I blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "Recover Susanos' soul jar and proceed to resurrect the Witch--" Nyx started to speak.

  "Yeah, I got that part," I said, interrupting her. I'd gotten really casual about interrupting deities these days. Blame killing four of them. "It's more the fact that is such a blindingly terrible idea that I'm having difficulty processing it."

  "You mean a terrible idea like teaming up with her and her collection of undead monsters to fight Veles?" Ania asked.

  I paused. "Okay, that actually isn't hypocrisy. It's me having learned from my mistakes."

  "Do you?" Jon asked. "Because I'm still seeing a lot of allying with objectively terrible people because you think there's good in everyone. I mean, take me for instance."

  "It's kinda worked so far!" I lamented, unwittingly insulting everyone here. "I just have limits here."

  "I never thought I'd say this," Agata said, taking a deep breath. "But I agree with Aaron."

  "Hey!" I snapped.

  Agata ignored me. "Susanos already took her shot at Veles and failed miserably."

  "I wouldn't say that," Rachel said, rubbing the scars on her face. "Admittedly, it was entirely because Aaron managed to think of a way to turn it around. Even then, I still took a bit of nuke to the face. That hurt!"

  "You poor thing," Nyx said, taking a condescending tone. "It is a true tragedy for a goddess of love to be less than perfect."

  "Yes, she's clearly she's become unfuckable," Jon said, heavily sarcasm. "It's like ladies who put on a little weight. Oh, wow, you have bigger--"

  "Shut up, Jon," Rachel said.

  "Got it," Jon said, making finger guns to her and showing that he and Rachel might stand the test of time.

  "We need all the help we can get," Nyx continued to explain her incredibly reckless plan. "The power balance would be different now. Before, you were directly under her thumb. Now, you would be the one in charge and have all the empowered associates beside you able to reign her in."

  "That is a big if," Rachel said. "Besides, we haven't exactly seen much tactical genius from her. It turned out the world's most powerful sorceress turned out to be motivated by little more than petty spite. It blinded her to any possibilities other than a direct assault that got our associates killed."

  "Unless," Jon said, pointing at Agata then Rachel. "Hear me out, unless, that was her plan all along!"

  Everyone stared at Jon, skeptically.

  "What?" Jon asked. "It's possible."

  I took a deep breath. "I've probably lost the trust of a lot of people here--"

  "Don't wallow in self-pity, Aaron," Ania said. "It's deeply unattractive. I haven't seen you in six months and want to tear your clothes off after this meeting."

  "Right," I said, doing an immediate course correction. "Well, speaking as the unofficial leader of our merry band of misfits, I think we don't have time to go searching the universe for Susanos' soul jar. That's assuming it even exists and she's not dead, dead."

  "Your Marks of the Champion didn't register her as dying," Rachel pointed out. "That's pretty good evidence she's still alive. Well, unalive."

  I glared at Rachel, not appreciating her backing that argument up. "Thanks, Rachel."

  "I'm a helper!" She said, cheerfully.

  "We know where her soul jar is," Nyx said, pausing. "Like forging the Marks of the Champion into a weapon to kill Veles, we don't have to go anywhere. All the equipment for resurrecting Suanos is right here."

  I blinked. "It is?"

  "It is?" Jon added.

  Even Rachel looked surprised.

  "Yes," Nyx said, pointing at Jon. "Susanos' soul jar has been hidden in Jon."

  "Dum, dum, dum!" Bloodstorm said before pausing. "Okay, I just said that because I was sick of not contributing anything to the conversation."

  Agata patted him on the shoulder. "There, there."

  "Huh," Jon said, blinking. "I always knew I had a feminine side. I just assumed she was a lesbian."

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  "Yeah, well, you try to keep pace at this snark fest," Jon said. "Not every one of my cracks is going to be a banger."

  "That would imply any of them are," Ania replied. "Jon is the soul jar for Susanos?"

  "Yes," Nyx replied. "I can detect it."

  "I didn't," Rachel said. "I've also been very close to Jon."

  "Uh huh," I said.

  "Very, very close," Rachel said, suggestively. "If you know what I mean."

  "We know," Ania muttered, sarcastically.

  "Hint, hint," Rachel said, winking.

  "Oh for fuck's sake," Ania muttered. "Could you double check, Rachel?"

