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“Tsukuyomi,” Herald said. “The god of the moon.”
“Wait,” Sterling snarled. “I thought we were fighting members of the Midnight Convocation. Nobody said anything about a damn sun goddess.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” I said. “But this is the deal. We bring them down, or this Tsukuyomi character takes my head.”
“These were the rules set out by Tsukuyomi
from the very beginning,” Nyx said, as if she’d heard us talking. “As Dustin Graves was permitted to bring allies of his selection to battle, so is the moon god free to choose his fellow combatants. In this case, his siblings.”
“How kind of you to explain,” Tsukuyomi called out across the field, beaming. “Dustin Graves. I know you have met both my wife and my brother.”
What the – wait, did he say wife?
“I thought she was your sister,” Sterling yelled back.
Amaterasu wore the same enormous raiment she preferred to don for battle, the thing that was half-kimono and half-battle armor. The ambient fire coating her like a mantle burned even brighter as she frowned.
“Listen,” she said, her arms folded. “It was a different time.” She nodded at me, speaking again with more than a hint of haughtiness. “Well met, shadow beast. I see that you’ve brought your sorcerer friend once more. The frostbringer.”
“I’d say something nice and polite,” Herald said, his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone, “but I know you guys are just going to be snippy with me again.” He waved limply at Susanoo. “Hey, man. Nice to see you again, I guess.”
Susanoo gave a little salute, the light of the full moon reflecting in his sunglasses, his hair swept up and dyed electric blue. “Sup,” he said, grinning. He wore an outfit very similar to the one he had on when we first met: a leather vest with no shirt underneath, tight jeans, and steel-toed boots.
“I like his sense of style,” Sterling said, leaning towards me.
“I figured as much.” I reached over my shoulder, loosening the flap of my backpack. “You two can swap style tips if we survive this.”
Vanitas floated out of his pocket dimension, and in my mind he made a strange sucking sound, something like a gasp. “Ooh. Three gods? Really? This is going to hurt for all of you.”
“You’re getting better at this understatement of the century thing,” I thought to him. “Worse? Yeah. I meant worse.”
“On the plus side,” Vanitas said, “I’m three times as likely to taste some god blood tonight. This should be interesting.”
“When the hell did you get so bloodthirsty? And I mean the question in the most literal way possible.”
Vanitas hovered for a moment, his garnets dim as he thought in silence. “I don’t know what you mean.” He slid his sword out of his scabbard, and Vanitas’s two halves flanked me, my very own verdigris security detail.
“So the shadow beast unsheathes his blade,” Amaterasu said. “See, brothers, how shameless he is about exposing the taint of the Old Ones in the face of our divinity.”
“Yeah, about that,” I shouted. “Maybe we should be focusing less on this silly trial and more on stopping the Eldest, huh?”
“Nothing silly about this,” Tsukuyomi said, his smile so friendly that I could almost believe he meant me no harm. “This banter is greatly amusing, shadow beast. But you have bared your metal, and so we must do the same.”
The three gods extended their hands to their sides, each at the exact same angle, like three copies of the same silhouette. They snapped their wrists, and three swords flashed from out of the darkness, appearing in their hands, one wreathed in fire, another in lightning, and the last in the alluring glow of moonlight.
I curled my fingers, readying a steadily burning ball of flame in the palm of my hand. Beside me, Herald grunted under his breath, then flicked his wrist, producing a sleek, razor-sharp sword of his own, one formed out of a huge sliver of pure ice.
Sterling bared his teeth and hissed, his eyes watching Amaterasu’s every move with the intensity of lasers. Vanitas’s garnets glimmered in the moonlight, but he stayed at my side, watching, waiting. Further down the line, the sound of bones snapping and cracking interspersed with Gil’s groans and cries of agony: the transformation was beginning.
And midnight had come.
Nyx raised her hand above her head, the Crown of Stars appearing in her palm for the briefest moment, then vanishing once more to rejoin the twinkling constellations above us.
“Brothers and sisters of the Midnight Convocation: so begins the battle for the destiny of one Dustin Graves.” She looked to either side from her perch atop the cairn. “To the death, then.”
I swear I could hear the witnessing stars singing, whispering madly in the corners of my mind. Murderer, they called me. God-slayer. Sure. I could live with that.
Nyx dropped her hand.
