Are You Even Human

"She's here."

"What? How?"

"She's here! Move us!"

"Shit!"

To my great annoyance, portal guy escapes moments before I finish growing myself in the staff room he hid himself in. I can shapeshift very fast, but making a new body ex nihilo is still a new trick for me. I wonder how that girl noticed me, though. She can see what anyone looking at her sees, right? Yet I was blind. She probably felt my domain when I reached it out to the room she was in, but she should have no way of knowing I can move through solid walls now. I just figured that out myself!

So much for capturing him before Oscar can start taking hostages. If I can't catch him off guard, I can't match his speed. All they have to do to keep ahead of me is to fill whatever room they're hiding in with their domain. The moment they sense my domain poking around, they can leave before I ever get into the room. I needed that sneak attack, and I flubbed it.

Well, that's fine. Scaring them off works just as well for now. Once I have a bit of mass in the new room, I quickly probe around and find their next location, shifting myself over there moments after they retreat. I do my best to herd them towards the roof, but try as I might to corner them, they never once teleport outdoors. Perfect. A swarm of Marias is probably covering the entire building with vision, as I ordered. He might be able to stretch his domain far enough to go clean past us if he chooses to leave the girl behind, so I have to make sure he doesn't lose hope and still believes he can find a way out of here with her. Meanwhile, I can tell by the general panic and elevated heart rates in the public areas of the building that Oscar has officially started pulling weapons on people and making demands. Stopping every single one of him simultaneously might be too much for me alone. I need help from the others.

Unfortunately, Oscar has access to the communication channels we were using and creating a whole new one would take precious time. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I know where they all are. They have gathered in front of one particular entrance if they all came from the direction of the park, and Oscar is probably threatening them so they don't go any further inside. I poke around in that direction with my domain, and sure enough, I brush into Anastasia, Christine, and the others. Giving Ana's domain a friendly squeeze, I form a small lump of flesh behind one of her legs, giving it a rudimentary brain and vocal cords.

"Don't look at me," I tell her, and I feel her subtly nod. "Expand your domain as far as you can into the aquarium. Keep it thin, try not to let him notice."

Ana shakes her head just as subtly as she nodded. Hmm.

"You can reach that far, right?" I ask.

She nods.

"You can't do it without him noticing?"

She nods again. Damn, unfortunate. But not entirely unexpected. I form a few small eyes and peek around Anastasia's ankle to get a better view of everything that's going on. As expected, Afterimage is standing in front of the entrance, keeping watch on my entire team. Christine, Maria, Ed, Peter, and Felix are all standing nearby, mostly just waiting around and looking pissed. Maria's big body is glowing like crazy, enormous red wings illuminating the entire sidewalk in spite of the midday sun. Red, huh? That one's new. Man I have a lot of girlfriends all of a sudden.

"Everyone, twitch your pinky finger if you can hear me."

I get a pinky twitch from everyone. Good.

"I'm going to create an opportunity to get Anastasia and ideally Christine inside," I inform them. "Ana, I want you to spread your domain around after you get inside. Encompass Afterimage's domain inside your own. Then, wait for my signal. You'll know what to do when you feel it. Everyone else, you're on damage control. If they let Christine in, I want her to pull the whole building apart, give them nowhere to hide, and pull the civilians out of there. But they probably won't, so just do what you can to help everyone who exits the building. I don't think Oscar's threatening people with anything more dangerous than a knife, so if you see an opportunity to get Ed in, take it, and that bastard won't even be able to slit someone's throat if he tries."

A bit of dirt shifts behind me, and I swivel my eye around to see that the ground has been shifted ever so slightly so that tiny letters have been written into it. Christine? I had no idea she could be that precise. The words say 'how do we get Anastasia in?'

"She'll be invited," I answer, and then shift myself back inside the aquarium.

