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I t should have worked. It should immediately have been all over. With nothing to show for our bravado and daring and monumental effort but a smear of clairvoyant on the priceless marble flooring.

But it didn’t, and for a moment, I didn’t know why. I only knew that I could suddenly breathe when the sandal disappeared. And that something was happening as I lay on the ground, stunned and silent and gasping like a fish out of water. Then Enid reached me, with Bodil on her heels, and got me sitting up so they could pound me on the back, like that was going to help!

It didn’t, but that did, I thought, staring.

And then I stared some more, because what I saw across the great expanse of the lobby didn’t compute.

I even did the dog trick of tilting my head to the side, thinking that would make it any less crazy, but no.

Enid started trying to pull me away, but Bodil stood there flatfooted and gaping like I had just been. And still was even while trying to get back to my suddenly much bigger and more brightly colored feet. But that’s hard when you’re simultaneously also growing to the size of a rather large barn.

Just like Pritkin, who was now huge and soloing somebody who looked a lot like Zeus but wasn’t, unless that wily old chameleon had switched faces again. This one had a long black beard and bushy eyebrows of the same color above vividly blue-gray eyes, the color of storm-tossed seas, which matched the golden trident he was holding, and, oh, I thought. That was why Bodil looked so gobsmacked.

What a way to meet your grandpa.

And then a trident the size of a steam train was being flung at me, and I was rolling and hoping I didn’t crush anybody and flipping back to my feet because suddenly, I had a lot of goddamned energy to work with. And no explanation whatsoever of how I’d gotten it. Or how he had, I thought, as another impossibly huge man gave a yell that shook the rafters and jumped the length of a football field onto what I guessed was Poseidon’s back, and—

“Mircea!” I screamed at him. “What is happening? ”

No idea , he gasped mentally. Perhaps our third—

But our third couldn’t explain anything as he was busy. Our third was—well, that’s why they call them war mages, I thought, staring once more. And okay, Pritkin was borrowing something from our bond, because that was vampire speed, I realized, as an even dozen spells hit Poseidon all at once.

And some of them must have been the Forbidden stuff the witches had been talking about, because they actually staggered him. So much for humans being weak, I thought viciously, and threw the energy coiling around my hand. It wasn’t in the form of my usual whips this time, but it seemed to work just as well, and would have taken the giant golden god square in the chest if he hadn’t moved like quicksilver.

As it was, it cut as a swath across one arm, causing him to roar in outrage, a sound that was cut off abruptly when Mircea plunged fangs into the great neck, changing the roar into a scream. And while it was still echoing around the room, Pritkin jumped him from the front. And started viciously carving into the great body with a pair of giant knives he shouldn’t have had because they were longer than a sofa.

They were also golden bright and began causing light to spill out from the great body, spearing around the room and reflecting off all the gilt this and marble-covered that to be almost blinding. I put up a hand to shield my eyes and felt my stomach churn hungrily, but before I could even be tempted, all that golden light suddenly wasn’t there anymore. I thought for a second that the guy staggering back from the assault had reabsorbed it, but then I saw Pritkin’s eyes, glowing so vividly green that they looked like two lasers in his face.

And realized the truth: he’d absorbed it.

He’d absorbed all of it.

“What the hell? ” I said, but nobody was listening.

Maybe because Poseidon had just clawed Mircea off his back and thrown him across the room, and almost simultaneously, Pritkin was staggering back from some blow I hadn’t seen, because I’d taken a split second to blink. And then I did it again, and Mircea was suddenly mid-jump, with fangs and stabbing down again. Until Poseidon lashed out with a huge arm, and this time, he sent him flying the full length of the lobby toward the far wall before crashing through it.

Dust billowed, a god roared, and Pritkin recovered and stabbed him through the shoulder, and would have gotten the heart except that the old bastard moved too fast. In fact, the whole fight was happening at speeds that I doubted anybody else could follow at all, because the rest of our group did not seem to be moving.

They looked frozen in place, almost as if I’d stopped time, only I couldn’t currently do that. But maybe I could do something else, I decided, because Pritkin was somehow holding his own, with the help of a bunch of huge weapons that seemed to have levelled up in size and power right along with him. A handgun went off, but since it was now the size of a car, it resounded around the room more like a cannon, and caused a spear of pure, golden-white light to carve its way out of Zeus’s brother and slash around the room.

It didn’t slash our frozen group, however, as it was far too high, all of this taking place well above their heads. It did carve a swath through the group of massive gods that had just run in from outside, though, probably in response to their master’s call. Or possibly their dad’s, as they looked decidedly fishy.

One woman had googly eyes and enough fins to qualify as aquatic, a man had tentacles for hair, and the rest… well, they looked like the people at Nimue’s court, except they made her courtiers appear like the posers they were. This was the real thing, with brilliant, glowing eyes in every shade from blue and green to pale, translucent nothingness; with hair floating out around them as if on unseen waves in every color except the normal ones; and with delicate, although gossamer fins instead of brows and more fins edging the gills in their necks and the backs of their arms.

