When I got up and made an excuse to retreat to the master bedroom for a few minutes, Scott followed behind. Of course, I didn't even realise he was there until after I'd slumped down onto the bed, ready to cry the stress away.

“Kaia,” he said, idly rapping a knuckle on the doorframe. “I'm so sorry. If I'd known they'd be like that…”

I gave him a wobbly, half-hearted smile. “It's okay, dude. I figured that… well… shit, I didn't think it'd go that badly.”

“I just don't understand why they care so much,” he said, waving his arms in exasperation. “Like, you told them, and it's not like the secret actually hurt anyone. It's the stupidest thing to get upset about.”

“I mean… it's not like people’s feelings are rational at the best of times,” I shrugged weakly. “If I can be scared to tell y’all over made up what-if bullshit, then I think it's probably reasonable to cut them some slack here.”

“Nah, fuck that,” he said vehemently. “Dude— uh, gurl, there was nothing irrational about your fears, because those blown bulbs downstairs just proved you right!”

I laughed, I couldn't help it. “Okay, fair point.”

He nodded emphatically, then kicked the doorway and stood up straight. “Actually, that's a W point I just came up with. Wait here.”

He turned and strode back towards the stairs. A part of me panicked, wondering what he was about to do, but I was just too tired, so I flopped backwards into the bed instead.

There was a commotion downstairs a few moments later, and during that time April slipped into the room. “There you are. How are you doing?”

“Exhausted,” I said softly. “We cleared the library dungeon today, did you hear?”

She gave me a smile and crossed to sit on the edge of the bed. “I heard. We’d just gotten a bunch of those books delivered when Scott showed up.”

“Good, that makes it all worth it,” I said, and closed my eyes.

 

When I woke up, April was still there, but she'd propped herself up on the other side of the bed, where she was currently softly snoring. A blanket was over me, but the chill of the unnatural winter had seeped in regardless. I shivered and wriggled up to sit beside my friend and slipped under the comforter. The sheets were ice cold, and I almost squealed in surprise. Gah! Fuck this stupid winter!

Rather than spend precious body heat on warming the bed up, I folded the comforter over April and took the blanket I'd woken up under as I cautiously went downstairs.

My friends were still there, although Scott, Alec, and Immie were all asleep. They'd managed to start a fire in the hearth, which I'd honestly thought was decorative. I guess not.

Camillo and Ollie were huddled close to the fire, quietly murmuring away. I cleared my throat as quietly as I could to alert them, and when they didn't immediately tell me to leave, I shuffled over to sit beside Ollie.

“Hi,” I said, giving them a hopeful smile. “I guess I fell asleep. Had a long day.”

“Yeah,” Camillo said neutrally.

Ollie nodded thoughtfully as she wrapped her own blanket tighter around herself. “True. Silver, who I guess is you now, was in the party that hit the library. What was it like?”

I thought for a second about what I wanted to say, but in the end I just decided it'd be best if I was honest.

“It was easy,” I said sheepishly. “The monsters felt… weak, almost like it was designed as a beginner dungeon. With the armour that the worksh— that we made, I didn't even get hurt.”

“Um…” said Camillo awkwardly. “You're… like, Silver is a tank, right?”

“I am, but not like you'd expect from games,” I agreed. “I have a weakening aura ability that I use as a taunt, but I'm not actually sure if it is a taunt, you know? Other than that, I grab and keep aggro by being… unignorable.”

Ollie nodded and a small grin split her lips. “Yeah. That's what happens when Alec and I do it, too. Get in their faces and yell so they gotta deal with you first.”

“What are your stats?” Camillo asked curiously. “Are you fully geared to tank, or…”

I thought for a moment, bringing up my stats. “Six Toughness, five Strength. In angel form, that goes up to seven and six respectively.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Ollie muttered, staring at me with wide eyes.

Camillo gave a frustrated, bordering on angry sigh. “Man, if you'd told us the truth from the start we could've been working together. You'd probably be even higher, and you're already crazy high. We'd be a lot more potent, too.”