Okay, I need an Oscar. Anastasia doesn't think she can sneak her domain in, which means he's likely to notice mine, but the question is: will he be able to tell it's mine? I find a relatively isolated Afterimage who's only threatening a few random people, pick an unseen corner of the room, and shift a copy of teleporter guy's entire body into existence, plus my best falsification of his outfit. With my new brain feeding me all the right instincts, I take a deep breath, and stomp right towards him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, kid?" I growl. "You have any idea how badly you almost fucked this up?"

"What?" Oscar blinks, turning to stare at me in surprise. "You okayed the hostage plan after what I told you!"

"Because you said that Seraphim would back off and leave us alone if we did!" I snap, trying to jab my finger into his chest but only passing right through. "Which she clearly isn't! The bitch has been chasing me all over the upper floors!"

Which was important; it had to be the upper floors because that's where none of the civilians are, and therefore where none of the Oscars are. I obviously can't impersonate the real teleporter guy if he's already having a conversation with Afterimage in a completely different place.

"Should I… I don't know, hurt somebody?" Oscar asks. "Let her know we're serious?"

"No, dumbass!" I insist. "Taking the hostages is bad enough, we don't want that kind of heat. If someone actually dies they'll send someone worse than Seraphim after us next. I've struck a deal with them."

"A deal?" Oscar asks, furrowing his brows.

"Yeah. That nine-year-old kid on your squad? Apparently big bad Seraphim wants her out. And I kind of agree with her on this. Shit's fucked up. So we offer to trade the kid for the hostages, they accept, and then they let us go."

"…And kidnapping a kid isn't a worse look than taking a bunch of people hostage?" Oscar asks incredulously.

"It'll up the heat for sure, but we still have to worry about getting out of here in the first place after your plan fucked everything up, don't we?" I scowl. "This is why I don't work with amateurs. Just offer the damn trade. Ideally, Seraphim wants us to bring in Breakdown too, take care of the little runt."

"Okay, well that's just a trap," Oscar identifies easily. "If we let Breakdown in here we're fucked. She'll rip the entire building apart and both you and the girl will have hundreds of eyes on you. Honestly, I'm not sure if the kid isn't a trap either. She's dangerous."

"And you don't see a problem with a kid that age being that dangerous?" I challenge. "That kind of shit is the whole reason I'm doing this. If Seraphim wants to let us go for doing our jobs even better than we originally planned, I'm inclined to take her up on it."

"I guess…" Oscar hedges. "Hey, wait a minute! How do I know you aren't Seraphim?"

I give him a flat look.

"Bitch, did you see me walk in through the front door?"

He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then sighs.

"Yeah, okay," he allows. "I don't really wanna stab anybody if I don't have to anyways."

"Well good, 'cause if you did, I never would have agreed to bring you with me in the first place," I grumble at him.

There's a pause. He stares at me. I glare at him like he's being a dumbass again.

"Quit looking at me!"

"Oh, right," Afterimage says, turning away and letting me unform the body while he has his attention elsewhere. I shift upstairs, chase teleporter guy around a couple more times to keep him from getting any ideas, and then reform outside again, wrapping myself around Anastasia's ankle and hiding in her shoe.

"Alright!" the Oscar outside calls. "We'll make a trade. We'll let everyone inside go if you give us the girl as collateral. Vermillion."

"Excuse me!?" Degreaser calls furiously back, which… is surprisingly well-acted, actually. Good job, Felix. "You want us to give you a child!?"

"Come on, Felix," Oscar sighs. "You know I'm not going to hurt her, or do anything to her. It's just collateral. If you don't fuck with us, we'll drop her off somewhere safe on our way out."

Peter yawns, entwining his hands behind the back of his head.

"Sounds like a good deal to me," he says. "What do you think, kiddo? Wanna be a big damn hero?"

"I am a hero!" Anastasia puffs up indignantly.

"You're crazy," Red Maria scowls. "Pick one of us instead."

"Nah, Ana's more portable," Oscar says. "We'd rather travel light."

"I'll do it!" Anastasia insists loudly. "I'll go!"

"Ana, wait—" Maria shouts, but Anastasia is already running right up to the entrance.

