Mare Frigoris

TIMELINE: AUGUST 19, 2017. TWO DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

They walk through the city as the sun rises, streets shading into shadowed view around them, early-morning inhabitants beginning to stir and leave their homes for the duties of their day. None of the three speaks as they walk, the glitter around them decreasing steadily as they step down and allow their mortal halves to take over.

(Not Artemis. While her glitter decreases as it should, Anna is no more present than she ever is, than she's been since they were gawky teens together. As she walks, Artemis wonders whether she should have asked more questions about that, raised more alarms—"Artemis never steps fully down when she's on the hunt" had been a convenient excuse in its day, but she's never truly believed it, has she? There's always been the little question of what, exactly, Artemis considers a hunt, as she's been unable to step down even when doing things as simple as looking for a certain kind of cereal at the grocery store. Anything can be a hunt, if you define the term broadly enough.

It makes her feel sort of slimy inside, like she's been unknowingly complicit in the oppression of a person who should have been her partner—even if Anna's few minutes of ascension made it quite clear that she was never looking for a partner, would never have been able to find a peaceful accord with Artemis. Still, that's a conflict they should have been allowed to have for themselves, in their own time, not had dictated for them by alchemists.)

Judy watches the rising mist of morning as it clears from the streets, and wonders how she could have been so foolish, how she could have missed the way Diana removed herself from the local community, how she could have overlooked the signs. She doesn't know what they were, even now, but she's certain they existed, that there was some indicator Diana might be planning to turn against her own kind. It shouldn't have taken a corpse and a stranger to make those connections. Aske should still be alive, and the fact that she isn't is her own fault. Or Chang'e's. The temptation to push the blame off onto her other half is strong; Chang'e interacted with Diana more than Judy ever did with Professor Williams. Maybe if she'd been an art major, that ratio would have been reversed. Maybe she would have noticed something, before it was too late.

Maybe.

David walks in refreshing simplicity compared to the others. He is angry, for his friend's sake, and for his own; he and Eliza might never have been anything more than friends, but they were good friends in the time they had, and he feels they would have stayed good friends, even if she'd turned him down. They had a whole future together, whether romantic or platonic, and these alchemists stole it from them. If Diana helped them, as he genuinely believes she did, she can be a target for his anger. She may be a more powerful and popular goddess than he is a god, but he has Chang'e and Artemis on his side, and he's willing to believe they can take her down together. His anger is a clean, straightforward thing, and it burns all the stronger for that simplicity.

By the time they reach the final approach to campus, the Telegraph Avenue street vendors are out and setting up their carts, positioning their wares to shine and sparkle in the morning sun. They begin to call out to the trio, to wave them over to gawk and appreciate, but they stop before the final invitations can be uttered. Street vendors are, by and large, a canny lot, with finely tuned instincts for danger. They have to be, to survive their chosen callings. Each and every one of them looks at the group as they walk with solemn unity toward campus, and they let them pass.

By the time the first students are arriving on campus to begin their days, the trio has reached the art building. They approach in a line, heading for the rear door, as if they fear their quarry might make an impressively coincidental escape if they come via the front. Artemis falls back, letting Judy take the lead.

Judy strides up the steps and through the door as if she does this every day, as if this were her department and place in the ebb and flow of college life. David and Artemis are close behind. Down the hall she storms, until she reaches the half-ajar door of Professor Williams's office.

She does pause then, to knock. The rules and rituals of school are so deeply engrained in her that anything else would be unthinkable, even if she feels foolish the moment she does so. They'll be going in whether they're invited or not.

But then, they don't want to confront her with a student in the room. Knocking lets them verify that she's alone. Judy knocks, and then they wait, all silent, to hear the call to battle.

"Come in," calls Professor Williams.

Judy pushes the door fully open and steps through, watching the older woman carefully. She's a good actress, is Professor Williams, but not quite good enough to conceal the slight thinning of her lips, the narrowing of her eyes, as she sees Judy.

Judy smiles with all the saccharine sweetness she's learned from an adulthood spent in Academia, dodging the sexist assumptions of old white men who think they're doing her a favor by seeing her as a delivery system for tits and ass rather than a racial stereotype. "Hello, Professor Williams," she says, every inch the respectful graduate student. "I just wanted to let you know that last night's passage went perfectly as scheduled, and Losna is safely home in her dorm room. I was a little surprised not to find you waiting for the hand-off."

