Chapter Text
Two months after he brings her back to life, God looks at Kiriona Gaia, furrows his brow, and says, “I think it’s about time for you to get a job.”
He says it matter-of-fact, without preamble, like it’s an entirely reasonable thing for him to say. The picture of an encouraging parent, sending his kid out into the world with a slap on the back and a go get ‘em, tiger.
She should be grateful. A father who’s the most powerful man in the universe, and who gives her the time of day, to boot. Who asks her questions, cares about what she thinks, what she likes, who she is. Even just noticing her should be more than enough.
Isn’t that all she’d ever wanted?
But Kiriona doesn’t feel grateful. Or happy, or even sad, really. She hasn’t felt anything but a lamentation of apathy since he tore her unbeating heart from her chest and jammed whatever’s left of her soul back into the still-raw void left behind.
“Do you,” she tells him, tone completely flat. At this point, she knows full well that when he starts a sentence by saying he’s thinking about doing something, that means he’s already done the something and is figuring out how to break it to you.
Case in point. “How much do you know about Antioch?”
Fortunately, it’s a name she’s heard tossed around a handful of times over the past few weeks. He’s taken to bringing her to Cohort meetings, training her up, getting her exposed to the inner workings of a universe infinitely larger and more complex than she ever could have anticipated from a lifetime spent in the claustrophobic containment of Drearburh.
“Shepherd planet on the outskirts of the system. Population of thirty thousand, give or take a couple hundred. Currently chocka with – ghosts?”
From the way his eyebrows fly up his forehead, Kiriona can tell she’s surprised him. Maybe he hadn’t realized how much she’d actually been listening; people usually didn’t. “Chocka with devils, but you’ve got the gist.”
“Devils?”
“Revenants, really. Nasty bit of business.”
“And you need someone to do something about it.”
God – John – Dad? – passes her a tiny badge, glittering golden under the Mithraeum’s fluorescent sterility. “There’s a squadron of Cohort soldiers at your co-command, First Lieutenant, if you’re interested. A good, engaging problem for you to sink your teeth into, and you’d be doing the system a favor. Win-win.”
For about fourteen years of her former existence, Kiriona would’ve stone-cold killed just about anyone she knew for an opportunity like this one. Now she isn’t sure if she feels much of anything about it, apart from a vague, muffled something that she has to consciously identify as curiosity.
“I mean, I guess I’ll do it,” she tells him. It’s not like she has anything better to do. And maybe it’ll get her away from – “Wait. You said co-command?”
—————————
“Absolutely not,” Kiriona says. “Absolutely not. I’d sooner drive nails through my own eyeballs than spend five minutes with her.”
“Don’t drive nails through your eyeballs,” her father says. “Be civil! Be professional! Perhaps one of you would be willing to set a good diplomatic example – ?”
“If she isn’t going to gouge out her own eyes,” Ianthe whilom Tridentarius says, with no small amount of relish, “then I’ll do it for her.”
“Not if I get to you first, bitch.”
“You wish you could.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Girls, please,” God says, in a tone Kiriona has dubbed his youths these days voice. He’s used it a time or two in Cohort meetings when one of them is kicking off, terminology he uses whenever he’s trying to get Kiriona to do something she doesn’t feel like doing, or, alternately, whenever Ianthe is trying to get him to do something he doesn’t feel like doing.
I missed the terrible twos, but I guess I still get to have the terrible twenties, he’ll say, and then nobody laughs, and then everything is mortifyingly bad until somebody coughs politely and moves the conversation on.
“Listen to daddy dearest,” Ianthe simpers. “Calm down. Surely I can’t be bothering you that much? Am I stoking your silly little temper?”
“Try me, Ianthe. I’ll throw you across this fucking room, right here, right now.”
“Well,” she says, examining her impeccable cuticles, “the thing is, you couldn’t.”
Perhaps it isn’t entirely accurate to say that she hasn’t felt anything at all for the past two months. Because, for better or for worse, this is something that she’s still able to feel. The white-hot shock of rage searing along whatever nerve endings she has left, that’s what she’s been left with. Gee, thanks, Dad.
Kiriona hates her. Always has. And now that hatred is the only thing she has left, she hates her all the more. It’s all too easy to let herself lurch across the room, wrap one hand around a bony-not-bone wrist, dig the other into whey-colored hair, and yank.
Ianthe’s answering screech curdles her stomach in a way that isn’t pleasant, but at least it’s something. The answering scrape of nails against her cheeks, the sizzle of necromancy along her nerves and the biting sting of pain, that’s something, too.