"You can't stop me!" Ana declares, rushing right up next to Oscar. Maria starts to move after her, but Oscar points a blade at one of the civilians and she stops in her tracks. For my part, I just maintain synchronicity with Ana's domain, hiding myself inside her power until the time is right. Oscar puts a hand on Ana's shoulder and leads her inside, motioning the visible hostages towards the rest of my team. There are countless more within the aquarium, and if Oscar is smart he'll send out one from each area at a time so that my team knows for a fact how many people are still in danger if they try to engage. I don't know whether or not Oscar is smart enough for that—I'm leaning towards no, but it doesn't matter too much either way, and when Ana gets led inside she expands her domain farther and farther, allowing me to hide within it in a wider and wider radius. When she encompasses Oscar's domain, I do too, and after forming and unforming several different eyes around the inside of that domain, I locate every single extra Afterimage.

I'm not totally sure I can pull this off. But I think I can. This is a lot less complicated than making even a partially functional body.

"Like the tournament," I whisper. I generate a spontaneous pool of Ana's blood around each and every copy besides the one next to us—which I jump onto and surround in moments.

Anastasia catches on immediately, turning the inside of every Afterimage body into a blender, completely preventing his power from choosing any but the one I'm sparing as the real one. I wrap him up in a cocoon of flesh, fangs growing on the inside of my body in several places to poke threateningly into his skin.

"Pull your domain back or die," I order simply. "You have two seconds."

Credit where it's due, he complies. I let him go, and Ana pulls a torrent of blood from each of the surrounding rooms to encompass and threaten him as I start to let him go.

"You know what to do if he tries anything," I say, and Anastasia nods, her face hard. God, I hate how incredibly good of a soldier she is. I hope she doesn't have to do anything, but I can certainly leave things to her here. Which means it's time to corner a pair of rats. I'm willing to bet my bite is stronger.

I shift through a few of the other rooms, encouraging former hostages to leave the building and reassuring them of their safety while prodding teleporter guy with my domain a few times to shake him up a little. Just saying 'I am Seraphim' is enough to get some people to sigh with relief, following my instructions without further panic. Seriously, when did I become so popular? I'm not complaining, but it feels so weird. Once I have the civilians taken care of, though, it's time to finish the job.

If I touch his domain, he runs. I've gotta feel out where he's likely to be and approach blind. A few more pokes and I think I've got it down to two possible rooms, so I shift into the hallway and optimize my senses for blind-fighting. I've actually made a plan on how to do that since it was such a problem in my fight with A Cold Flame Tempts Endings, creating a better-optimized body for exactly this sort of situation. The end result looks kind of like a huge, fuzzy spider with bat ears, covered in organs to sense differences in scent and air pressure and vibrations in the ground. I even have long whiskers stretching out around me so I don't run into anything. Internally, I'm mostly brain, with no real need to give this body a digestive system or anything similarly space-consuming. I actually breathe instead of just healing my cells alive with spare oxygen, but that's mainly because I'd need an air sac anyway to squeak for echolocation. (I could probably figure out a way to do that without an air sac. Maybe by having my legs set up to be able to make a certain sound like a cricket? But I'd have to make sure it matches the right frequency for the bat parts of my brain to understand, and there's no real need to bother overdesigning something like that when classic squeaking works just as well.)

Not that I'll be squeaking much, a fact that would truly devastate Anastasia if she knew. Since I'm trying to ambush someone, though, I'll have to stay quiet. I shift up into a hallway and follow the wall to the first spot I suspect they might be hiding in. Sniffing underneath the door, however, I find they don't smell strongly enough to be here. I'll try the next spot.

Skittering to the next room over, I pick up on a stronger scent as I approach the door. Sure enough, my sensitive ears start to pick up on something, too.

"…Huh?" the girl mumbles to herself.

"What?" teleporter guy whispers. "What is it?"

"I… I'm not sure. Some kind of animal…?"

Huh. Is her power not just activated by vision? Is it perceiving her in any way?

"Okay, fuck this," teleporter guy swears. "That's her. That's gotta be her."