It's a calculated guess: the gate originally opened underground, in what can only be described as enemy territory. If Diana went to wait for them there, without being intercepted or fleeing from the dead auf in the hall, she was openly admitting to being on the side of the alchemists. But given that Judy has no panicked texts about arriving at the clocktower to find the gate missing and the key missing with it, she's reasonably sure Diana simply didn't show.

"Did it, now?" asks Professor Williams. The tension around her eyes is only getting worse. Whatever she agreed to do for the alchemists, she clearly didn't expect to be required to deal with the consequences.

Gotcha,thinks Judy, and there's no triumph in it, only regretful recognition that she's never known this woman, not really, not the way she should have. "Have you met Losna, by the way? It feels like I've been falling down in my duty to introduce you to our newcomers. She's very eager to be helpful, and she has lots of good ideas about how we can move the pantheon into the modern era."

"I… No, I haven't met Losna yet. I keep meaning to, but…" Professor Williams waves her hand vaguely. "You know how the time slips away from us."

"I certainly do," says Judy. "Why, it seems like just yesterday I was the new kid on campus, and you were already the senior Lunar, taking care of all us juniors. That's something I always respected about you. The way you genuinely cared about our well-being."

Professor Williams is looking more uncomfortable by the second. "I know my duty as senior Lunar in the area," she says. "You'll have to do it yourself, one day, I'm sure."

"After I graduate and move on, I hope. I would never want to replace you." Judy turns to the door. "Losna! Professor Williams is ready to meet you now!"

"Awesome!" In bounds Artemis, eyes once more the untroubled, deeply layered blue of the sea near Tuscany, an expression of almost-frantic eagerness on her face. "Professor Williams, it's a genuine honor to meet you, I've heard so much about you, and you're not buying a word of this, are you?"

Professor Williams is no longer seated behind her desk. Professor Williams is on her feet, back to the wall, staring at Artemis like she's just seen her worst nightmare entering her office. Her eyes narrow, and in a strangled voice, she manages to spit, "You."

"Me," agrees Artemis, tone mild. "You. This is a fun game. Do we loop Judy in now, or do we just keep going back and forth forever?"

"This is my territory, my pantheon," says Professor Williams, and the air seems to almost bend with the force of her stepping up, Diana becoming manifest in their midst. She doesn't get any taller, but she towers all the same, a mountain, a monument to godhood, untouchable, unstoppable, immortal.

Artemis lifts an eyebrow, unimpressed, while Judy has to fight the urge to quail away. "Step up," says Artemis, tone mild. "I need the support. David?"

But it's not David who busts into the office. It's Máni, charging in and stepping up at the same time. The divinity in the small space is becoming choking. Judy steps up almost in self-defense, Chang'e gently nudging her aside to take her place.

"You moved the gate," Chang'e thunders, interposing herself between Artemis and Diana. Her fury is as great as theirs, and her cause more just. This is her campus, seniority be damned. "You had every cause to believe a junior goddess would be making the passage, and you moved the gate. Why would you do such a thing?"

"I'd heard a rumor. That a corrupted incarnation of Artemis was attempting to infiltrate our pantheon in the guise of Losna," says Diana, glaring daggers past Chang'e to Artemis. "I thought to catch her out. No one else would have been hurt. But if she could find the gate at all, that would prove she was other than she claimed to be. No incarnation of Losna would be able to enter the lion's den and survive."

"You would have left the City unattended, had you been correct and she been unable to access entry," says Chang'e, fiercely. "You broke every creed we stand by."

"One missing Moon does nothing to harm the City," says Diana. "It might have once, when each of us was unique in the night. Now, there are a hundred Chang'es scattered around the world like stars in the sky, a thousand Dianas, and one of us missing changes nothing. We just need to show up so that one missing doesn't turn into a dozen missing, or any other number that might dim the light that shines upon the City. We're less essential on our own than you would make us out to be."

"Tell yourself that if it makes you feel less like a traitor," says Artemis. She reaches into the air like she's grabbing at a flying insect, and for a moment, she's holding the shadowy outline of a hunting bow. Then her fingers pass through it and ball into a fist, and the bow is gone. She looks, bewildered, at the place where it briefly was.