I huddled tighter into my blanket and avoided looking at him. “I know. I'm sorry.”

“I'm still blown away that you're Silver,” Ollie said, then laughed quietly and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “You're so baby now, it's crazy that you grow like two feet when you transform.”

“Yeah…” I said, giving her a tentative smile. Then I realised something, and I asked, “Should I do it now? Maybe I have more body heat when I'm Silver.”

“Oh fuck, I don't know,” Ollie said nervously. “I'm not sure I could handle that, emotionally.”

I wilted and turned my attention back to the fire. “Ah, no problem. Sorry.”

She giggled and nudged me with her shoulder. “Nah, I mean… like I'm straight, but fuck does that girl… uh… you? When you're Silver, she's… you test me. You really test me. Tall, buff, statuesque, and tough? Yeah, I'm not sure I can deal, you know?”

“Ollie's been fangirling over Silver since the day the Storm arrived,” Camillo chuckled. “I was a bit star struck too, I mean—”

He trailed off and stared at me, eyes widening. “I just realised, that holy angelic carnage during the battle of the gymnasium, the flying and ripping and smashing, that was you. I mean, you just told us that, obviously, but that was you. Little, meek Kaia. Although, not so meek these days. I guess it's hard to be meek when you're moonlighting as an old testament angel.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling embarrassed, or even bashful. “Part of the reason I refer to my two bodies as separate sometimes is that the physical differences cause me to act differently. Like, I'm way more nimble as Kaia, my fingers especially so, while Silver can probably put her hand through a brick wall with a casual punch. It's weird because the stat bump when I'm an angel isn't that much of a difference anymore… I don't know.”

“Huh,” Cam said, then to my surprise, he gave me a genuine smile. “That makes sense. I can see how you—the Kaia we know—would act Silver if you had a huge confidence boost and a couple thousand folks who look at you as their saviour.”

I sighed. “Not Pastor Thomas, though.”

“Pastor Thomas is a fuckwit,” Cam and Ollie both said in unison. The harmonising had them laughing as they glanced at one another.

“He really is,” I said, relaxing somewhat. They were, it seemed, still my friends even if they were angry.

We sat in companionable silence for a minute or two, until Ollie gave me the side eye.

“What?” I asked.

She quickly looked back to the fire, like the world's most suspicious troublemaker. “Nothing.”

Frowning, I poked her thigh through the blanket. “Tell me.”

She made a grumbling noise and wiggled further into her blanket.

I decided just to wait and see if she'd spill or not. Another minute passed, then another, then she sighed theatrically. “Can you… you know, can you…”

“I… don't think I do know? What do you want?” I asked, confused and a little alarmed now.

“Can you transform?” She asked, the words rushing out of her all in a tumble. “I want to see…”

Okay… I was confused. “Sure…”

I did as she asked, shifting into Silver right there. Suddenly there was a whole lot less space between us, and even sitting down I had a couple of inches on her.

“There, how's that?” I said with a self conscious smile.

Just like when I first transformed, she was staring at me with wide, awestruck eyes. “How are you so pretty and handsome at the same time?”

“I uh, I was told that Cynath, my patron deity, she's a goddess of uh, basically fucking and fighting.” I said, embarrassed. “So her angels have to be ready for both, I guess?”

Camillo snapped his fingers a couple times. “Wait, she was uh… that Babylonian goddess, right?”

“Ishtar, but I don't know if she was Babylonian specifically,” I told him.

I was known as Ishtar to the Babylonians and Assyrians, or Inanna to the Sumerians before them, my goddess helpfully provided in my head. After my… tussle with my sister and return from death… I had a bit of a bloodthirsty streak. Ended up tricking my sister into my place when I no longer wanted my job. She'd just lost hell to that upstart Hades anyway, she needed the job.

“Uh, Inanna to the Sumerians, Ishtar to the Babylonians and Assyrians… apparently,” I said, when I focused back on my friends. Hold on, return from death? Bloodthirsty streak?

