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“Of course!” Nezha said brightly. “The position of Shouhushen requires a delicate balance of action and discretion. Unguided revelations about the spiritual world to mundane humans are not only embarrassing, but potentially very dangerous.”
He pointed his finger at the couple. “Forget!”
A solid beam shot from his hand. It flew across the lawn and knocked the boy clean off his feet, sending him tumbling backward over the bench to the ground. The girl stared at the empty space he no longer occupied, and screamed.
I had to admit I was impressed by Nezha’s aim. But for all his precision, he was just as oblivious as Guan Yu.
“So . . .” Guanyin said to me as her competitors for the mandate gleefully chucked spells left and right, the cries of terrified people filling the air. “It felt like any muscle I moved would have made the situation worse.”
A forget spell the size of a grapefruit whizzed by my head, fluttering my hair.
“Sorry,” Quentin called out. “Trying to get in on this action.”
“Can we just go?” I said weakly. “Through the rift or whatever? I can only deal with so much. I don’t think I want to be on this plane of existence right now.”
Guanyin patted my shoulder. “Maybe that’s for the best.” She snapped her fingers. “Hey! Train’s leaving the station!”
The gods got their last few licks in with their technically harmless spells. The lawn was littered with slumbering people, like there’d been a gas leak. This was a catastrophic break in the masquerade that Heaven nominally tried to maintain.
“Is there a category for subtlety?” I muttered to the Great White Planet. “Because if there is, I hope you’re taking notes.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he said. “But yes, there is. Despite what you may think, I’m not oblivious to your champion’s talents.”
? ? ?
Guanyin led us into the pool area. Backtracking along Ao Guang’s route to Earth meant ignoring the chemical levels and jumping in.
“Wait,” I said, barring the entrance with my arm and causing a pileup behind me. “We shouldn’t be letting Erlang Shen near water.”
I couldn’t see him roll his eyes, but I knew he was doing it. “These wouldn’t be very good restraints if they let me use my godly powers,” he said. “Though the fact that our journey begins with my personal element means the Universe favors me as the eventual victor.”
The Great White Planet was actually writing that BS down in his notebook. “Seriously?” I yelled at him. “He gets points for a coincidence?”
“There are no coincidences when it comes to a Mandate Challenge,” the Great White Planet said. He tucked the notebook back into his robes. “And every little action counts. I have to go first so that I can judge your entries from the other side.” He smoothed down his robes and slid into the water feet first with nary a disturbance to the surface. As soon as he was completely under, he vanished like cotton candy.
I was starting to grow suspicious of our judge’s fairness, but no one else was bothered. “You heard the man,” Guanyin said. She smiled at me before diving in with the grace of a striking cormorant.
I couldn’t help but feel that prior to our little pep talk last night, the old Guanyin would have waited for the rest of us to go in front of her, shepherding each god through like she was loading a peewee hockey team into a minivan. New Guanyin led the way and didn’t wait for slowpokes. It was a subtle difference, but one that made me immensely happy.
“She’s going to get points deducted for that,” Erlang Shen commented. He seemed to know more about the mandate process than the rest of us, which only made my alarm bells ring louder. “It’s discourteous to push your way to the front of the—”
I smashed my palm into Erlang Shen’s face, shoving him into the pool so that he flopped in without dignity.
Quentin and Guan Yu chuckled. Nezha gave me a worried look and jumped in after Erlang Shen.
Guan Yu whapped Quentin hard in the solar plexus. “Splash check!” he roared. He leaped into the air, not toward the water, but the diving board. The springy plank bowed to the breaking point under his weight and propelled him skyward, reaching half the height of the surrounding buildings. At his apex, he curled into a cannonball and plummeted into the deep end.
The splash he made was like a depth charge. Quentin threw up a casual barrier spell to keep us dry as the water rained down. I was surprised there was any liquid left in the pool.
I expected Quentin to answer the challenge immediately with some flashy attempt to best Guan Yu, perhaps climbing the stairs to a nearby roof and cliff-diving in that way. But instead of following his friend, he paused.
We were alone, just the two of us. It was a good opportunity to talk about whatever we wanted.
“I’m about to be the first human being to visit a different dimension,” I said. “I feel like this is a momentous occasion. I’m like an astronaut.”
Apparently what I wanted was to joke around like normal. It felt like ages since we’d spoken without being mad. My mother had gone to the hospital less than a week ago. Distance from Quentin had messed up my sense of time.
He grimaced. “Yeah, but astronauts don’t have to fight the living embodiment of thei