  "Okay, but I'm not gonna..." Rachel said, trailing off as she grabbed Jon's head and stared at him. "Hmm."

  "What do you mean, Hmm?" Jon asked, looking very comfortable.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I mean hmm," Rachel replied. "Okay, yeah, Nyx is right."

  "What?" Jon asked, shocked.

  "Yeah, you've got her soul in you," Rachel said. "The Mark of the Champion influence is keeping you from being possessed, though."

  "Oh, thank you," Jon said, taking a deep breath. "I wasn't really taking the six month old twenty year old seriously."

  "Jon please don't make that weirder," I replied.

  "I'm not sure it can be made weirder and I'm dating Rachel," Jon said. "Okay, I may have shot myself in the foot with that one."

  "Believe me, spending twenty years away from my sister was difficult," Agata said, speaking in a tone that suggested she wasn't entirely telling the truth. "I have seen wonders you would not believe."

  "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannh?user Gate," I said, making fun of her. "Okay, we'll definitely put it on the list to get Susanos out of Jon. I don't want her possessing him and making him a walking meat puppet at an inconvenient time. Two dragons are better than one, especially when one of those dragons knows kung fu."

  "Woah," Jon said, clearly uncomfortable. It seemed to be sinking in just how dangerous this might be. "Wait, did she think I was going to survive the battle with Veles? Is that why she made me a soul jar?"

  "She probably had a spell ready to teleport you away if I didn't," Rachel replied. "Either way, we can provide a corpse for her to move her spirit and carry out the ritual to resurrect Susanos."

  "Or exorcise him," Joan said, interjecting. "That way we have one less nightmarish evil sorceress in the world and don't have to kill Jon like you're all thinking we should."

  I was appalled. "What? No one is thinking about killing Jon!"

  Everyone but Rachel, Joan, Jon, and Nyx looked away from me.

  "Oh come on!" I said, upset on my friends’ behalf.

  "I don't want to kill him but I kind of think he's intruding on my thing as the dragon in the group," Sparky said.

  "Et tu Sparky?" Jon said, looking at him.

  "Don't be cursing at me in no weird Imperial witchcraft language," Sparky said, pointing at Jon. "That's what Joan speaks when she's casting her spells."

  "It's Latin and it's what I use for prayers," Joan said.

  "Exactly!" Sparky said.

  I rubbed my temples and took a second to clear my head. "Okay, this is something I need to think about."

  "Just how much time do I have before I become a meat puppet?" Jon asked. "I'd like to know if we're talking days, weeks, months, or we should pull this thing out of me now. I'm imagining the dinner scene from Alien except it's Monica Belluci bursting out of my chest. Which, contrary to what you might think, isn't something I'd be into."

  I looked to Nyx. "Uh, any ideas."

  "We have time," Nyx said. "Usually, it takes at least three days for a resurrection to occur with a death lord. Susanos is different, though. The fact she didn't automatically seize control over his body and send consume his soul is a good sign."

  "Nothing about that sentence was reassuring," Jon said.

  I took a deep breath and looked at Ania. "I think we should discuss this in private."

  "Before sex or after?" Ania asked.

  Yeah, that was an interesting element of my girlfriend. She was very clear about when and how she wanted to be intimate. Apparently, killing was a thing that got her hot and bothered. I'd be terrified if I wasn't so turned on.

  "Before," I said, reluctantly.

  Ania muttered something unpleasant under her breath. "Fine. But I have a room all set up."

  "I'd rather not have our reunion be in a place that will give us hepatitis," I said, noting this place reminded me of the kind of place the Punisher would fight dirty cops in.

  "Cast some cleaning spells then," Ania said. "Besides, we've got some modifications here that I think you'll be impressed by."

  I wasn't sure what she meant by and tried to figure out how Veles hadn't noticed his worst enemies based here. Maybe the fact that the Zoryas were gods really was the great equalizer. Also, disturbingly, there was the possibility that Veles had just left them alone until I was here. Maybe that was just my natural pessimism, but every step forward seemed to be one that came with additional disasters.

  "So where can we speak in private?" I asked, uncomfortable with everyone else here despite most of them being literal family to me now.

  Or, at least, soon would be.

