The flames from Nightingale’s self-summoning trick vanished, revealing the full might and glory of heaven.

“I didn’t expect it to look so much like a child’s drawing,” Kaylen said.

Nightingale gazed across the endless expanse of fluffy white clouds and blue skies. “What did you expect?”

“Well, the Lunar Gardens are supposed to be full of beautiful flowers and trees beneath an eternal twilight.”

“But there are other heavens, too, right?”

Kaylen thought for a moment. “True. The Grove of Solitude is supposed to be all paths and terraces, to wander and contemplate. The Eternal Fortress is supposed to be a giant training yard where warriors prepare for the final battle against the forces of darkness.”

“What are the forces of darkness?” Nightingale asked.

Kaylen shrugged. “I would say the demons, but since they’re supposed to all die now according to the Edhru Prophecies, I guess the forces of darkness are just any non-Athorian. But the point is that no god has this kind of generic heaven. So where are we?”

“You’re in the lobby,” said a voice from behind them. The two turned to see an angel. She was at once so beautiful that it made Kaylen want to cry and so terrifying that she made her want to scream. She was sitting at a small wooden office desk. “Kaylen Arac and Nightingale Ross. You’ve certainly fucked things up, haven’t you?”

“I hope so,” Nightingale said with a smirk. Wasn’t she disturbed by the angel’s appearance at all?

“Mmm-hmm,” the angel said dryly, adjusting her glasses. “There was a plan, you know. All laid out in prophecy. The heroes were supposed to kill the Demon King, putting an end to demonkind and reclaiming the world in the name of humanity.”

Nightingale raised a finger to object, but the angel interrupted. “And elves and orcs, too, of course. All you had to do was let the heroes follow their destiny and things would have worked out in your favor. Instead you had to ruin the saint, keep the other heroes from finding their path, and allow the demons to run rampant.”

“Riven ruined the saint, not me,” Kaylen objected, a slight whine entering her voice.

The angel gave her a withering look so powerful that Kaylen clutched the box closer to herself in fear. “You stood against the saint, too.”

“She was altering the souls of people against their will. Including Sanguian priestesses.” Under the angel’s glare she felt like she was trying to excuse her actions rather than justify them.

The angel gave a heavy sigh. “You have to understand. This prophecy is the result of a series of carefully negotiated alliances between the gods. It was agreed that the Paragon would be an Athorian saint and that she would be permitted to test her powers before converting the other heroes.”

Kaylen felt something in her chest catch. “She was supposed to do that to the other heroes?”

“Of course. That’s the reason she was given that ability.”

Words didn’t seem like enough for Kaylen to express her disgust. “Why would she do that to her own allies?”

The angel gave her a quizzical look. “The heroes need to work in concert. They’re all very different people with very different values. It would have been impossible for them to cooperate without making alterations. It was determined that giving the saint the power of conversion would ensure their unity.”

The box in Kaylen’s arms seemed to shudder. “That’s disgusting,” Kaylen said. Nightingale nodded in agreement.

“It’s little matter now,” the angel said dryly. “Thanks to your meddling, we now have to find some way to get things back on track. Which brings us to why you’ve been allowed to come here.”

Kaylen and Nightingale shared a glance. “Allowed?” Kaylen asked.

The angel rolled her eyes. “Nothing happens without the allowance of the gods. This includes fools attempting to kill them. You never had a chance of success. However, under the circumstances, the gods recognize the force of your will and are willing to offer you a role in the restoration of their plan.”

“What could they possibly offer her?” Nightingale asked angrily.

The angel picked up a piece of paper from her desk and examined it as she spoke. “Thankfully, fate has a way of pulling itself back on course. The Miracle and Champion are positioned close to each other, and obviously the Stranger is already in our hands. However, a replacement Paragon is needed. Therefore, we are willing to offer you sainthood in exchange for you playing that role in the prophecy.”

Sainthood was every priestesses dream. To the Kaylen of a year ago it had been a goal so lofty that even she had never considered it a realistic possibility. Now that it was within reach, nothing seemed more unappealing.

“So I can twist Fiona and the other heroes into loyal Sanguians against their will?”

The angel shook her head. “Conversion will be one of your powers, but whether or not to use it will be your decision.”