Well, no time, then. If this is true she's impossible to ambush. I leap forward, exploding into a larger form in order to open the door. Behind me, I hear a roaring, thunderous noise, so I start growing eyes just in time to feel the air suddenly get cooler and several times louder. The moment I can see I realize I'm suddenly in a subway tunnel, and that noise is a train that's about to—!

Ouch. The impact with the train breaks the majority of bones in my body, which is extremely uncomfortable but overall much less of an inconvenience than the teleportation. I collect my splattered body and shift up to the street before the train can carry me too far away, chaining together shift after shift to return to the aquarium as quickly as possible. I don't need to make a huge body to count as being in a new spot, letting me just grow small bulbs of flesh at my target destination (just enough to have the eyes and brain to see where I'm going) while removing the prior one. I can now more or less move as quickly as I can reposition my domain, and I bet with practice I could go a lot faster, too.

Which is good, because I still owe a certain bastard for all this irritating cat-and-mouse he's making me do. I never expected that he'd be able to teleport into the subway tunnels, but I guess I can see why he hasn't bothered to send himself down there to escape. Pretty damn risky, especially if he's bringing the girl. If I'm lucky, he'll still be at the aquarium when I get there, and I'll get an opportunity to try yet another method of catching up to him. Annoying little shit.

I make it back to the aquarium, rush up to the top floor, and immediately spread out my domain to find the guy as quickly as possible. Rather than attempt to enter the room before he can escape, though, I make my domain nice and thin, wait for him to move, and move it in exactly the same direction, shapeshifting my new body in front of him. I never notice it, never feel it, but that allows me to go through it—I pass through his portal before he does, and recreate myself at his destination. By the time the girl starts to warn him, he's already pulled her through—and I'm wrapping myself around both of them.

"Shit!" he hisses. "Wait!"

"No," I answer, because I'm not stupid.

"I have your mother on the phone!"

…What?

"Are you serious?" I ask, forming a proper face just so I can glare at him properly. But I can feel it, since I'm trapping him in a cocoon made out of my own body and all; he does seem to have a phone in his hand.

"You said you wanted to talk to her, right?" he grunts.

"That was before you teleported me into a goddamn subway train," I tell him frankly. "It's way too late to negotiate, buddy."

"Well, she wants to talk to you. She's being very insistent."

I sigh. Can this not just be over already? I twist myself to pry his fingers apart, grab the phone out of his hand, and pass it through a newly-grown hole in myself to the arm on my new half of a torso. Engaging Lia brain, here we fucking go. I wish I could just blow these damn people off, but I do have a cover to maintain.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Mom?" I speak into the phone.

"Lia!" my mother—I mean Lia's mother—calls back. "Are you in Atlanta?"

"Uh… yeah?" I confirm. "The big military morons sent me out here to deal with a problem I hear you caused. I have your guys. If you're about to tell me to release them you'd better make it worth my while; my bosses are already mad at me."

"You can keep them if you want, they don't matter," my mother insists, her voice sounding surprisingly urgent. "None of that is important. You need to leave that city. Now."

"…Why?" I ask.

"Because there's about to be an incursion!" she hisses.

What!?

"H-how could you possibly know that?" I demand, questions and fears and plans of action all running through my mind at once.

"It doesn't matter!" my mother insists incorrectly. "What matters is that you get yourself and everything you care about out of there before it happens! It's happening today!"

What the fuck?

"Why am I just hearing about this now!?" I demand. "If you can predict incursions—"

"Young lady you will shut your mouth and do as I tell you!" my mother shouts back into the phone. "Go! Now!"

And then she hangs up on me. She fucking hangs up on me, because of course she does, this is what she always does. I stifle a furious scream, turning my attention to the teleporter.

"You. You're a Defender of Nothing, right? Did you know about this?" I ask.

"Hell no," he answers, looking pissed. "Are you kidding me? I wouldn't be here if I knew."

"If you help me evacuate civilians, I will conveniently lose track of you when the incursion starts," I tell him simply. "Full truce, full amnesty. I'll never go after you again."

