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Other than a certain goddess’s betrayal.

Anger shouts, “Arms!” as the first arrow cleaves through the distance.

The projectile rents the air, a clean shot flying toward a head covered in sage green tresses—Harmony. The target zooms in her direction, fast enough to snap her neck, even as she aims to dismantle it.

A length of quartz gets there before the strike, splintering the attack. Light detonates on impact, hurling brilliant threads into the atmosphere like a firework. The weapons cancel each other out, vanishing at the point of collision.

Harmony ducks beneath the illumination. Rising again, she glances at Wonder, who lowers her weapon, her quartz arrow reappearing in her quiver.

Weapons pour from the canopy. Gods and goddesses straddle the dragonflies, some kneeling with impeccable balance atop the creatures, their crossbows and longbows spitting arrows.

The Fate Court wields five sets of archery. Azurite, crystal, lava rock, pearl, and purple agate. Their capes and gowns flap around them. Their expressions display conviction over rancor, leaders protecting the ancient anthem of their world, warring in the name of destiny.

Envy thinks of a million things they’ve said, of a million things he’s grown up believing. The mudslide of memories pours into his mind, suffocating him. He doesn’t want to fire, he doesn’t want to fire, he doesn’t want to fire.

Anger’s next commanding shout plows through Envy’s consciousness. He raises his weapon alongside the immortal friends flanking him.

Merry, Love, Andrew, Wonder, Malice.

Despite their differences, and despite this unexpected means of attack, their features mirror one another for once. Fierce, stunning, focused. This is what they’ve been training for.

In an elegantly synchronized movement, they nock bows, target, and shoot.

The projectiles harpoon into the air, blasting down a row of deities. There’s no respite from the visual of his kin plummeting, those with whom Envy once bantered.

He forces himself to aim again.

The dragonflies whiz overhead, then split and veer around the stargazer’s circumference. They slingshot in and out of the fortification.

And then comes the army on foot. With the rebels’ attention diverted toward the canopy, thousands shouting archers spill into the landscape. As if a damn has broken, they flood the jagged horizon of trees and boulders. Anarchy ensues as arrows forged of countless materials lance the hemisphere, half rocketing upward, the other half parachuting downward—all of them colliding. The universe ignites, bodies capsizing from above and below.

As the mounted dragonflies dive, a cavalry of assailants leap into the fortification or land on the blooming grass, where they trade blows with the rebels. Someone’s back hits a wall, cracking into the stone. Envy’s arrow knocks a Guide off his ride.

Flares of light remind Envy of an evening when he’d listened to a goddess speak about mortal trenches and howling soldiers.

You don’t want to know that side of pain, Envy.

A fist swings in his periphery. His forearm rams against the incoming set of knuckles, and his free hand slices his weapon across the archer’s leg, incapacitating the male. The ally to his right screams as a crystal weapon spears through her shoulder, a piercing shot that can only come from a ruler.

Sure enough, the reigning monarch in snowy lace zips past them on her dragonfly, her androgynous face already fixed elsewhere.

Envy wants to aid the downed female, but Pride and Spite charge at him. He tumbles, lurches upright, and targets them with two arrows at once.

Where are his friends?

Frantic, Envy checks the perimeter. The world is a gritty, shaky vantage point, with figments shifting in and out of the picture.

For a minute, he gets a clear window. Merry slides down an incline on her skateboard, a rapid succession of neon arrows hitting focal points that impair opponents’ vision long enough for her allies to thwart them.

Anger provides backup from the building’s highest tier. He alternates, raging against anyone who gets near Merry, then pitting his iron arrows at anyone who gets near his band.

Covered in gashes, Malice tramples a deity headed for Anger. The two rage gods gawk at one another, then spin and fight back-to-back.

Love and Wonder invade the vast lawn outside the facade. In one of the trees, Love scales the trunk and bounds with dexterity from branch to branch. Flitting between the leaves, she dodges arrows while nocking her bow.

Another goddess springs into the tree, casts her arrow toward Love’s tailbone—and shrieks as Wonder drops in front of her. Hanging upside down, with her limbs hooked over a bough, Wonder beams at the flummoxed archeress, then barrels her scarred fist into the female’s countenance.

No longer needed by Anger’s side, Malice licks his bloody chops and hops sideways over the parapet’s ledge, dumping himself into the fray—right into a group of deities who outnumber him. Popping up like a pogo stick, he gives a raucous cackle, his hickory bow pumped with arrow after arrow. Lack of direction aside, he bashes everyone out of the way, his strikes victorious—too victorious, too ambitious.