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The last echoes of the other gods' departures faded within the silent, artificial church on the moon. The vast, ornate space was now occupied only by Nicholas, the Shaper, and his four towering attendants.
The tension of the negotiation had dissipated, replaced by the heavy weight of what had been agreed upon and the lingering, thread of Athena's message. It coiled in his mind, a psychic hook wrapped in implication.
He pondered the invitation, turning it over with the cold, strategic part of his mind. An ambush was a distinct possibility. Lure the upstart god-king to a private meeting, then have the full might of Olympus descend upon him. It was a classic tactic.
Yet, the location suggested otherwise, the Empire State Building was a symbolic heart of America, the monument to its new economic might, and soon to be the new location of Olympus. It was not a battlefield that the pantheon would pick.
More importantly, the calculating part of him acknowledged a new truth: there were very few things left in this world that could genuinely hurt him. The risk was minimal, and the potential intelligence to be gained was significant. He needed to understand the older powers, their hidden pacts, and their secret fears.
Athena had left more than a message; she had left a beacon, a subtle pulse of her own divine essence tied to a specific location in Manhattan. With a message to his attendants to remain vigilant, Nicholas dissolved his form into a stream of golden threads.
Using his magic authority, space folded around him, not with the violent tear of his journey to Pluto, but with a precise, surgical seam. One moment, he was on the moon; the next, he was rematerializing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
It was a deep night. The city below was a sprawling galaxy of electric light, but up here, on the highest open deck, the world was a pool of darkness cut by the cold wind. The space was utterly deserted.
A quick sweep with his divine senses confirmed it; the usual security guards had all been compelled by a gentle but irresistible mental command to conclude their rounds and leave the upper floors, their minds fogged with a forgetful calm. They were already descending in the elevators, unaware of the meeting occurring in their absence.
He stood at the railing, his human-form suit and top hat untouched by the wind, which seemed to part around him. A moment later, the air shimmered, and grey smoke gathered into Athena beside him.
She had forgone her armor and giant form. She looked like a tall, severe woman with sharp grey eyes and dark hair pulled back, wearing simple, modern attire, a grey pantsuit. She was every inch the strategist, even in this casual disguise.
"You came," she said, her voice neutral.
"You left a compelling calling card," Nicholas replied, not looking at her, his gaze on the city lights. "I hope this isn't some belated, vain attempt at reconciliation now that I possess power you can't simply ignore or command."
A flicker of genuine hurt passed over her composed features, swift but visible. He saw it in the slight tightening around her eyes, the minute downturn of her lips. He felt no satisfaction from it, only a deeper wariness. He did not buy it, emotional manipulation was a weapon in her arsenal as old as her spear.
"The time for such theatrics is past, Nicholas," she said, the hurt fading into a weary sternness. "I am not here to plead for a son's love. I am here to give you information that the others would gladly have watched you stumble over in the dark."
"Information has a price. What's yours?"
"For now? Your continued existence. A stable, intelligent rival is preferable to a chaotic, collapsing one that might lead the world to an end. What I am about to tell you concerns the true structure of our reality, a structure you have just become a major pillar of, whether you understand it or not."
She turned to face him fully, the city lights reflecting in her grey eyes. "Let us speak of God. Capital G. The one the mortals pray to in their churches and mosques and synagogues."
Nicholas remained silent, listening.
"He is real," Athena stated bluntly. "But not as they believe. He is not omnipotent. He is not omniscient. He is… a construct. A reservoir. For millennia, the pantheons have used Him. We, the faith we could no longer absorb, the belief we could not safely absorb or did not want, into the concept of a single, all-powerful, benevolent deity. It served two purposes. First, it prevented that wild, unstructured faith from coalescing into new, wild pantheons, unruly rivals springing from the human unconscious. Second, by defining Him as all-good and all-powerful, we made Him manageable and an asset that would intervene if the world ever came into true danger."
She paused, letting the magnitude of the confession settle. "All that faith, from billions over centuries, flows into Him. It grants Him a sliver of authority over nearly everything: love, war, justice, the sea, the sky. But only a sliver. A fractional percentage. He holds one percent of the domain of War, half a percent of the domain of Wisdom, and two percent of Healing."