“So then…” Cam looked uncomfortable. “Does that mean all that stuff I read in AP history was… Like, did she really invade hell, then get tricked and killed by her sister, and then as a dead god, built an army of demons and reinvaded her way back to Earth? Because that shit is wild.”

“You invaded hell?” I asked mentally, alarmed. “Then made an army of demons and invaded Earth? What the heck?”

I had my reasons.

Shaking my head, I looked at Cam. “She’s being cagey and pouty. What do the history textbooks say?”

My friend looked alarmed, but he had a little think, then said, “Okay so according to the Sumerians, she was the goddess of sex, beauty, law, and politics. Then when she was Ishtar, she got the war aspect too. The invasion of hell isn’t actually an invasion in a lot of versions of the myth, and it’s really ambiguous as to why she invaded—” My bitch of a sister killed her husband, my friend. “—hell, but that was where her sister reigned. She got to the gates of hell, and something happened, she got tricked or lost a duel, or—” She bribed one of my angels to stab me in the back. Everything else is propaganda. “—something. Then her spirit got imprisoned there in hell.”

And by the stars was that an ordeal. She stripped me naked and kept me on display. I got my revenge, though.

I was struggling to keep a straight face while Cynath added her commentary in my head. “What happened after that?”

“One of her godly allies sent… something down? It’s unclear, but their name was like, Asu-something? Anyway—” Ah, Asu-shu-namir, they were a hell of an angel, and a non-binary icon too. “—That person secretly healed her. While she was down there, she saw her husband up on Earth living it up without her—” That son of a whore was cheating on me with five other women! While I was in prison!

I frowned and thought to her, “That’s a shitty insult. We stan sex workers here Cynath.”

Void, yes. My mistake, they are, and were, some of my biggest supporters. Blame the ancient patriarchy for that one. The language of the time was awfully sexist.

“—So she either invaded Earth or just walked out of hell and threw her husband down to hell in her place.”

“Wait, so where do the demons come in?” I asked aloud, confused.

“It’s super murky,” Cam shrugged.

Besides the one traitor, my angels were loyal, but in their efforts to free me they were corrupted by their time in hell. They looked a little… different when we returned. It was absolutely an invasion, too. I did not throw, either, I put a khopesh through his neck and sent him to hell the old fashioned way.

God damn, I knew my goddess was old-school, but this was… intense.

“There’s also a bunch of later myths about how she started taking the other god’s domains by force, but that’s all a bit murky too. Everything we know about that era, including religion, is extra spotty. Sorry, I got a little carried away info-dumping there,” he said, growing sheepish.

“I see,” I said, then grinned ruefully. “Well, judging by what the peanut gallery has been saying in my head… take the blood-thirstiest interpretation of those myths and that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“Really?” Cam asked, concerned. “Because that’s pretty blood-thirsty.”

“She apparently had good reasons,” I shrugged. “But she also has a temper.”

I do not.

“She’s being pouty again,” I giggled, rolling my eyes.

Ollie and Cam exchanged glances, then as one, they grinned at me.

“Yeah, seeing you just relaxing here, I’m surprised we didn’t realise who you really were,” Camillo said.

Oh no. The lump, it was in my throat again. “I’m sorry.” Goddess, I was stuck on repeat.

Their smiles mellowed, and Camillo let out a long sigh, then stared thoughtfully into his hand. “You’re good, Kaia. I guess… I don’t know. Just don’t do something stupid like that again, yeah?”

“I won’t.” I promised emphatically.

Ollie snorted. “Sure thing, princess. I totally think your scatterbrained ass will be able to keep that promise. Now, I’ve been wondering about how much heat that body makes…”

Suddenly, my very tiny, stocky little friend was wrapping her arms around my waist in a tight hug. To say I went rigid would be an understatement! Ah! Ollie was being… weird!

“Oh, yup, that’s warm.” Then she touched a frigid hand to my neck, and I squealed. Nevermind, this wasn’t weird! It was perfectly in character, she was being a little shit!

Oh, and so much for having a quiet conversation. Someone groaned from nearby. Oops.