There’ll never be another one. Is that really for the best? What’s left that matters, if you take those away?”

“Your mortal kin toil every day to feed and clothe their families,” said God’s Light, in its usual even tone. “Knowing that at any moment a stranger may unearth some cursed tome and reduce those families to ash with a word. Is their life thereby enriched?”

Kind of, yeah, thought Astra. What’s life without struggle? Without the possibility of things going wrong? If that’s got no value, why not skip life altogether and send people directly to Heaven?

She second-guessed herself before giving the thought voice. The obvious counterpoint was that some level of hardship had to be too much. She didn’t know how to figure out which, but perhaps the angels did.

Take the claim at face value, then. They’re going just because having to fight off people like the Dread King is more trouble than it’s worth?

It did make some sense. Except... she flicked her eyes around the circle.

“What about you?” she asked God’s Ferocity. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what it is you do for the great beasts, exactly. But if something has an angel, I don’t think it will manage well without it.”

Its eyes, slitted like a cat’s against the soft radiance of God’s Light, met hers. It whined, like something in pain, the sound all the more heartrending for the sheer size and power of the creature it issued from.

Uncertain dread gripped Astra. “You don’t mean they’ll go extinct? All of them?”

Surely not. Astra kept her gaze locked with the angel’s, still terrified of it, but more terrified of being right, or of not knowing. She needed answers.

God’s Ferocity turned its face away from hers, upwards, and howled. Astra fell to her knees as its grief flooded over her, and over the mountaintops around them. Hundreds of miles away, she was sure, the citizens of the kingdoms would hear it echo and weep without knowing why. She wept too, for the dragons who would not be, and the people who would never see them fly.

It was inconceivable, a tragedy on a scale too big to wrap her head around. She needed someone who could make this make sense.

Astra stopped crying, abruptly realising what was missing from their gathering. A small, fragile hope bloomed in her. Face still wet, she turned her face away from God’s Ferocity, addressing the circle at large.

“Is God’s Mystery... not Returning?” she asked. “Or is it here with us already?”

Should have thought of that, she chided herself. The angel of the arcana was fond of games, and it changed its form more often than the others, often to completely inconspicuous things. It could have been one of the rocks for all Astra knew. Above all else, it was a teacher; it would be able to explain this.

But God’s Blindness smiled sweetly at her. “My dear hero,” it said, “God’s Mystery Returned on the day of your victory.”

Astra stared at it. She saw her own face reflected in its eyes, emotions flickering across it like dancing flames: shock, betrayal, shame at being so visibly distraught in front of her enemy, anger at it for making her feel ashamed.

All that was merely personal. The bigger issue, the realization that should have produced those strong emotions but ended up only an afterthought because she was only human, was the simple thought: The end of arcana.

Astra was the best sorcerer in the world, because she had learned from an angel. She had no illusions that she could teach another to be quite as good as she was. A hundred previous lines of mages had made it clear that without God’s Mystery, the pure knowledge would one day be lost forever.

God’s Strength squeezed her shoulder. “It was the oldest of us,” it said gently. “It wanted to go home very badly.”

Of course it had. And yet... “It was my mentor,” said Astra in a small voice.

“God’s Mystery taught the very stars their courses,” said God’s Light, neither comforting nor combative, just informing her.

It had a lot of students, it meant. You weren’t special.

“I saved the world!” snapped Astra, and then caught herself. The tears had started up again. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, “but I saved the world, and now you’re ripping it out from under me. So please—and I do mean that, I’m asking, obviously I can’t command any of you—but please, tell me. What did I save?”

Another pause, long enough that she wasn’t sure they’d understood her.

“I understand,” she choked out, as evenly as she could manage, “why the world would be better off without an angel of evil.”

She glanced at God’s Blindness, which was a mistake. It only grinned mockingly at her, and the sight of her own snivelling reflection just made her feel worse.

“And I understand,” she continued, “that if that happens, then God’s Strength... doesn’t have much left to fight.”

She grabbed her friend’s hand and squeezed it. It squeezed back, and nodded to show it understood what she meant.

“But I just don’t see,” she concluded, “how the world would be better without arcana, or leviathans, or prophecy.”

“Incredible,” said God’s Blindness, “that the plan we spent an age implementing is not apparent within five minutes to your dizzying intellect.”

“Then please,” snarled Astra, half angry and half pleading. “Enlighten me.”

“I am a teacher,” conceded God’s Blindness, which was news to Astra, “but not the lecturing kind. My role is fulfilled. Figure it out.” The last words were delivered with more vitriol than Astra would have thought possible from an angel.

She wasn’t sure she could figure it out. She had trained to defeat the Dread King in open battle, not for... whatever this was.

Yet she was the one standing here. Was that happenstance? Surely not.

“On the day of my victory,” repeated Astra slowly. She watched God’s Blindness’s face carefully as she spoke, for all the good that would do. “The work... it was me, wasn’t it? The perfect hero.”

To her absolute mortification, God’s Blindness laughed aloud at that. “No impostor syndrome for this one, eh?”