Yeah, she hates her. But she’ll take what she can get.
“Lieutenants,” God bellows, “for the love of – sit down, both of you. Ianthe, kindly detach your nails from my daughter’s face. Kiriona, let go of her hair. Yes, all of it. And take a moment to compose yourselves, fuck’s sake.”
She woefully disentangles a hand from Ianthe’s scalp, lets the palmful of corn-silk strands that come along with it drift to the floor. Ianthe’s nails really haven’t done much damage in return – they’ve just sort of punched into Kiriona’s skin and stayed there, like a spoon digging into a bad pudding.
She doesn’t need to worry about anyone drawing blood. Not anymore. Invulnerability. Immortality, practically.
It should feel more reassuring than it does.
“This is – a low moment for you both,” God tells them once they’ve settled down, sitting as far opposite each other as they can manage. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Kiriona glares across the table. Ianthe just smiles her slimy little smile.
Saint of Awe, her ass. If she had it her way, Ianthe would forever be known as Saint of Uncleaned Shower Drains, The Kind With Black Mold And Wet Hairballs.
(That one might be a little long for the propaganda posters. She’s workshopping it.)
“This conduct is entirely irresponsible,” her father is saying. “What would your soldiers think if they came upon you two at each other’s throats?”
“What did the Admiral’s soldiers think when they came upon him bending you over his desk?” Ianthe asks, the picture of innocence.
God puts his head in his hands, plants his face on the table, and stays there for a long time.
“That information,” he finally declares, voice slightly muffled by the table, “does not leave this room.”
The two of them lock eyes and mutually decide not to tell him that it already has.
“So, Antioch,” Ianthe finally prompts. “You want us to visit for a diplomatic rendez-vous, or a Cohort strategy meeting, or – ?”
That’s what finally gets him to look up, brightening significantly. “Right, of course. Deployment until further notice. Your shuttle gets here in two hours. Cheers!”
—————————
Kiriona remembers that, once upon a time, she had always wanted to see the world. But it’s a little harder to keep up that delusion when every place is seemingly worse than the last in new, special ways.
Drearburh? Boring as shit. Canaan? Murder city. The Mithraeum? Also boring as shit, plus Ianthe’s there. Antioch? Indeed chocka with devils who definitely want to kill her, Edenites who probably want to kill her, and civilians who could well be swayed into wanting to kill her.
At the very least, she thinks, stepping off the shuttle dock and narrowly sidestepping a blood-soaked creature careening toward her and her brand-new white uniform at top speeds, it isn’t going to be boring.
Unfortunately, the devil is diverted from its collision course with Ianthe; somebody throws something – a stick? No, on reflection, definitely a mangled, half-burnt femur – that explodes into shards on contact, pinning the creature to the deck of their ship until it stills.
“Cheers,” she tells the uniform-clad woman scrambling in its wake. “You happen to know who’s in charge around here?”
“Not – uh, not me,” she says, which is a great start. “As of now, it’s probably you? One of you? Both of you?”
Kiriona can’t remember a moment in her life where she’s been in charge of anything, ever. “Uh, yeah, guess I am. Your brand-new big cheese, that’s me.”
“Co-command, Kiri,” Ianthe hisses. “Co. What do you think co means?”
“Sorry, co-big cheese, and this one is never going to let me forget it. And you are?”
Kiriona can tell the poor girl is Fourth House, from a combination of the blue robes and the explosions and her gaunt, frightened face, not a day over eighteen. “Corporal Apolline Quattuor, First Lieutenant. Or would you prefer Your Highness?”
“We’d prefer to talk to whoever the fuck is in charge around here, or was, before we showed up,” Ianthe cuts in, and Kiriona is thankful for the interruption, for once, because she has no idea what she’d prefer to be called, but she’s pretty sure it’s none of the above.
“Definitely was, um, First Lieutenant,” Quattuor confirms. “Captain Erku was killed in action six days ago. We’ve been running on a bit of a skeleton crew ever since.”
“That looks like it’s been going really well for you,” Ianthe says placidly, flinty blue eyes scanning the screaming soldiers running pell-mell across the battlefield. “Never fear, though. We’ve been sent here to scrape you back together.”
It sounds like she’s trying to be reassuring. Quattuor does not look reassured.
Kiriona doesn’t think she really wants to spend weeks on end scraping a regiment back together with the Saint of Curdled Milk. But she also doesn’t think she really has a choice in the matter.
Especially not as the shuttle takes off behind them, leaving the pair of them stranded in the middle of an active battle surrounded by demons with tongues for eyes and a pile of recruits practically tripping over their own swords.
