“Silas.”

He ran across the room like a hyena, gathering his precious supplies. The book, the chalk, the makeshift amulet, and… Aha! The flowers! They jostled in the crook of his blazer.

“Silas.”

He gingerly placed the items in his duffel bag, but the impact felt like a boom. His paws shook, his mind whirled. He’d been waiting for this day, and it’s finally here, and he’s not sure how to act. He felt like laughing. He laughed. He might’ve been going a tad crazy.

“Silas!” MJ grabbed him harshly by the shoulder.

MJ sighed. She tucked her red ponytail into her beanie and said, “I just want to make sure that you’re fully aware of the consequences. Of what we’re about to do.”

What an insult! He grabbed a jump rope from a high shelf, and turned back to her. “Obviously! What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

“You’re giggling like a little boy on his birthday,” she deadpanned. “This is serious. This is so, so serious. You are treating this like a silly escapade where you get to summon a demon. There are lives in our hands.”

Silas hauled the bag onto his back, peered into the darkness beyond his attic-bedroom window, and decided to grab the flashlight under his bed. “Relax for once, eh? It’ll be easy. Take Emerald to the cathedral, call upon His devilish grace, let Him do, uh, whatever He does to them, and He stops trying to ascend our fathers!”

“Whatever He does to them,” she repeated.

“Well, do you know? All we have are educated guesses.”

“He is going to melt Emerald’s face off. Plug up several of their orifices with that horrific ‘divine tar.’ And He is going to puppet them. He is going to ruin them. And it will be our fault.

“Though, that’s just an educated guess,” she emphasized sarcastically. Silas gets the hint; he remembers long afternoons of sitting in Dad’s room, in that rough, squeaky armchair, listening to the life support struggling to clear the gunk out of his lungs. Half his fur bandaged, bruised, swollen, black.

Both Silas and MJ’s fathers worked closely with a mystic scientist upstate, Caswell-something-or-other. That kind of work gets the attention of beings no one wants to alert. Mystic scientists, to put it bluntly, piss the demigods off. There’s nothing more they hate than mortals meddling in their space, in dimensions they shouldn’t be able to access but can reach their grubby hands into regardless.

So, the demigods do what they can to stop them.

Silas and MJ are doing what they can to stop them, as well. Sometimes “what they can” looks like switching the trolley tracks.

“I don’t like this either, Mika.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she huffed.

Silas was a little excited, admittedly. Whatever was going on up there was his prevailing obsession ever since he was aware of it. The folk tales fascinated him. Silas wondered how many of the trees Adakite planted nemself, how many storms were Saccharide’s doing, and how many scorching wildfires Vermillion had set.

He used to wonder what Nowun was up to. Legend, according to the good men at Overgrowth Cathedral, says that Nowun doesn’t govern Earth, or, wasn’t supposed to, at least. It isn’t His job to be here, but Silas has always felt Him the strongest. He is the devil on Silas’s shoulder, the reflection in a cracked mirror, the person staring at him through a black cat’s eyes.

Silas doesn’t have to wonder anymore; he knew, certainty strong in his heart, that He was tormenting Dad. And MJ’s dad. Possibly more dads than he knows about.

That changes tonight.

“2:28,” Silas breathed, eyeing his watch. “Let’s go.”

Step one was dragging Emerald out of the basement. Their mouth was duct taped, their paws bound. Blood was soaking through their baggy hoodie.

“MJ, take them,” Silas commanded.

“No,” she replied. He glared at her; she just crossed her arms. “This is immoral. This is so fucking immoral.”

He glanced at MJ, and back to Emerald. Fine. So his partner in crime was a coward. So what?

(Silas was so scared, to tell you the truth. He was trying not to face the reality of what he was doing. He was failing. He was failing so hard..)

(MJ knew what Silas was getting himself into and was keeping her paws as clean as possible. She’s a smart girl. Silas is a fucking idiot. But he’s in too deep to back out now. After all, he had a restrained teenager in his basement.)

Silas let out a dramatic sigh. “Take my bag, then.”

He lifted his arms, letting MJ slip the heavy thing off his shoulders and drape it over hers like it was feather-light.

Emerald recoiled when Silas stepped towards them, but they couldn’t do anything about it. They were bound well; MJ made sure of it.

“Relax,” Silas said, positioning one arm under Emerald’s back and another below their knees, painfully picking them up as they writhed. “It’s for the greater good.”

He swore Emerald tried to bite him through the tape. He clutched them tighter as he and MJ made their way to the empty cathedral. MJ planned the most optimal path from Silas’s house to the empty cathedral, which was through the forest. They stepped through the mud to avoid crunching too many leaves as they walked. Silas had a very, very, unwilling sacrifice in his arms. He couldn’t afford to draw attention.