“I’m not even a priestess,” Kaylen protested. “Sanguis rejected me.”

“Ah, yes, about that.” The angel picked up another paper, examining it. “While Sanguis is, of course, infallible, it has been determined that some additional analysis of your particular case was required. And, it seems, as far Sanguis is concerned, you are a woman.”

Excitement coursed through Kaylen. Gods could change? “You mean Sanguis is going to accept trans women now?”

The angel laughed like a parent delighted by her child misunderstanding something. “Of course not. Sanguis has determined that you aren’t a trans woman.”

Kaylen frowned. “Yes, I am. I was assigned male. I’m no different from Fiona or Andra or Riven.”

“Do you bleed?” the angel asked flatly.

Kaylen was taken aback. “Is that a threat?”

“I think she’s asking whether you have periods,” Nightingale explained.

“Oh,” said Kaylen, relieved. “Yes I do, actually. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“Do your friends?” the angel asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I never asked,” Kaylen admitted. “I guess Andra doesn’t, because she doesn’t have the anatomy for it. And slimes probably don’t, so I guess Fiona wouldn’t, either. I suppose Riven could simulate them magically, but I can’t imagine why she would.”

“Exactly,” the angel said conclusively. “That’s the difference. Real women have periods. Men pretending to be women don’t. You had simply allowed yourself to be tricked into thinking you were a man pretending to be a woman. It’s understandable. It happens to women all the time.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kaylen snapped. “Even some cis women don’t—”

She cut herself off. This was futile. Sanguis would always find some definition of womanhood that included the people she wanted and excluded those she didn’t. Kaylen was only being offered a provisional womanhood because she now had value to the goddess. She couldn’t believe the goddess she had once worshipped was so slimy.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to betray my fellow trans women to get what I want again. Either Sanguis accepts all of us or none of us.”

The angel shook her head. “That is not the terms of the offer. The gods are perfect. If they were to change, then they would no longer be perfect.” Kaylen couldn’t help but note that the gods had beliefs that contradicted each other and that they therefore couldn’t all be perfect. “You can either accept their ruling or another Paragon will be selected. Probably one more willing to make use of conversion.”

Kaylen caught the threat in that statement. If she didn’t accept her role, another saint would take it, and permanently alter Fiona. Taking part in the destruction of the demons would be a monstrous act, but did Kaylen have another choice?

“Screw that,” said Nightingale. “I say you open the box.”

Kaylen looked at Nightingale. The elf smiled and placed a supportive hand on her shoulder. “But she said that it wouldn’t matter. The gods knew this was happening. They could have stopped me, but they didn’t because I never posed a threat to them.”

“A goddess is also offering to make you an exception to one of her unbendable rules. Something big led to her making that decision and I think it’s that she’s scared of you. Gods are completely self-serving. They don’t care about right and wrong, just about what gives them the biggest advantage.” Nightingale's smile turned into a grin. “I say hit them with everything you’ve got.”

Kaylen considered the box carefully. She had killed before, but those had just been mortals, and people who had and would continue to hurt others. Except that gods also hurt people, and on a much greater scale than anyone she’d fought before. They were no more deserving of existence than mortals and they were an active threat to the world. The answer was obvious. It would be the most dangerous thing she had ever done, but Kaylen saw no reason why that should stop her from rushing in.

She adjusted her grip on the box so that one hand held the top.

“Die, gods.”

She opened the box.

The malice of a mortal rejected by the gods mixed with a thousand years of anger and pain at being betrayed by her cousins.

Suddenly Kaylen saw the world from angles she had never known. Every plane was visible at once. The mortal world, the demon world, the Heavens, Hell, and the Deadlands were all layered on top of each other yet completely visible. The gods, too, were visible.

First came Roolius. He was a man with a face made of judgement and robes made of law and she was herself, crushing his head with a god-sized version of her old flanged mace. Then he was a bureaucrat issuing fines to a curfew-breaking homeless man and she was an activist issuing a petition to change the law. Then he was a scavenging bird assured of his place in the food chain and she was a starving man killing and devouring him. Then he was an elder in an ancient village explaining which foods are and are not to be eaten and she was a villager insisting that the reason for these rules be noted because should circumstances change, then the rules should change along with them.

