I find her out of bed, standing in the middle of the room with her face contorted in fear.
“Entity is here. Entity is HERE!”
Helios and Ragnar try to calm her down, but there’s no calming her. She’s frantic. I have never seen my mother be bothered by anything. Ever. She is the calmest woman in the world. In the universe, even.
“Shh! Mother!” My sister, Raine, rushes past me and embraces my mother. She always did know what to do. When I look over my shoulder, I see that Tanuk, her mate, has arrived too. The entire adult family has assembled in my parents’ bedchamber within a minute of my mother beginning to scream.
“Why are you here?”
“We’re here because Entity is here,” Raine says, echoing my mother’s words. “Those lights in the sky belong to Entity. They’re here.”
I have never encountered Entity. My mother fled it when she came here from Earth. My sister became famous among humans for being able to resist the powers of what I am told is a machine sentience powered by captive humanity - whatever that might mean.
So far, my impression of Entity is that it is, well, pretty. I know better than to say that, however. My family already thinks that I am a simpleton compared to my brilliant, brave sister, so I stay quiet while they settle my mother and comfort her while outside the lights grow brighter and more numerous.
“We need to leave the palace,” Tanuk says.
“Absolutely not,” Helios replies. “This is my home. This is where we make our stand.”
“Entity will take your stand and turn it to rubble. This place isn’t safe. It’s ostentatious,” replies Tanuk.
“I’m not afraid of a few human sky baubles,” Ragnar growls.
My fathers are as different as any two gods can be. Ragnar is powerful and dark, all burly muscles and long rough hair. He’s a barbarian from a very long time ago, a guardian against all kinds of nasties. I wouldn’t say we’re close, because we’re not. He loves me, because he is my father, but Raine and I, being identical twins, each took after one of them. I am the daughter of the sun. Some call me the golden princess. Ragnar thinks I am spoiled and indulged, but Helios would never allow him to do anything about it.
“You should be afraid,” Raine says. “Entity would not be here if it hadn’t calculated the risk and decided it was worth it. This is not a god which might start a war as an act of capriciousness or spite. This is a cold intellect which strikes precisely when it means to in the knowledge it will inflict maximum damage.”
“I don’t think Entity…”
BOOM!
Entity speaks the language of explosions, and joins the conversation with an unholy roar which shakes the ground and fills the sky.
“Did that hit the fucking palace?”
Raine swears because of her time with humans. She thinks it makes her sound cool. It kind of does.
“Yes,” Helios winces. “It did.”
This palace isn’t just a building. It is raised from his body. In some strange, tangible way, it is him. If they are hitting the palace, then they are hitting my father, and that makes this real.
I feel an ominous foreboding which makes my innards feel as though they have been turned to stone. I never before tried to imagine what an invasion was like, and yet somehow, even without a single preconception, I find it other than I might have expected. I feel violated to my core. Those things, whatever they are, bright sparks in the sky which seem to multiply with every passing moment, do not belong here. What was pretty at first is now threatening.
I look out the window and I see the lights dancing brighter and bigger in the sky. They are getting so bright that they illuminate the world around us with a horrible light which is entirely unnatural.
I watch as one ball grows brighter. Much brighter. Then it gets larger. It takes me far too long to realize that is because it is getting closer. It is a bright electric ball of cold fury and it plunges down from the infested skies, to strike my father’s palace right in the center of the grandest dome. There is a sound like a thousand of Sapphire’s little toys discharging all at once, and then an explosion of rock and dust.
The first projectile does no damage at all besides leaving a faint smear of carbon upon the dome, but there are more to come, a thousand, perhaps even a million more and they begin to rain down with such fury that it seems as though the stars themselves have turned on the gods.
“I’m getting you all out of here,” Tanuk says. “Stubborn old gods and all.”
A moment later, we are encapsulated by Earth. We barely all fit in this space which is small and furry and smells like animals.
“Where the Hades are we?” Helios has to stoop to fit beneath the heavy clods of dirt which make up the roof.
“My burrow,” Tanuk says. “The only underground place I could think of.”
He is smiling. There is something wrong with that god. He takes delight in terrible things. He is the sort to smile at a funeral - if death were something we had to contend with in Okeanus. I didn’t think it was, but now I am not so sure.
“Entity is happily attacking the golden palace,” he says. “Let’s allow it to do so while we get ourselves sorted. That place was never anything more than a bit of rock anyway.”
“We need somewhere for people to shelter,” Raine says. She’s always worried about her precious worshippers, who are probably the reason this is all happening in the first place. Humans are trouble. I’m half human, and even I know that.
“They’re fine for now,” Helios snaps. “What about my bloody palace? How did this Entity pierce the barrier?”
“I’ll tell you how," Ragnar growls. “Three hundred humans is how. We allowed too many in. This place has become profane rather than sacred. We cannot stop the consequences of humanity from following it.”
And then the arguing starts in earnest. I don’t have a strong opinion on any of this, so I spend time worrying what’s happening to my precious pretty things. I could panic about this war, but I doubt that this Entity is going to have any real effect on Okeanus. We are a world of gods. Entity may have caught us off guard, but how bad could it possibly be?
At some point, decisions are made. I’m barely listening to what is being discussed. This does not feel like a me problem. Helios and Ragnar and perhaps Tanuk will take care of this. We have three ancient gods here and at least several dozen more dotted around the planet. Or more. Actually, come to think of it, a lot more. On the evening of our birthday party there had to be at least five hundred. Or maybe two hundred. Or a thousand.
“We could all die…” someone says in a very high pitched voice. It could be Raine. Could be Helios. I’m not sure.
Nothing has really ever been my problem. I’ve become accustomed to letting others worry about pretty much everything. I am worried about some things though, I guess. Those Entity exploding stars look like they’d ruin a silk gown. And my shoes. What if they get exploded? I’d have to get new ones and frankly, the cobbler elves have lost a lot of motivation recently. A princess asks for a thousand pairs of shoes and suddenly they’re not sure about their professional direction and are considering their options for the future. Thankfully Helios will conjure pretty much anything I want, but he doesn’t have the level of taste I do, so he usually makes some golden slippers with wings on the sides. They were cute when I was little, but a grown woman wants a heel.