Chapter Thirty-Three
Odin's conclusion caused an uproar. I just stared at him through it, horror shivering down my spine.
I had refused to bind myself to the machine, but if it came down to doing that or losing my husbands to the fucking Nothing (I don't care what they said, it sounded like the same Nothing to me), I'd do it.
Odin must have seen it in my eyes, because he pulled me into an embrace.
“All is not lost yet, my love,” Odin whispered in my ear.
“Shut up!” Hades roared.
The room went quiet.
“It is not erasing us,” Hades went on. “Some places are vanishing while others are restructuring themselves. Souls are arriving half-formed; some get lost halfway. This is far more than an erasure. Even if our territories change, we will still survive.”
“But you don't know that for certain.” Blue, with his arm around his wife, stared down Hades.
“It's not breaking reality anymore,” I said. “It's replacing it.”
That sent a new wave of fear through the room, silencing even Hades.
“It is a machine!” A blast of light got everyone's attention.
I turned to see Amaterasu standing upon her chair, staring down the other gods.
“A machine,” she repeated. “We are gods! Have you forgotten that? Or have you gone soft in your centuries of dominion? This is war! Our authority is being challenged. Our territories are being threatened. This will not stand. We must use our wits, which are far superior to those of any machine, even a magical one. We use our centuries of experience and collected wisdom to figure out a way to destroy it!”
The room erupted in roars of approval and applause.
As they cheered, Amaterasu climbed down, and I watched her.
We had found the machine by following the bond between her relics.
There was something there. What? Connection.
Magical bonds. We'd gone this route before, and it had destroyed Amy's mirror.
But maybe there was another way to use those bonds.
“We have the machine,” I murmured. “We don't have to search for it. It’s ours.”
“What's that, La-la?” Re asked.
“We have the machine,” I said louder. “Half the battle is won. We’ve captured Agwusi and have the machine. Now, we just need to destroy it, and I think the way to do that is through your links to your relics.”
“But we can't remove them from the machine without causing it to destabilize,” Shango grumbled.
“You don't have to remove them.” I leaned on the table. “You just have to connect with them.”
“And then what?” Hephaestus asked.
Odin looked at me, his expression going grim. “And then we destroy them. We destroy them inside the machine. We connect to our relics and destroy them together, all at once, killing it before it can malfunction.”
Again, the room exploded into angry voices. We let it go on for a few moments longer, and then I nodded at Odin.
Odin pounded a fist onto the table. “That is enough! We are here to discuss options, and we can't do that by shouting at each other.”
“I will not destroy my cloak!” Freya shouted, the Valkyries nodding and shaking their fists in agreement.
“Then you fade to nothing. Or even worse—to irrelevance!” Odin roared.
Freya took a step back.
“And you women!” Odin pointed at his shield maidens. “You owe me fealty, not Freya! Remember who you serve.”
The women bowed their heads, murmuring, “Allfather.”
“All right, all right.” I laid a hand on Odin's shoulder. “Let's not forget who the enemy is.” I looked around at the gods whose relics were in the machine. “I know how much it is to ask that you destroy your own relics. But Odin is right. It is that, or we lose everything.”
“We need to understand this machine before we act,” Athena, standing beside Hephaestus, said.
“I understand it, Athena,” I vowed. “And I think this is our only chance.”
“I already lost my mirror, and you don't see me weeping about it,” Amaterasu said. “God-up, you cowards.”
“My axe,” Shango whispered like a child. “It's everything to me.”
“You can form a new one,” Odin said. “You know it intimately.”
“It won't be the same.”
“No, but you will have an axe and your life,” Odin added.
Shango grimaced and nodded.
One by one, the gods agreed to destroy the machine in the only way we could—by slipping in through the back door.