He only thinks about it for a second.

"Deal," he agrees. "I'll need to relocate the girl, first. I won't be able to safely get around until she's out of the picture."

Hnngh.

"Alright," I allow, knowing full well he could just ditch me if he felt like it. If he does, he does. "Go. Get it done fast."

He nods, and I release both him and the girl, shifting up to the roof.

"Maria!" I shout to the rainbow of girlfriends forming a halo around the building. "Calling all Marias! We're done, no more overwatch. Come down here!"

They descend, their usual varied collection of emotions on full display: worry, excitement, hope, exhaustion… they're all so different, yet so similar.

"Did we get 'em?" Yellow asks.

"No. Everyone listen very carefully and try not to panic."

"Oh, that is the worst way you could have responded to that," Blue whimpers.

"According to a source we can't afford to dismiss, there's about to be an incursion here," I tell them evenly. "I don't know how they know. It doesn't matter. We need to prepare for—"

I feel it before I see it. What are the odds that I'd feel it for a third time? I'm so much more than I was for the first two, though. I know what this is. I understand this pressure. I've lived through it not just in Denver, not just in Chicago, but in my very dreams. It's an unmistakable sensation.

The weight of a god, peeling open the world.

I look up, and I see the sky start to tear in exactly the same way I feel it. The first time this happened, the sky became some horrific, picturesque idealization of itself, from beyond which the aliens emerged. The second time, the sky split in twain, divided inexorably into two parts and no fewer. This time, it is like countless dewdrops of rain splattering on a glass pane above, each impact its own individual invasion. There are a few at first, but then there are more, and more, and more, a myriad of dimension-shattering droplets crashing through the firmament of our reality.

Unlike every other incursion I've been in, however, I feel no strange, painful pressure in my skull as I gaze into the cracks between worlds. It may be a god's power, but my body and mind have been honed by a god of my own. I can see into the cracks, more and more as they multiply and widen. As I enhance my vision, optimizing it for greater distances, I can see past the cracks, to the swarms waiting behind it, prepped and ready to drop.

It's not just because I'm protected from the damaging effects of staring at an outpouring of divine energy that I can see inside, though. It's also because of the angle. We aren't just in the radius of the incursion zone. We're directly beneath the drop point. A Queen of Legion is coming to Earth, and even more than any other Queen she shall not be alone.

"Shit," I hiss. "Shit! Maria, collect all of your yous and get the others to start gathering civilians. We have maybe half an hour until the Queen drops if we're lucky. Go!"

I shift myself back downstairs, regrowing myself next to Oscar and Anastasia.

"Ana!"

"You're back!" she says, looking at me with wide eyes. "What's happening? I feel something."

"There's an incursion happening," I answer. "It just opened up directly above us."

Her eyes go wide.

"I'm sorry, hon," I say, grabbing her and giving her a quick hug. "Let Afterimage go, we have way bigger problems. Oscar, full amnesty if you help us evacuate people. I'll forget this ever happened."

"Shit, I mean, yeah alright," he agrees, standing up as Ana pulls her mass of blood off of him. I give him fifty-fifty odds to ditch us at the first opportunity, but I frankly do not care. He can go if he wants to. All of this stupid draft drama has been rendered completely meaningless, at least for now.

I pull my phone out of my torso as I start running out of the building towards the group, quickly dialing an emergency military number just to tell people what's going on. The call connects at first, but my phone loses network connection before I can even get a word in, communication across the entire city likely shutting down. Damn it!

Anastasia, Oscar, and I rush out of the front doors of the aquarium to find the rest of my squad gathering up a panicking crowd. Where is… there. Christine isn't doing so hot, and Felix looks almost as panicked as she is, but most of my crew is doing passably at managing the civilians, getting them to group up so we can protect as many as possible. I shift into my full Seraphim regalia, spreading my wings and enhancing my voice so everyone recognizes me and my authority.

"Okay, everyone!" I shout as I approach, spreading my domain out to help my team cover everyone, just in case. "We're heading for Centennial Olympic Park! Stay grouped together, don't rush, and we'll get all of you out of here! Let's go, go, go!"