Who’d have expected Zeus to leave his very aquatic brother in the middle of a desert, I thought, right before Pritkin fell, with three of the new arrivals jumping him at once, and I remembered that I wasn’t here as a goddamned spectator.

I still had no idea how, but I had power. Why I wasn’t going mad from it, or what the hell was going on, I didn’t know, but I didn’t need to. All I needed was that, I thought, as a couple of huge golden whips rolled out from my hands and, a second later, were flying through the air to wrap around two of the bastards menacing Pritkin.

I yanked and they went flying, one with his head now separated from his body. And causing Mircea, who had just reentered the room, to go sliding on his knees and bending backward to avoid them. And then springing back up and leaping for the third of Pritkin’s attackers, tackling him with fangs out and eyes glowing a brilliant amber gold, while Pritkin snarled and jumped back to his feet.

Just in time to counter the sword Poseidon was bringing down on his head.

He met it with those long, golden knives crossed in front of him; I saw that much. And then it was hard to see anything except in flashes, as the battle sped up to the point that it was all I could do just to stay on my feet and keep fighting. Because these foes weren’t mindless.

And I didn’t need anybody to tell me that they’d been battling at each other’s sides for thousands of years as they moved almost as one, without the need for communication. Or maybe they were doing it the same way we were—silently—but I heard nothing before they were on me. Along with a few dozen more who ran in from the street, where I guessed they must have been waiting for us to arrive, and started this way.

But then Pritkin—I guessed—opened the portal again, sucking half of them down its throat as they ran by. I wanted to ask what good that was going to do, since the damned thing let out only a couple of blocks from here, but didn’t get a chance. Not before a scream resonated through my head: Down!

I got down, or as low as a five-story woman could, hugging the ground and then rolling and dodging and lashing out with my whip at the myriad of weapons that followed me. And then clattered to the ground all around me when the portal reversed, overloaded, and exploded, blasting the room with fifty years’ worth of pent-up energy. And sliced through the phalanx of godly types still on their feet like a scythe through wheat.

Bodil hadn’t been wrong, I thought, as a rush of crimson energy boiled just overhead, so hard and so impossibly hot that it felt like my face was burning off. And a lot of other people’s literally were. Body parts rained down everywhere, as some of these “gods” must have been of the demi variety, spilling blood instead of power, although there was some of that, too.

I immediately absorbed it, feeling it radiate through me and then outward through the bond, reinvigorating me before doing the same to my triumvirs. And they needed it, because Poseidon was raging now, and he was worth a battalion, all by himself. The deaths of his people had changed the tenor of the battle, and he wasn’t playing anymore.

He created a golden shield, used it to bisect the livid red beam, and redirected it at Pritkin, who dodged just in time to keep from flying apart into ash. But the beam cut a swath through the wall behind him, and I do mean that literally, with daylight streaming in through a jagged tear that looked like the Joker’s fiendish grin before the energy blast abruptly cut out, the talisman’s power expended. And I scrambled back to my feet to help my triumvirs before it was too late.

Only to be immediately hit by something that dropped me back to my knees, screaming. It felt like being flayed alive, like hot knives piercing all over my body, like acid-laced fire. Like that, I thought, seeing a spell with black flames and purple tips running over me, sucking my power away, and hurting, God, so much!

I fell out of slow-time while the battle raged around me, and I realized: the gods hadn’t thrown this. Over by the main doors, a group of mages had shown up, and I guessed all the dark ones weren’t on our side, after all. These looked a lot more prosperous than the rag-tag group I’d been hanging out with, and they were more powerful, too, twisting the fiery knives trying to eviscerate me and causing them to sink farther in, threatening more than pain, but thrash as I did, I couldn’t free myself.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

Because we had magic users, too, didn’t we? And while they hadn’t been able to help against actual gods, the dark mages were another thing entirely. And it looked like Zara and company hadn’t been the peace party because of a lack of strength.

A raft of spells, so thick they almost looked like one, flew at the mass of mages, and—

Damn, I thought, staring as the spell tormenting me broke and fled. Probably because the casters had just broken and fled, what ones of them still could. Which wasn’t many; the witches’ spells had bisected some, cutting them right in two, had eviscerated others, leaving them tripping on the bloody ropes of their own intestines, had flayed still more alive, leaving the red meat of their bodies springing out of their skins even as they tried to run, and had immolated most of the rest.

It didn’t look like many of the idiots had bothered to shield.

I guessed that would have cut down on the amount of magic they’d had to send at me, and they probably hadn’t thought they needed to, as we were fully occupied with a genuine, senior god. And in all this, who would notice a tiny knot of witches, muttering in a corner? Not them, I thought, watching as the few shielded ones turned and ran.

But they weren’t the only newcomers, and it looked like the gods had been busy. An even dozen of their demigod children, those who had evaded the portal’s fury, came for us while I was trying to get my breath back. And they came fast.