  "Down here," Ania gestured to doorway that opened to a set of steps. I followed her inside and found that it led to a set of steam tunnels. Except it wasn't just steam piping but a lot of weird electrical wiring and tubes that were channeling energies I could feel from a foot away.

  "Huh, interesting," I said.

  "Veles has rebuilt most of the city after it was destroyed," Ania replied. "A lot of the upgrades are to make his magitech serviceable here on Earth. I think it's whatever his big plan is. No matter what I may think of Susanos personally, destroying his UMC field was a big blow to his efforts."

  "It wasn't guarded," I said, frowning. "That still bothers me."

  "The people of Earth think the UMCs are keeping the undead at bay," Ania replied. "The deathrot plague has shown up in many parts of this world. We've been trying to help people with it but the fact Veles has intelligent wights working for him make it difficult. I thought that might be the vector he's going to use to destroy your world but there's a problem with that."

  "Which is?" I asked, wondering just how many people of my planet he'd killed while I was off playing hero. It was a stupid thing to feel guilty for because if I'd been here, I certainly wouldn't have been heroically saving the day. No, I would have probably been just another victim.

  Or worse.

  As an employee of Epic DungoneeringTM, I might have ended up brainwashed or turned into a monster myself. There might have been a time I would have eagerly signed up to learn real magic, regardless of the source. Who knew what kind of contract I would have signed without reading it. Actually, I knew because that was how I'd ended up on Mokosh in the first place.

  "If Veles wanted to wipe out your world then he probably could have done it by now," Ania said, taking a deep breath. "No offense but they are some of the stupidest, most selfish, backstabbing pieces of shit I've found outside of the Ledzianan nobility."

  "You're Ledzianan nobility," I said, before I could stop myself. I also didn't comment on the fact that her impression of my world was probably being influenced by the fact she was in Washington DC. Still, I agreed with her. We were missing something about Veles’ overall plan.

  "Yes, but my backstabbing is literal," Ania said. "What did you want to talk about?"

  I kissed her. "I wanted to say how much I've missed you, how much I hated being apart, and how it was the biggest mistake of my life to go with Susanos."

  "And yet you don't want to have sex now," Ania said, pressing up against me.

  I sighed. "There's a few other things we have to cover."

  "I prefer uncover," Ania said, purring.

  I rolled my eyes. "Just bear with me a few more minutes."

  Ania sighed. "Fine, tell me why we have to free Susanos and give her a new body."

  "What?" I asked, not having intended to do that at all.

  "You're you, Aaron," Ania said, pulling away. "No one is beyond redemption. The best way to defeat an enemy is to turn them into a friend. Alliances are better than rivalries. If we all just care enough, the world will become a giant flowerpot."

  I blinked. "That doesn't sound like me."

  "Really? Because I've been listening to this bullshit for a year," Ania said. "It's fine, I agree with you."

  "You do?" I asked.

  "Yes," Ania said. "Your plan to take out Veles by turning his bitch whore wife into a weapon against him wasn't terrible. I mean, it was, because you weren't the one doing the strategizing. If we can resurrect her, I mean fully alive, then he won't have as much power over her as before. She'll be a tank, that's one of the machines I learned about here, and we can have her help bring down Veles' power. We can also bring her back with a geas by combining all of our magical strength to bind her."

  "Uh huh," I said.

  "That's what you were going to say, right?" Ania asked.

  "No, I was going to say we should destroy her because she got my cousin and Maelor killed," I replied. "Your mother too."

  I didn't want to bring up Garland.

  "Oh," Ania said, "Well, that works too."

  "No, no, you persuaded me," I said. "It's clearly a good idea to recruit Sauron to fight Morgoth. I'm sure she'll appreciate the mercy we showed us and not turn on us like Gollum."

  Ania closed her eyes. "I watched the movies. I know what that means."

  "We'll make the god killing blade or whatever Nyx has plans," I said. "I'm sorry your sister lived twenty years without you."

  Ania paused. "Me too. She's almost a stranger now. I worry the gods may have done something to her and Bloodstorm. It's just hard to tell what's the distance of time and her natural haughtiness. I'm glad I didn't have to live that time without you, though."

  I smiled. "That brings me to what I wanted to ask you."

  "What?" Ania asked.

  I took her hands in mine. "Can we get married now?"