It was enormously gratifying to hear God’s Strength say, quite calmly, “Be civil to my friend, please, God’s Blindness.”

Astra thought she saw a hint of a glare in God’s Blindness’s expression, even as its eyes showed her the hint of smugness in her own. She felt the completely inappropriate urge to stick her tongue out at it.

“Am I wrong?” she challenged.

“You are,” said God’s Blindness, flatly. “You were not ‘the perfect hero’, nor were you the ultimate goal of an entire aeon, surprising though that may seem. You were just the last step.”

“You were indispensable,” said God’s Strength reassuringly.

God’s Blindness waved a pale hand dismissively. “There would have been another,” it objected. “Eventually. You’d have liked them just as much, I’m sure.”

“And our Return would have been delayed that much longer. Will you remain another century, God’s Blindness? Since it’s all the same to you.”

God’s Blindness was silent. Astra felt her heart hammering in her chest. As far as she knew, she was the first mortal ever to witness an argument between angels. Then it bowed to her, as sarcastic a gesture as Astra had ever seen.

“My apologies, O Great Hero. You were indeed indispensable. None of us would be Returning if not for you!”

The last sentence was a good twist of the knife, Astra had to admit, but she jumped on it anyway. “In other words,” she said, with some savage triumph, “you owe me.”

God’s Strength took a step back from her in shock. “Astra...”

“Not you,” she clarified hastily. “You’re my friend. I don’t count debts with my friends.” She did not go quite so far as to call God’s Blindness her enemy. By any mortal standard it clearly was, but she doubted the angels would see it that way.

She was unpleasantly surprised to see a tiny smile playing around its mirrored eyes.

“I knew there had to be more to you!” it exclaimed, with a note of excitement that quite troubled her. “Just to be clear, you have a boon to ask? From me, God’s Blindness, the angel of evil?”

Put like that, and combined with God’s Blindness’s poorly-concealed glee, this was clearly a terrible idea.

But God’s Blindness had kept its very existence hidden from every mortal on Earth for millennia. Surely it could conceal its emotions if it wanted to. A double bluff?

Maybe, maybe not. What was at stake here, exactly, if this was a trap?

With this son of a bitch? The whole world, potentially.

And really, how much would be lost if Astra stopped demanding the universe justify itself to her, just this once?

The whole world, potentially.

Well, then.

“Yes,” said Astra. “I want a boon from you, God’s Blindness, angel of evil. Will you grant it?”

Now the smile was gone, replaced with a mask of angelic blankness and two reflections of her own face, as resolute as she could make it.

“Within reason,” it said. “A century is not so long, after all.”

She relaxed only far enough to notice that she had her hand on the hilt of her knife again. By a titanic effort of will, she let go of it. It couldn’t possibly help.

“I just want an explanation,” said Astra. “Why do you all have to go? What happens to the world without... all of you?”

“Ah,” said God’s Blindness. “Well, that’s easy. I don’t know.”

She hadn’t expected that one.

“You don’t know? You’ve been doing the—the work—for what, ten thousand years? And you don’t know what it’s for?”

“It’s like being a soldier,” said God’s Strength. For once its voice was so quiet it was almost whispering. “We had our orders. The strategic picture is for the commander to worry about.”

The problems with that metaphor were too many to list, but the bottom line was clear. The angels’ ‘commander’ wasn’t going to be answering her questions any time soon.

Astra wanted to scream. Everything was at stake and she didn’t even know why, let alone what she could do about it. It wasn’t fair.

“Shall I show you?” asked God’s Light.

Astra froze.

“If God’s Blindness owes you a boon,” it went on. “Then surely I do as well. I do not know the goal of anything, but I can let you see the outcome. Perhaps that will suffice.”

She wanted to know. She would have knelt and begged for answers if she’d thought that would help. But she didn’t want that, the kind of knowledge that would put the weight of the world on her shoulders again. Hadn’t she done enough? Didn’t she deserve to live her own life now?

She turned a little towards God’s Light, for politeness’s sake, but she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the ground. “I—thank you,” she said, acutely aware of the grace being extended to her, “but no. I am grateful for the offer, but—”

Something struck Astra in the face. Not hard: a little ball of tightly-wadded black cloth, which she grabbed with one hand without thinking about it.

“I thought you might want that,” said God’s Blindness, “since you hold your ignorance so dear.”

There was real venom in its voice, more than the casual disdain it had previously evinced for her.

“God’s Blindness,” began God’s Strength again, but it cut it off.

“No, God’s Strength,” it said. “No, I will not be civil to your friend on this matter. A certain... parochialism, naivete, an expectation that the world should revolve around her—all these things are to be expected in the righteous champion. But I am sincerely disappointed to find cowardice.”

Once again, Astra swallowed the first response that came to mind: colorful profanity, not constructive in this situation.

“I’m sorry you never got to experience free choice,” she said. She tried to mean it, and found that she could, just about. “But I’m not ready to give mine up again. I don’t want another destiny.”