Next came Passia. The battle with Roolius had given her time to prepare and she was wearing the armor of familial bond and armed with the sword of names. Unfortunately, it was no match for a woman whose weapon had broken that sword in the past, and whose armor was forged by friends who knew how to create even greater bonds. Passia’s armor unraveled, revealing at its core a time period where the threats to the world were so great that mortals were constantly at the brink of destruction. A time when mothers constantly mourned children and had little choice but to create as many as possible in hopes of carrying on the species.

Athor was next, said to be the fiercest warrior of the gods. He was at once a god of the chaos of war and the order of a neatly organized hierarchical society. However, as a student of religion, Kaylen already knew what was at his core. Now that she had faced two gods, she knew what to look for. He was not the god of war or power or light, but the god of fear. Fear of the darkness, fear of the unknown, fear that one’s only paths in life are those of the subjugator and the subjugated. She devoured him with the light of the small light potion her mothers had kept at the side of her childhood bed.

Finally, she faced Sanguis. The goddess she had once loved with all of her heart. Though Sanguis was armed with the spear of mercy, she did not attack. Instead she stared at Kaylen. Is there nothing women build that men will not take away? she seemed to ask.

“She was a woman,” Kaylen responded. “And you took everything away from her. And gave some of it to men.”

She needed to be stopped. She was a threat to the beautiful mortal world I am trying to create.

“There’s no beauty in a world with no trans people.” Kaylen wasn’t sure if she was saying this or someone else.

She shook her head. “Anyway, the mortal world belongs to mortals. Both women and men. It’s not yours or hers or any of the gods’.”

She thrust her spear at Kaylen so powerfully that a mountain in Hell crumbled, a new island rose in the human world, and a thousand spirits in the Deadlands were blasted into the Great Unknown. Kaylen felt a stab of regret at the loss of those souls. She hadn’t known that this battle would put mortals at risk, but she was facing the gods both everywhere and nowhere. There was no place where she could fight them without someone being at risk.

But now she could end the fight quickly. With the power of three gods absorbed and the knowledge of how to fight them, she quickly found what was at Sanguis’ center. It was, of course, a man desiring control over a woman. She felt Sanguis’ pain at the knowledge that at her core she was a reaction to a man’s actions, but this was a pain she could not soothe. So she made it her own. As a priestess, she had tried to lighten Sanguis’ burden of eons of men’s cruelty, but now she accepted it entirely. And then Sanguis was gone.

She caught sight of the lesser gods now, at the edges of her vision, hiding behind demon world sand dunes and in human world oceans and Hell’s screams. She briefly considered letting them live, but she saw the way they eyed the remains of the other gods within her and knew they would try to claim that power and use it to control mortals. So she devoured them one-by-one like a shark.

And then there was only Her. She stood alone, the only goddess in the universe. There was damage to be fixed, She recalled. A woman named Marissa had had her soul twisted by one of the old gods. But She could see the past, see what Marissa’s soul had been and restore it to its previous state. She did the same for everyone else who Hermia had twisted. 

Next, She found Hell. Much like the tear between the human and demon worlds, there was a gate between it and the Deadlands. She threw this gate open. Souls would be able to escape if they so desired. She threw open the gates of the various heavens, too. As long as they were locked, they might become prisons for the souls within. Satisfied, She debated what to change next. There was so much wrong with the world.

“Kaylen?” a tiny voice said from somewhere near and far. “Kaylen? Where did you go?”

Nightingale had not changed her size, yet she was so small now. During the battle, She had turned to face a direction Nightingale could not see. She turned back now, causing Nightingale to jump in surprise.

“Kaylen! What happened? Are you...are you still you?”

A small part of Her wanted to grin. She indulged it. “Nightingale, I did it! I destroyed the gods!”

Relief washed over the spellsword’s face. “Oh, thank goodness. I was worried that we’d made a terrible mistake.” She examined one of the nearby clouds. “This dream wouldn’t be nearly as nice without you.”

“I have all their power now,” She said. “I can fix everything.”

Nightingale’s relief turned to terror. “Hold on a second. That’s just being a god.”

That was right. Nightingale didn’t like gods. “There are so many people who get treated unfairly in the world. Like trans people. I could make them all like cis people.”