Diana laughs.

"You can't draw your weapons during the day, little huntress, or did no one teach you the rules of your position before they sent you to challenge me? You're powerless here, while I, on the other hand, am in my own domain."

"You're as tied to the moon as the rest of us," snaps Chang'e.

"True. But I'm a tenured professor in my own office, and you're a bunch of students threatening me for no reason." Diana's smile is thin and cold and does not reach her eyes. "I would run, if I were you."

Chang'e shakes her head. "I respected you," she says. "I thought you must be the best of us, to have held your position for so long."

"The best, or the most trapped," says Diana. "There's no promotion from ‘goddess of the moon', Chang'e, no way to move up in the department. You get chosen, and that's your tenure, and then you're stuck doing the same thing over and over again until you die. I was going to be a great artist, once. I was going to change the world with my brilliance. And what am I now? A middle-aged art teacher trying to make people understand that I'm more than just an easy A in a discipline that matters so much more than they want to believe it does. The Moon isn't our friend. It's our abuser. It lures us in when we're young and innocent, and it uses us up, and it never knows our names. The City doesn't need us. The City just needs something to shine. We're an affectation at best, an infection at worst. It's long past time something changed the system. You can't blame me for seeking a better way, can you?"

"I can blame you for Aske," says Máni, voice cold and thick with fury. Chang'e hears David in his voice, god and man united in their anger. "She had nothing to do with anything you think you've been burdened with. She was young and kind and eager to see what kind of life she was going to have, and you took that away from her!"

"I did nothing of the sort," says Diana.

Artemis looks at her coldly. "We were in her everything. We saw what you did. We know you're working with the alchemists, and we know you killed her."

Her voice is steady, her words clear. She may be exaggerating how absolute their evidence is, but she's doing it well.

Diana doesn't recoil. She does, however, sink deeper in her chair. "Do you have any idea what you're risking?" she asks. "How dangerous this is?"

"Not unless you tell us," says Chang'e.

"I was supposed to be a famous artist," says Diana. "I was supposed to reimagine the world. When I was called to serve the City, I thought, well, this might slow me down for a little while, but it'll be something new for me to bring to my art—something innovative. I went willingly and with joy, and when it became clear that I wouldn't dream anymore, wouldn't find the inspiration I needed to be truly great—and you can't sell paintings of the City, people just assume you're trying to be a children's-book illustrator, they don't take you seriously. Well, then, I thought I might as well make the best of it. I had technique if I didn't have inspiration, and so I started teaching, and I suppose I liked it well enough, at first. I met a man who taught history, and we were happy, he and I, for a very long time. I told him, eventually, what I was, why my clock never changed while his rolled around the wheel of hours, and once he believed me, I started bringing him peaches, so he could stay with me."

Chang'e recoils. "That's… You know that isn't…"

"You're young, you have a lifetime of mistakes ahead of you, you have no idea how malleable the rules become when following them would mean sitting back and watching the people you care about suffer. You say we serve the City. Well, when has the City ever served us in return? We cross its sky nightly, but it gives us nothing. We wouldn't even have immortality if not for your damn peach trees, and when there's no Chang'e to be found, we sicken and age like anyone else. It's an unfair system. You can't blame me for wanting out of it."

"And that justifies bludgeoning a student to death where her parents will never be able to know what happened to her?" demands Máni. "Lying to us, working with alchemists?"

"Oh, you think you know everything, don't you?" asks Diana, her own tone mild. "Well, then I suppose there's not much left for me to say. You could call campus security, but there's no way you can prove I did anything, since it didn't happen in this reality. Or you could call the police—oh, same issue. What are you going to do?"

"We're going to stop your friends," says Artemis.

"Good luck with that," says Diana, and reaches for a notebook on her desk, apparently dismissing them. Chang'e frowns, then turns to the door, which closed behind Máni when he came into the office. She gestures for him and Artemis to follow her, moving to exit.

When she opens the door, the man from the lab is right outside, an unnervingly calm smile on his face. She stumbles back, knocking into Artemis, who steadies her before she can fall.

"You really should have listened when I told you to run," says Diana.