MJ swung the back door open, and the two of them carefully stepped inside. When Silas reached the center of the apse, he unceremoniously dropped Emerald on the floor, panting in exhaustion.

“Be quiet,” he hissed at Emerald, who was trying to scream through their tape as MJ started taking the supplies out of the duffel bag.

“Should I put on more?” MJ asked, wriggling a roll in Silas’s direction.

He considered it, before replying. “No, no, we’ll have to take it off when He’s here anyway.”

MJ sat at the altar while Silas prepared the ritual, half according to The Fourth God: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia Of Nowun And Spells To Win His Favor (1983) and half according to his personal beliefs about the elusive demigod that he’s accrued in the past eighteen years.

In black chalk, Silas drew on the floor, moonlight illuminating his work. Nowun doesn’t appreciate circles or pentagons like some of the others; He dabbles in the abstract. Silas drew an amorphous, but deliberate blob around Emerald, who flopped around ungracefully. He made four lines at the edges, leading imperfectly to the center.

Silas surrounded the blob with 83 letter Φs. Classical depictions of Nowun surround Him with Phi like they’re His seeing eyes, or what He draws power from, or– well, it’s not consistent, but they’re always there. So Silas incorporated the Greek letter into his summoning.

He created a lasso-like shape within the blob. Silas wrangled the amethyst amulet from the duffel bag and placed it like a pendant at the bottom of the shape. It isn’t a pretty amulet. The gem is taped to the nickel with craft store double-sided tape, and MJ found the chain on the ground after she tripped over it on her skateboard and landed flat on her face.

He decided to place the vial of blood he harvested from MJ’s bruise from that day next to the amulet. For good luck.

Finally, Silas set the flowers. It’s never a specific species, but fifteen of them have to be withered, and the final flower must be white. He set them around his drawing, the final one resting opposite to the blood and amulet.

“MJ,” Silas called, expecting her to be distracted, but she’s right next to him with the spellbook, flipped to the page marked up twenty times in all shades of highlighter.

“Ready?” She asked. He nodded. He’s prepared, he’s ready, his legs are not trembling.

“Nowun, He of many faces,” they incanted in unison.”God of balance, God of distortion, God of pendants. God of Alpha Centauri. We fear Nowun, the unknowable. God of uncertainty.”

At first, Silas couldn’t tell if anything was happening, if He heard them. But MJ shot him a look as the cathedral shakes, as Emerald’s eyes widened in horror.

It’s working.

“Our Solar system welcomes Nowun, our Earth welcomes Nowun,” they continued. “Our God of antimatter, of all sides of the black hole. Earth submits to Nowun, Earth bows to Nowun.”

The cathedral shuddered.

MJ’s phalange, which was tracing the words as the two of them spoke, landed on the halfway point of the written incantation. The first verses can be recited in any language, but the final few must be said in the original Greek, according to this book, and all the other books. Silas had a blistering nightmare about two women who recited the final verses in German. He remembers their faces, how they… lost them. MJ had the same dream.

Needless to say, the two of them have been practicing their Greek pronunciation very, very extensively. The cathedral felt like it was bowing as they spoke, like it could crumble at any moment.

Emerald, however, has stilled.

Their words were draining the cathedral’s color. The vibrant stained-glass windows turned murky shades of gray and black as they preached what roughly translated to permission, no, a plea for Nowun to conquer their universe.

The final few phrases left their lips, and there was a blinding, bright light.

As they planned, Silas and MJ drop to their knees, curling in on themselves to minimize the impact of His descent. They opened their eyes and rose when they heard a low, low note reverberate through the floor.

Silas was not prepared for how brightly He glowed. Nowun was like a mini-star despite the darkness that otherwise enveloped his silhouette, His facial features were indistinct, but Silas could make out the shape He has chosen to appear in, which was the usual one, according to the ancient art: feline, horned, and draped in a cloak.

“Hello, little ones,” the God Silas and MJ just summoned said. There was a rift above Him, but the two of them knew not to look into whatever dimension Nowun had descended from; it would blind them, permanently.

“God of pendants!” MJ bellowed, her voice steady. “We want to make a deal with you.”

Nowun picked up Emerald like they were a sweater off the rack. “Hmm,” He considered. “So this one isn’t a free snack, I presume.”

MJ raised an eyebrow, looking to Silas for guidance. She might be the brawns of the operation, Silas admitted, but he was always supposed to be the brains. He’s been studying this thing for years. He knew the jokey attitude was a diversion to get one of them to say something they don’t really mean; Nowun was to be treated like a very, very cruel genie.

“You know who we are,” Silas began.

“Yes,” Nowun confirmed. “Son of Damien Basilica. Daughter of Hawthorne Raina Phoenix. Annoying mortals.”