God’s Blindness seemed honestly lost for words for a moment.

“You ingrate,” it hissed eventually, sounding more shocked than angry.

“I know it was for the best!” shouted Astra. Shouting at an angel was probably not smart either. “I know the Dread King had to be stopped! But I never got to choose.”

“You did choose,” said God’s Blindness. “You and the Dread King were the only ones to whom any meaningful choice was given at all.”

Astra’s anger floundered on the incomprehensibility of that statement. More angelic inscrutability, which she was already sick of. She opened her mouth to say so, but God’s Blindness spoke over her.

“If you had backed down from your destiny,” said God’s Blindness, voice like a hammer, each word driving another stake into the conversation, “the Dread King would have triumphed. Conversely, if your supporters had abandoned you, you would have found some way to defeat the Dread King anyway. Some trick, some spell. Do you deny it?”

Astra shook her head, not daring to open her mouth.

“I have seen this before,” it went on, in a slightly more human tone. “We all have, in every possible permutation. It is only ever the hero’s choice that truly matters, and their adversary’s. The whole world can only watch.”

It was right, of course. That was what destiny meant. The ones with the destiny would be the ones who chose the future, because with the destiny came the arcana, or the dragons, or whatever it was that would decide the fate of the world this time. Astra might not have been there more than once, but she’d studied her history; she knew how this went.

Until now. The angels are Returning, so none of that will happen any more.

Was that it? So simple?

Astra strongly suspected it was the best she was going to get.

“Thank you,” said Astra, swallowing her pride. “I consider my request of you fulfilled.”

“You do?” asked God’s Strength.

“Oh, yes,” said Astra. Also, she had to say it or the damn thing might do anything under the pretense of ‘granting her boon’. Best to be clear the opportunity was now over.

God’s Blindness made some no-doubt-snide remark, but she wasn’t listening. Its explanation, whether intentional or not, was only half an answer. It had told her what was wrong with her world, but nothing about that which would replace it.

Astra tried to imagine what such a world would be like. Much the same, in some ways. Rain would fall, trees would grow, and the lesser creatures would surely survive and live out their dumb lives. Commoners would work the land to eat and kings would feast in their halls. There would still be struggle, and still be triumph, she was sure.

It would all just be... smaller. Small and mean and grey.

Was that really what would become of everything?

How badly do I want to know?

The glowing figure at the edge of her vision moved one step closer, as if sensing her hesitation.

“Be not afraid,” said God’s Light again. Its voice was gentle, like its glow, and only slightly less terrible.

Astra lifted her eyes from the ground and looked into the light, fell into the light, felt it shine through her and bounce off the edge of the universe and back until the whole world was nothing but light and the fog of Time was burned away like morning mist.

But only for a glimpse. A single image, fleeting, of a world where the angels had left, and the unicorns had died, and the arcana were forgotten, and there were no more righteous battles and no more monsters or heroes to fight them. A dead world, stripped bare by time until only the skeleton remained. The bones of her world, great rods and plates that still, somehow, moved by inertia alone, one bone pulling another along, round and round.

She saw the people, too, living on in that dead world, bending low to peer at the bones of the earth, craning upwards to examine the bones of the sky. Discussing them, debating them, conducting an interminably long and dull conversation about their dead and pointless world until they knew the bones, as the living spirit of the world could never have been known by any mortal. They knew the bones’ shapes and how they moved and where they met one another, and they reached with careful hands into those joints and twisted—

God’s Light turned away, and Time closed over the future, and Astra was merely standing on a mountaintop in the company of four angels, one of whom was physically holding her upright so she wouldn’t fall face-first into the dirt. God’s Strength released her as she put her weight back on her own legs.

“Oh,” she said.

The angels were silent, but her words had abandoned her, until simple good manners prompted her to add, “Thank you. All of you. For the work.”

“You’re welcome,” replied God’s Blindness—faster than any of the others, and with a smirk on its face. Astra glared at it, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“Honestly, I’m still not sure what you were for,” she admitted.

God’s Blindness laughed, whether at Astra or itself she couldn’t tell, and then it bent its knees very slightly and leapt up, and up, and up, shedding its bad joke of a humanoid form as it went, falling into the night sky as something alien and beautiful. God’s Ferocity followed with a roar, and God’s Light with no more sound at all, like a shooting star in reverse.

God’s Strength gave her a very gentle hug, which was to say most of her bones remained intact. “You’ll be alright?” it asked.

It was such an unexpected question that she didn’t know what to do with it. The implication that God’s Strength could somehow do something if she said ‘no’ was absurd. If she asked it, would it stay with her? Just as a friend? Someone to rely on as she faced the world they’d left her with?

She rather thought it would, which meant there was only one answer she could possibly give.

“I’ll live,” she said. And then added, “Just for a few more decades. I reckon I’ll see you pretty soon by your standards.”

And then she was alone on the flat peak with only the rocks and the stars for company. She stood there all night, watching them, thinking. When dawn came she started carefully back down.

The work was over, for some.