49. Caspian

W e snuggled in the garden and talked about hope for hours while we were celebrating our victory. Pax, Benji, and Medusa needed it after everything they’d gone through. I had some doubts. Dionysus wasn’t talking as much as usual, so I had a feeling he did, too.

I honestly expected violence. I expected the worst of humanity to start targeting anyone they suspected of being supernatural now that they didn’t have the Coalition to do it for them. I suspected the people in power who were dropping us off at Coalition facilities to abuse it and go after us.

But then none of that happened. I never really liked the phrase ‘put the fear of god into someone’ because it was usually used to justify abuse. But now the actual gods were here putting the fear of god into people, so I guess that was okay.

Everyone was literally on their best behavior. If Hades was real, then so was the Underworld. If Hades was real, then so were the other pagan gods and the various afterlives. People knew about heaven and hell. They either didn’t believe in them, or they were sure where they were going and where people they didn’t like were going.

The Messenger of God showed up in Times Square with a message they’d gotten some shit wrong with supernaturals. Any of the humans who had seen an angel the last time they were here were long dead. There wasn’t a single person alive who had an encounter with an angel.

Until now. Everyone saw Gabriel’s message. Benji and Dionysus helped everyone set up a platform and build a following. They did video posts, but they also had a podcast. Yahweh invited all the gods on this realm to come for a chat. Pretty much all of them took him up on it except Orion Onyx, or Flying Spaghetti Monster. He was a bit of an anarchist and resented ever being created, so he didn’t want to talk about it.

And they handled it perfectly. They never went into detail about how gods and supernaturals were really created or how the afterlife actually worked. If they did that, it would shatter everyone’s beliefs and probably ruin what they were eventually going to do with Hell.

The message literally all of them shared was a good one. Benji compared it to one of his all-time favorite movies Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and decided to make a side hustle selling t-shirts with all the god’s faces screen printed on them with the quote Be Excellent to Each Other under it.

Dionysus wanted half the profits on his shirt, Hades said he couldn’t use his image unless he included Persephone, Persephone hated the photo he used and made him change it, Yahweh looked at him like he was utterly insane, and I was pretty sure Athena wanted to curse him but was holding back because she and Medusa were finally friends again.

That wasn’t the exact message they were spreading, but it was close. They basically said stop doing shitty things to people or there will be cosmic consequence, eventually. And they didn’t just sit on their asses making threats, either. That’s where the rest of us came in.

They started doing good deeds with their magic. Some people called them miracles and I guess they were. Persephone and Dionysus helped crops grow. She hated him and I’d forever hate him for what he did, but someone convinced Poseidon to clean the garbage out of the water supplies. They had everyone working together to give a leg up to the people who needed it.

And no one would tell me who did it, but one of the gods convinced Pepper Crane to run for president. She won by a landslide, and we had even more help bringing hope to everyone. They did something similar in other countries. There always seemed to be at least one politician who was actually there for the people who was liked by everyone who just needed that little nudge.

They were right to talk about hope in the garden. Things had been so bad for supernaturals and we’d been fighting for so long, it was hard to see a way through where things would go our way.

But it actually was a new Golden Era, at least, it was the start of one.