"His power is vast but infinitely diluted, spread so thin across countless authorities that He can be overruled in any specific domain by the god who holds the majority share. We made Him powerful enough to be a useful reservoir of faith and manager of the world, but never focused enough to be a threat. We crafted His personality through doctrine and scripture: endlessly forgiving, merciful, passive. A saintly warden, not a warrior king."
Nicholas finally turned his head, meeting her gaze. "You're warning me about allowing his faith in my territory."
"Yes," she said, her voice sharp. "You must never allow his believers to define him too narrowly as, say, the God of Victory or the God of Knowledge; that concentrated belief could allow Him to seize a full, uncontested majority in an authority. You would create a true, focused rival, or you would empower the reservoir to break its constraints. You must be vague and never allow for him to become anything other than the Omnipotent and Omniscient God."
"And the other purpose of this visit?" Nicholas asked, his tone still cool. "You didn't just come to give me managerial advice."
"No," Athena admitted. "I came to warn you about Lucifer. Satan. The Devil. He holds a significant share of the authority of Magic, specifically its darker, transgressive aspects. He is also utterly, irredeemably mad. The faith that shaped him, humanity's fear of evil, their concept of absolute rebellion and torment, has twisted him into the perfect embodiment of that belief. He is spiteful, and consumed by a hatred for order, upstarts and humanity. You have just claimed a major portion of Magic. You have divided his domain. In his mind, a human has stolen from him. He will see it as a personal, absolute offense. Do not mistake his evil for stupidity; he is cunning and plans ahead, and he knows that he is the weakest link in the pantheons. That if and when you decide to expand your control over magic, you will target him. He will seek only to harm you, to corrupt your works, and to drag your followers into his pits, simply for the vicious pleasure of it. The other pantheons have a long, bloody understanding with him, an uneasy border. You have just crossed it, and he does not respect treaties."
A faint, cold smile touched Nicholas's lips. "And the other gods would have loved to watch him make a fool of me. To watch the bright new power get tangled in his schemes. So they decided not to mention it."
"Precisely," Athena said, her expression grim. "They see you as a destabilizing element. Some, like my father, still believe they can crush you. Others, like Odin, are more cautious. But all would be pleased to see you bloodied by the Adversary, to see your neat new order splattered with hellfire and sin. It would prove you are not as clever as you think."
He absorbed this, the pieces of the cosmic board shifting in his mind. The Eastern Pantheons with their separate agreement. God as a faith-sink. Lucifer is an irrational, unavoidable enemy. It was a more complex and dangerous game than he had even anticipated.
"So," he said finally, turning fully to face her. "What is this, then? Your attempt at a truce? A non-aggression pact? Do you want to be allies?"
Athena looked at him, and for a moment, the mask of the calculating goddess slipped, revealing something older and more tired. "I do not know if we can be allies. But I do not wish to be enemies. Not truly. You are… a work of art I had a hand in. A dangerous, unpredictable masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless. I would not see you shattered by ignorance when a word of warning could steer you clear of the darkest pitfalls."
He studied her face, searching for the lie, the hidden gambit. He found complexity, conflict, and a ruthless pragmatism that mirrored his own. It was perhaps the most honest she had ever been with him.
"The favor is noted," Nicholas said, his voice formal. "And for the warning about the Adversary, and for the insight into the celestial… plumbing, the previous animosity between us is written off. We start from this new point."
He took a step closer, and his voice dropped, losing any hint of the son and becoming pure, cold divinity. "But understand this, Athena. I will accept this information in the spirit it is given. I will watch for the Devil's hand. I will manage the faith in my territory with your advice in mind. But if this is, in fact, the first move in a deeper scheme, if you or Olympus attempts to use this seeming goodwill as a lever against me… hope that your strategy is flawless."
He let the threat hang in the cold air between them.
"Because I am a fast learner. And I never forgive twice."
He didn't wait for her reply. His form unraveled into threads of light that whipped away on the wind, leaving the Goddess of Wisdom alone in the darkness atop the tower, the weight of her warning and his final words hanging heavily in the silent night.
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