“So you’re going to wield absolute power to fix them all?” Nightingale asked.

“You should know,” She said. She looked at Maxine, who was sitting in a prison cell, scraping something on the wall. “You’re friends with Maxine. She can’t use her name, she has to wear a mask just to interact with the world. I can make the world forget her old name.”

“Okay, that’s good for Maxine, but what about Atworth? You think they need to be fixed?”

She looked at Atworth, who was suspiciously eyeing a plate of food. “There are things they want changed about themself.”

Nightingale hesitated. “I didn’t know that. We never really talked about trans stuff. They probably thought I wouldn’t understand. But what about your friends? Do you think Riven needs to be fixed?”

She looked at Riven, who was grinning suspiciously as she placed a plate of food before Bessen. “Riven eats up all of her magical energy keeping an enchantment on herself. With my help, she could achieve her true potential.”

Nightingale hesitated again, then her face brightened triumphantly. “What about Andra? You really think she sees herself as anything less than perfect?”

She examined Andra, who was raising a glass of wine and making some annoying speech. She ignored the words and looked deep into the woman, remaining silent.

“Kaylen, please don’t do this,” Nightingale begged. “Not you, of all people. I can’t stand to see you turn into a goddess.”

She said nothing. Instead, she continued to stare into Andra.

“We were supposed to kill the gods, remember? Not replace them. No one’s immune to bad choices.”

Not even Andra, who was perfect just the way she was.

Kaylen felt around inside herself, gathered up every bit of divine power into her hand, then crushed it into a powder. As the various planes dissolved from her view, she spread the power throughout each, letting it fall where it may. Someone might one day gather it up again, but for now it was too thinly spread to be of any use to anyone.

She felt the squish of the clouds beneath her feet and heard the heavy breathing of the terrified Nightingale.

“I’m just Kaylen,” she said. “That’s all the universe needs me to be.”

She felt an impact in her side and the clouds beneath her rose to meet her body. She landed comfortably in the fluff of the clouds with Nightingale embracing her.

“Kaylen,” Nightingale sobbed. “You can’t make yourself that big. Otherwise I can’t keep you in a jar.”

“It’s okay,” said Kaylen. “I’m back.”

Nightingale was crying. Kaylen tried to raise her hand to stroke Nightingale’s hair to comfort her, but her arm was pinned to her side in the elf’s powerful grip.

“I’m sorry I’m a creep. I’m sorry I followed you out here. I’m sorry I technically stole your stuff even though I was doing it to get it back to you. If you really don’t want to date me, I’ll leave you alone from now on. Just please never do that again. You can’t be anyone but you.”

“I’ll never do that again,” Kaylen promised. It wasn’t like she would get a chance, anyway. “And as for that other stuff, yeah, you probably shouldn’t have done it. But I’m okay. You were never anything worse than strange and a little annoying as far as I’m concerned. And since we’ve actually gotten to talk and stuff…”

She paused, realizing that she only understood this as it was coming out of her mouth. “...It turns out I like you too. You’re fun, and you match me in ways no one else ever has. And I know we don’t understand each other super well, but it feels like we’re both learning. So I want to date you, too.”

Nightingale squeezed tighter, enough to make Kaylen wish she’d kept some of that godly power to protect herself. She squealed with delight. “Really? You mean it? So, uh, do we kiss now or something? I mean, I hope that’s not too forward to ask. I just don’t really know how this works.”

Squirming down a little bit, Kaylen kissed Nightingale on the forehead. “There. We’ll start with that, okay?”

Nightingale nodded. “Okay.” She leaned up to kiss Kaylen’s cheek.

There was a sigh from somewhere nearby. Kaylen suddenly realized that the angel was still at her desk.

“This is going to be a pain to sort out.”

“What’s there to sort out?” Kaylen asked, still trapped by Nightingale’s grip. “There aren’t any gods any more.”

“There are still systems,” the angel said. “We just have to figure out how those systems are going to operate without gods. Especially since, it seems, my powers are now gone and I imagine those of every other angel are gone as well.”

The angel sighed again.

“I suppose the first order of business is to get the two of you out of here before you cause any more trouble. Is there anywhere I can drop you off?”