"Fuck!" Peter suddenly swears. "Above us!"

I glance up, quickly seeing he's right. The first step of an incursion is always the same, after all. It's time for the Leviathans to fall.

…Why is it time for the Leviathans to fall? With all I know now, it seems particularly strange. Do the aliens just not know they're doomed? No, there's no time to think about it. We're standing in the landing zone. And sure enough, right overhead, one of the countless holes in the world starts to get wider and wider as a titanic beast pushes it open with its own body.

And then, once the way is clear, it starts to fall. What… what do I even do? I can't protect anyone from this. It's too big, we're too close. I'll live, but the civilians? Most of my team? Anastasia?

"Christine!" Peter snaps.

"I… I…!" Christine stammers.

"Just make us a ceiling!" Peter insists.

"It won't hold!" Christine says.

"Like hell it won't! Do it!"

Christine takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and rips the aquarium apart, the entire structure breaking like a dropped LEGO set and sorting itself into individual bricks above our heads, collected into a wide lattice that shades our entire group. Peter reaches up and touches the floating structure, strain visible on his face that only multiplies with the accompanying boom of impact, the shockwave that sends most of us stumbling to the ground, and the subsequent rumble of surrounding buildings being flattened. Yet when it's all over, we're all somehow alive.

"Fuck… yes… Breakdown," Peter wheezes, holding out his hand for a fistbump. Christine clutches her chest, lets out a deep breath, and returns the gesture, tapping his knuckles. I didn't know Peter could transfer his power to other things like that, but I am very glad he can.

"Great work," I nod to both of them. "Now let's move!"

Christine puts the aquarium back together (including the water and the fish that had been floating off to the side in the air) and we start to march towards the park. It's a good rendezvous point for a lot of reasons, mainly that it's open enough to accommodate a lot of people without anyone being at risk from nearby collapsing buildings, and it's likely to be one of the first places teleporter guy looks if he comes back.

God, I hope he comes back. The Wasps are about to come out next.

"Ana honey, go get our guns from the car," I instruct her. Which is the other reason we're going to the park: it's where our vehicles are, and therefore it's where our weapons are. "Christine, when we get to the park I need you and Degreaser to build some kind of room where people can enter but not see from the outside. The guy we were here to capture agreed to help with evacuation in exchange for amnesty."

"…Can we actually promise amnesty?" Christine asks.

"Not really, but if he actually comes back to help in the middle of all this I'll beat the everloving shit out of anyone who tries to arrest him," I tell her. "As far as I'm concerned that's close enough."

"I see more Leviathans," one of the Marias calls out. "None directly overhead, but… close."

Again: why? The massive creatures look like a cross between a snake and a hydra, many of them splitting apart at one end to taper into several different tail-mouths, like an enormous, limbless collection of Raptors. Each and every one of them will die when it hits the ground; I doubt even Queens manage the drop without severe injury and risk. It's so stupid. It's so wasteful. What do they even want with us?

Do we even have whatever it is that they want? Do they want anything from us at all? Do they even know that only death awaits them? This war was never about us. I know that from the Council of Blasphemy. Is it actually possible the entire invasion of Earth is some kind of… of misconception?

"…Seraphim?" Maria asks. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I… I've gotta go up there," I tell her. "I have to stop them."

"What!?" she yelps. "Hey, hold on, what do you mean?"

"I can talk to them!" I remind her. "I'm the only one who can talk to them. I might be able to stop this entire thing before it starts! Or… or convince them to spare people! Or something!"

"Wait. Wait. We need you here. You're the leader!" Maria insists.

"Ed!" I shout. He turns to me. "We will hopefully be getting support from a teleporter to help all these people out of here. If he takes more than five minutes to show up, start to march out of town. East, to where they'll set the front lines. Got it?"

"I understand," he nods. "Do what you have to do."

"Wait!"