But then there’s some sort of rushing, roaring sound from further across the field, and somebody is screaming about them breaching the Chrysostom, whatever the fuck that is, and the pair of them are swinging into the fray without a second thought.
The shuttle captain had given them something of a crash course in devils. How to down them (chop them up into many tiny pieces), how to kill them (set them on fire after the said chopping up), how to avoid becoming one (don’t let them touch you, don’t let them bite you, with their mouth-mouths or eye-mouths).
“Eye mouths?” Kiriona had said.
Ianthe had just sniffed. “Not that it’s that important. They can’t really do anything to us, anyway. At least, I presume not. Right?”
“Eye mouths. Is nobody else concerned by this?”
“Doesn’t matter much to them if you can’t properly die,” the shuttle captain had said, shrugging. “They’ll still try to snatch ya.”
Kiriona, who has already had her body snatched by several sociopolitical entities, would really rather it not happen again. So she draws her Cohort-issue broadsword – a proper fighter’s weapon, nothing like Ianthe’s gold-plated toothpick – and throws herself at the first devil she can find.
This is something she’s good at. Slashing through creatures shambling toward her, digging her blade into stomachs, lopping off arms, dodging the gnashing teeth of their disgusting fucking eye-mouths.
Loath though she is to admit it, Ianthe is the only one even remotely able to keep pace with her. It isn’t long before there’s a heap of bodies steadily growing around them – a heap of actual devil bodies, rather than recruits or freshly possessed corpses.
“Not bad,” Kiriona shouts to her. “I remember when you couldn’t even pick up that thing without snapping a tendon.”
A slimy tongue curls around Ianthe’s bone arm; she yanks it from the socket with a sickening squelch. “You wish you could keep up with me.”
“And you wish you were here because of raw, natural talent instead of a magic bone arm.”
“Nepo baby.”
“Bold words, Princess.”
The unit, unfortunately, doesn’t look to be faring nearly as well as they are. Either the front line has fallen entirely, or they weren’t organized enough to have a front line to begin with.
They’re organized enough to know how to run when they start screaming run, or how to get out of their fucking way when they start screaming the same. And, for the moment, that’s good enough for Kiriona.
But when it comes to anything else – fuck, aren’t the Fourth supposed to train toddlers to do battle formations in nursery school?
“Antioch is one of the smallest shepherd moons in the system,” she remembers her dad saying. “Honestly, nobody paid it much mind until the devils appeared. The forces are – well, they’ve got a can-do attitude and an adventurous spirit, but I can’t say they’ve seen high-level fighting.”
He’d moved along swiftly, something about that’s where you come in! and encouraging the troops! But, looking at the carnage surrounding them, Kiriona isn’t exactly feeling in an encouraging sort of mood.
At the very least, they’re also organized enough that, when the devils finally start receding, howling and staggering away from the keep, they start sweeping the chunks of corpses into massive piles and setting them ablaze, providing the scene with a fragrance Kiriona could really do without.
She looks around for the first unoccupied person in Fourth blues she can find – the same who approached them earlier. “Does this happen every time the keep is attacked?”
“Yes, First Lieutenant,” Quattuor says, matter-of-fact as if she’d just asked what they usually eat for breakfast. “Attacks every three to four days. The Cohort replenishes our numbers every few weeks.”
She glances over to Ianthe; they mutually decide to save their opinions on how much this place sucks for a place not in front of an exhausted foot soldier.
“Fascinating,” Ianthe says, her tone vomitously acrid. “And when you aren’t – well, having your souls sucked out through the eyeballs, I assume you’re all holed up in that metal lump? God, no bonus points for accommodations.”
“Cohort installations are built for efficiency and practicality above all else,” Kiriona says, parroting Vice Admiral Duto, famed for being the architectural brainiac of the Cohort and the single driest speaker who’s ever rocked up to one of her dad’s board meetings.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to see the barracks,” Quattuor says, sweeping some ash into a tiny heap with the toe of her boot. “We don’t exactly have anybody assigned to welcoming duties – well, we did, but I think she’s just died – so I can show you around, Lieutenants, if you’d like.”
“A tour would be much appreciated,” Ianthe tells her. “If you could give us a minute, we’ll be right in.”
“More like five minutes,” Kiriona says, because they do honestly need to unpack some things about the disaster they’ve just been dropped into.
“We don’t need five minutes,” Ianthe snaps. “Lead on, soldier.”
“Make it ten,” she tells Quattuor, this time mostly just to be contrary. “We need to have some grown-up lieutenant talk.”