The witches turned their barrage on them and dropped a few, but the majority seemed almost spell-proof, with the wicked curses sloughing off them with no more effect than rain. I struggled back to my feet, but it didn’t go well, not only because I was slipping on blood and burning body parts from the rain the portal had caused, but because whatever the mages had done to me had lingering effects.

The pain was fading, but my eyes kept trying to cross, and my limbs didn’t always do what I told them. I kept falling back onto my butt while Alphonse kept yelling at me to “get up, get up, get up, goddamn you!” And I tried, I was trying, but when I attempted to tell him that, my tongue tripped on the words, too.

“Minute,” I managed to get out, which didn’t help, as we clearly didn’t have one of those.

Or maybe we did, I thought, as ?subrand said an emphatic word that Bodil’s link to me translated as “Finally!”

And stepped forward.

Nobody went with him. Enid was cradling Zara in her lap, who had gotten hit by something in the melee; Bodil was still just standing there, looking at the battle raging between Poseidon and my two triumvirs as if she could follow it; and Alphonse was now punching my oversized leg, as if that was going to help.

It did not. Meanwhile, ?subrand leisurely pulled his weapons, the bright new sword he’d bought in town, and the rusty pike he’d been carting around all this time, the one item that he possessed of his old world. And smiled.

“Let us dance, then,” he told the advancing horde, like a complete madman!

“Help him!” I managed to say to Bodil, but she didn’t even look at me.

A distracted, “He’s fine,” was all I got back.

But at least Alphonse finally noticed what was happening and turned, just in time for the tide to break over top of us. And jumped one of the fish-looking bastards, taking him down in a rolling, snarling, fighting knot of didn’t see that coming, did you? I thought. Or that, because in the little demonstration ?subrand had given in town, he had been holding back even more than I’d thought.

A lot more, I thought, watching him carve through three demigods in a matter of seconds. Because yeah. He had god-blood, too, didn’t he?

And they’d made the same mistake the mages had, watching me instead of the human rabble around me, and had paid the same price. But there were a lot of them, and I was still struggling, although I managed to grab one of the assholes trying to carve me up and threw him at a couple of the others. I missed, but I must have thrown hard, because he didn’t get up again.

And then I roared at them, my voice suddenly coming back, and that seemed to have an effect. They started looking at each other, and when I staggered back up, keeping to my feet this time, they backed the hell off, deciding to opt for another spell instead of direct contact. And then kept on deciding that as they started stumbling around as if they suddenly couldn’t see straight, either.

Or walk straight, or do much of anything else straight, because Enid was back on her feet now, too, the witches having taken Zara, and she was pissed . Whether because these bastards were menacing her man or me, I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that Margygr magic worked on them as well as everyone else. They were staggering like drunken sailors, and a few ended up cursing each other instead of me, and while I assumed they’d throw it off eventually, they didn’t have eventually.

?subrand, bleeding from a couple of wounds somebody had managed to get into him, was nonetheless on his feet. And it seemed that the fey were like vamps: if they could move, they were deadly. Something he proved as he and Alphonse, the latter’s mouth red with demigod blood, jumped the disoriented squad and fucking laid waste.

“I don’t even know why I came,” I said thickly—to no one, as no one was paying the huge golden woman any attention.

Well, except for one.

In retrospect, getting back up had probably been a bad move, as it drew a certain god’s attention. And suddenly my still less-than-coordinated ass was having to dodge spears of water that curved upward out of a huge pool and fountain halfway across the room behind me, which must have been part of the reno, because it certainly hadn’t been here before. But it was there now, full of leaping horse sculptures that I almost couldn’t see anymore as the water spears were slashing everywhere like a demented octopus.

And anything they touched, they carved through.

The water wasn’t touching me, not yet, but it was lashing at me, and everywhere it did so, the bright haze around me began to shrink. Only no, I realized a second later, it wasn’t shrinking. I was.

Several of Poseidon’s endless array of children jumped me, seeing their chance. And then not seeing anything when I put a whip through one’s eye and watched his face melt, and curved a strand of magic around the other one’s throat, popping off his head like a champagne cork out of a bottle. And felt nothing except disappointment that there wasn’t anything inside but blood.

Shit, I thought distantly, grabbing another and then another, ripping their heads off looking for power that I suddenly, desperately needed, because the damned fountain was stealing all of mine. And my triumvirs couldn’t help, as they were locked in a life-or-death struggle with a much larger foe, meaning that I was on my own. And then another idiot jumped me, I guessed trying to prove his worth to Papa, and I didn’t even bother to attack him, just screamed my rage into his useless face so loudly that he actually let me go.

Just in time for ?subrand to run him through, and jerk me away from another, and that was a lot easier than it would have been a moment ago, because I was almost back to normal human size. Goddamnit! I needed power!

“The water!” Mircea yelled. “It’s eating our energy!”

Yeah, I’d gotten that!

And then someone else grabbed me, only it wasn’t an enemy, this time. Or maybe I’d been wrong about that. Because the knife Bodil was suddenly holding against my throat didn’t feel friendly.