I turn to the shout to see Anastasia rushing back towards us, a tide of blood carrying her and our gear across the park in moments. The moment I feel her domain, I create more for her, loading her up to ensure she'll be more than powerful enough to survive without a scratch.

"Stop it!" she insists.

"No, Ana," I tell her, putting my foot down. "Come on, I don't even have to hurt myself to do it anymore. Take the blood. And please, keep everyone safe… but most importantly, keep yourself safe."

"No, wait, please!" she insists. "I don't… it's not supposed to work this way! You can't give me this much."

Huh? Oh. Oh! Her discomfort with me giving her blood was never entirely a personal hangup, was it? Her power is from Reciprocation. She's supposed to have to be hurt if she wants to hurt anyone else. That's the whole point. The oddly sensitive girl can tell, somehow, that her god isn't happy with my little exploit. But… is that really a problem? Reciprocation is such a broad idea. There's so much more to it than just hurting whoever hurts you.

"Ana, it's a gift," I tell her, kneeling down and staring her directly in the eyes as she comes to a stop in front of me, her wave rushing around to hand out weapons to the squad. I decline my own. "It's a gift I'm giving you because I want you to be safe. In return, I want you to keep everyone else safe. Understand? This isn't a weapon. You don't have to hurt anyone with it. You just have to give them the same safety I'm giving you. And when I come back, you'll give it to me, too."

Slowly, as I speak, I can feel the stress start to leave her, a little at a time. It's hard for her, because it's always been hard for her to think of her power as anything other than a tool of death and pain, but over time I've done my best to discourage that line of thought and it finally seems to be paying off. I can almost feel her domain pulse where it rests within mine, a bit of extra strength to go along with her god's approval.

"…Okay," Ana agrees. "If it's for you, I'll use it."

Good enough.

"Thanks, Ana," I tell her. "I'll be back before you know it. Promise."

She rushes forward and wraps me up in a hug, her domain squeezing me along with her little arms.

"You have to let me pay you back," she insists.

"I will," I promise. "But you're always paying me back. I love you, Ana."

"…Love you too."

I return her squeeze with my wings for a second or two before letting her go, standing up and looking up to try and judge how high I'll need to go. It looks doable. A big enough bird could get up there, I think. And if not, I can always try to teleport there… though it'd be a little hard to move faster than gravity can make me fall. I don't really want to know what happens if I don't have any flesh to anchor my domain to. Now certainly isn't the best time to try to find out.

"Be right back," I say, and leap up into the sky, wings unfurling and reshaping for better vertical lift. Every flap of my wings sends new panic through my body, my destination impossibly urgent yet never seeming to get closer fast enough. Slowly but agonizingly surely, I make progress, the holes growing larger and larger in my vision until I'm almost directly beneath one. The closer I get, the more I can feel it. The power holding this window apart.

As I get close, a downdraft starts to batter my wings, alien atmosphere pouring onto Earth and blowing the air away. Far heavier, however, is the weight of divinity the air blows along with it, flashes of domain-like contact that don't seem to be attached to anyone or anything at all. They rush into our world and spread in every direction, seeking Possibility-knows-what. I even briefly feel a brush with my own dreams, a wisp of my god passing by into the world. It's humbling. It's terrifying.

But worst of all, it's impassable.

How can I swim upstream in a river of divinity? It pushes down on me, pouring past me, crushing me, knocking me aside. The overwhelming majority of it is Legion, the very power holding these holes open in the first place, but nearly every deity seems to have some representation here, however briefly. My wings strain and fail me. I can't fly even an inch higher. Not even my domain—something entirely unbothered by any other impediment I've ever encountered—can push higher. It can't fight the tide.

But it has to. I have to go. It must be possible. Is that not what I am? Let me in, damn you. Let me in!

I struggle, strain, and push, only vaguely aware of a crowd gathering on the far side of the portal, a swarm of monstrous forms watching and waiting with perfectly coordinated precision. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. I will get through. I must get through. It's not impossible, because nothing is.

Something in the torrent halts. It turns to me. And like a guiding hand, it helps me pull myself up, one stroke at a time. My domain stretches like taffy, struggling painfully against the current, but then, I feel it breach the other side. I use my power, and I shift.