She can tell Ianthe is getting testy. There isn’t a version of her that Kiriona earnestly likes, but testy, provoked Ianthe is as close as it comes. “Whatever you need to tell me, you can tell me inside.”
“No, I actually don’t think so. We’ll wait out here.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. Who are you, my mother?”
Kiriona throws back her head and laughs. Or, at least, she thinks she does, she tries; she doesn’t remember what it feels like any more. “Who knows? We both probably hate your fucking guts. And, besides, genius, that means you can’t tell me what to do, either.”
“I changed my mind. Don’t come on the barracks tour. In fact, don’t come into my barracks at all.”
“What the fuck do you think co-command means, Tridentarius?”
“Ooh, you going to tattle on me to daddy?”
“Right,” poor Quattuor finally says, looking between the two of them with noticeable concern. “You can just come back in whenever you’re done, yeah?”
No sooner has Quattuor executed a shoddy little bow and started jogging back to the installation than Ianthe whirls on her. “You can’t do that.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“You can’t fucking bitch and moan in front of Fourth foot soldiers. They’re a wreck. Half of them probably aren’t out of puberty. If we don’t get them into shape, they are going to fucking die. Immediately.”
“And here I’d thought your scrawny animaphiliac ass would be trying to kill as many of them as possible.”
“I am trying,” she says, “to do my fucking job. You want to go back and tell your lord and father you murdered an entire combat unit, a massive waste of resources and dereliction of duty, then be my guest. Like it or not – and I most certainly do not – we’re co-commanders of this disaster.”
“Yeah, exactly, we’re co-commanders, which means you can’t tell me what to do.” And maybe Kiriona is arguing for argument’s sake, but she’s spent about three hours of her life on Antioch, and she isn’t exactly keen on spending any more.
She’d always wanted to join the Cohort; she’d never wanted to be in charge of it, and especially not co-in charge of it with a rancid swamp rat. So if she can argue and needle and bitch and moan her way out of it, argue and needle and bitch and moan she will.
“This,” Ianthe says, “is an absolute nightmare of a scenario.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said this month, possibly ever, that I agree with.”
Antioch is a moon full of backwater hicks, nobody knows what to do about the devils, and there have been reports of Edenites showing up from who knows where.”
“Really cheerful pep talk here.”
“The soldiers are a spineless garbage heap,” she goes on, “but they’re our garbage heap now. I do my fucking work. I take care of my fucking business. And I don’t think you want them to die any more than I do.”
Kiriona thinks about the foot soldiers scattered around the field, lying in the dirt, hacking at their own devil-bitten arms in terror. She thinks about the Fourth. It’s an easy thing to do; she can still see Jeanne’s face whenever she closes her eyes.
Apolline is smaller, frailer, than she had been, but still with those wide, dark eyes, defiant, terrified. “No. I guess I don’t. Your terms?”
“We need,” Ianthe says, “to be a united front. We have fuck all to work with except each other. It’ll do us no good to be arguing with each other all the time, especially not in front of our subordinates.”
“Tell that to every time you picked a fight with your sister dearest in front of every titled noble in the system.”
Most of the time, Ianthe is a snit, an annoyance, and little else. But when she pulls the face she does now, teeth clenched, looking down the bridge of her nose with icy fury in her eyes, Kiriona is woman enough to admit that, yeah, she can be pretty fucking terrifying when she wants to be. “If you mention her again, I’ll gut you like a fucking fish, Nav.”
It hits harder than a slap ever could. “And I’ll do the damn same if you ever call me that again. If you want to be a united front or whatever, you’re going to have to play fucking nice, Your Holiness.”
Her jaw is still set, but she nods. “Fine. We’ll play fucking nice. Get this lot into shape and then get out of here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly fancy dying on this rock.”
Kiriona, who really isn’t all that invested in being alive and is rather curious about what would happen if yet another entity tried to slurp up her soul, isn’t quite sure she agrees. But she still sticks out a hand. “To not dying on this rock, then. Co-command.”
The coated bone of Ianthe’s palm is tacky with drying blood. “Co-command.” It’s actually fairly nice of her, until she follows it up with a, “Still spending as little fucking time with you as possible, though.”
“Agreed. But in front of the troops – ”
“I suppose I can manage to muster a cordial, collaborative spirit for a few hours a day, Gaia,” Ianthe says, which is about as good as it’s going to get.
“Well, in that case, my darling dearest, my apple blossom in spring, shall we away to the mess?”
Ianthe does not look like an apple blossom in spring. She looks like a pinchy, jaundiced shrew. But she huffs and says, “Well, if we must,” so Kiriona takes that as a win.