The first thing I notice is the beauty. The world around me is so bright, so colorful. I feel like I'm floating in a compressed galaxy, the infinite mass of space scrunched together into a single nebula, full of planets and stars and limitless cosmic beauty separated not by the vast vacuum of space but merely a few miles. Each cluster of miniature worlds is completely different in appearance, most not even being spherical, and far above me, far beyond me, I can see life moving on and between them.

The second thing I notice is that I am rapidly starting to die. This is, as it has been for several months now, an extremely solvable problem. The humanoid aspects of my body aren't doing well here, but I am far more than human. A simple reconfiguration of all my cells to function on alien biology instead of Earthly biology is all I need for the atmosphere to stop feeling like fire and start feeling like home.

The third thing I notice is that an army is staring at me, and they have several questions. The first one is fairly straightforward.

"COMMAND: IDENTIFY."

Okay, I mean, that's kind of not a question but it basically is.

"Compliance," I respond immediately. "This unit's designation: Thief of Torn Wings. This unit's affiliation: the world beyond this portal. This unit's intentions: peaceful negotiation and information exchange. Addendum: business is extremely urgent."

"SO NOTED."

The response is so overwhelmingly voluminous that it's hard to think of it as anything but a shout, though unlike with the Queen of Blasphemy it isn't a single voice of overwhelming intensity. It is the fact that every single alien around me is repeating exactly the same signal at almost exactly the same time. The Wasps are closest to me, each one with acid glands aimed and ready. Raptors and Behemoths are above them, and highest of all is the Queen, a ring of her Angels floating around her. The Queen herself looks sort of like an enormous bunch of grapes: tiny, thin vines connecting thousands of spherical orbs of flesh together into a single being. The many, together. Legion.

One of the Angels floats down to approach me. It looks quite a bit like a Behemoth, huge and stocky, but the closer it gets the more I realize it's far bigger than it should be. It is, the more I look at it, several different Behemoths, all smashed together into a single organism.

"You may expound," the Angel informs me. I signal my thanks, and speak.

"Clarification: I am ignorant as to the extent to which you understand some of the things I am going to tell you," I begin, "but through these portals lies a separate realm of being. I, and many others like me, have lived there since our creation. But for some time now, the people of this world have been coming to our world and killing us. We do not understand why, but this has hurt us greatly. And it hurts you, too. The large ones you have sent are already dead. We did not kill them. The act of sending them there has. Our world is…"

I look around, trying to understand the impossible collection of multicolored stars and planets around me, all so close and so small. One of them, in particular, catches my attention and keeps it for longer than I expected. It looks so familiar. It looks like my dream. How is…? No. Find out later.

"It is not like this one at all," I explain. "Your Queen will be unable to move. Your people will struggle. You will feel vast lands that seem unclaimed but are NOT unclaimed. Our people are so different from yours I do not know how to communicate the scope. All of the ones of your kind that have come before have killed us, thinking naught of our lives. I come here to beg you to reconsider. This will not be a good place for you. The vast majority of you will die just making the journey!"

The Angel shifts uncomfortably, seeming to take my words seriously. A little bit of hope flickers in my chest, though I should probably know better.

"Appreciation. Concern. This information troubles Us," the Angel tells me. "Requesting further explanation."

Really? They're really willing to listen?

"Addendum," the Angel continues. "Explain quickly, and with a focus on knowledge relevant to new location. The path cannot be changed."

Ha. Oh god, of course. There it is.

"Why!?" I ask. "What is so important about our world that you HAVE to invade it? Why do you keep showing up? Why do you keep taking our land, our WORLD? Why can't you just stay here? Why are you doing any of this!?"

Again, the Angel twitches, its massive legs stretching and flicking in discomfort. It smells almost… chagrined. Apologetic. Maybe even something close to afraid.

"Apologies," they say. "We are unable to answer that question."

"Why!?" I demand.

"Because," the Angel says, "We do not know the answer either."