He tore off Emerald’s tape and bindings, but they didn’t shriek or thrash at all. He floated over to stand in front of Silas and MJ, the sacrifice still in His paw. The light he emitted made them uncomfortably hot. “You want something from me,” He stated.

“Yes. We want You to let our fathers go. Stop ascending them.”

“Why?” Nowun asked. He did a flip in the air, like this was a fun little game to Him. It probably was. “Basilica is a problem. Phoenix is a problem. I solve problems by bringing them up. Making them mine. Easier to control when they’re right in my grasp.” He emphasized this by letting a third arm materialize, rush out of His body, and squeeze Emerald’s neck. They said nothing. Silas tried not to react. It almost would’ve been easier if Emerald were screaming.

“You are a problem,” MJ growled.

“Really the least of my concern.” He casually tightened His chokehold.

Silas wiped his brow. “We have brought You a very special sacrifice.”

Nowun turned to Emerald, scrutinized them, considered them. “Emerald Choir, first of her name. 17 years old. 5’10, 225 pounds. What’s so special about her?” Emerald looked like a lifeless doll in His two-pawed grasp, frighteningly limp.

Silas produced a shiny, handcrafted blade from his belt. The handle was purple and emblazoned with symbols of Nowun. “See for yourself,” he said, presenting the weapon to Nowun. Obviously, the God is more than able to materialize a blade of His own, but it’s a token of goodwill, of faith. They both understood this.

With His third free paw, Nowun took the weapon. He inspected the craftsmanship, and drew a thin line across Emerald’s left wrist. Red blood, tinged seafoam like two-toned toothpaste, poured out of the wound. The sight of it made Nowun drop the blade.

Silas smirked in satisfaction. He did it. He surprised a God.

“Adakite,” Nowun stated.

Yes, Adakite. Earth’s demigod of nature, of plants, of trees, of, most importantly, life itself. The most responsible, caring, motherly of the “Magic Trio.” Silas has read about Nem; a devoted worshipper of Adakite can call upon Nem during the difficult birth or a baby, or a seedling, and Ne will help.

But Ne will leave Nir mark.

MJ glanced wearily between the bleeding incision and Silas. He hadn’t told her about this part. Silas was aware, going into their partnership in this operation, that there were some things MJ refused to do – giving a Demigod a knife to stab a sacrifice with, for instance. Silas respected her code of ethics, but it was really, really difficult to work around when he knew that Gods don’t play by the rules. Especially not this one. So he just… left some details out.

“What the fuck,” she whispered. “What the actual fuck.”

Silas ignored her. “Emerald has been blessed by Adakite, yes. But I suggest you look deeper. Examine their heart.”

MJ looked at Silas like he had become something monstrous. Perhaps he was. He certainly wasn’t the Silas she grew up with, anymore.

He could only shrug helplessly. “It’s on the opposite side of where hearts usually are.”

Nowun humored him, thankfully, deftly plunging the knife into Emerald’s ribcage and excavating the meat between their heart and the outside air. The hunk of flesh fell to the floor. Again, He seemed surprised. “Well!”

Emerald’s heart was blackened, with red and orange splotching the edges of the main arteries. Even though the desecrated organ was beating at a quick pace, MJ felt like she was watching an autopsy. She felt sick. She felt every cut Nowun made like it was on her own skin.

“Touch it,” Silas instructed.

A fourth paw slunk out of Nowun’s tail and pressed itself to Emerald’s charred heart. Nowun left it there for several seconds, before nodding thoughtfully and retracting it, allowing it to disappear. “Several degrees hotter than normal. The work of Vermillion.”

Vermillion is typically regarded as the second Trio member, lower-ranked than Adakite but not as disliked as Saccharide. She is the demigod of heat. Volcanoes, earthquakes, wildfires, the sun. It came to Him as naturally as words.

Its reach extends to anything that can burn. A mind, an eye, volatile chemicals, or passion itself – anything that you want so badly it hurts. The mark of Vermillion on Emerald puzzled Silas as well, but he has a few guesses why it’s there.

Emerald was picked for a reason. Silas poured over a lot of medical records to choose his victim. He looked for birth complications, of course. He also searched for people who had capital-I Issues.

Emerald’s parents are dead. They were raised by their brother, who was older by just five years. The two of them lived on the street for nine years, before the brother secured a very illegal job and a very illegal windowless apartment in the slums.

Silas’s subject only needed two divine marks to pique Nowun’s interest. But he wasn’t complaining about the extra leverage. He guessed that Emerald’s brother had some… intervention to get that gig at 15. He guessed that Emerald used to be very faithful.

They’ll be even more faithful by the time this is over.

“You are a horrible person,” MJ whispered.

Silas knew that already.

“Lastly, I want you to look at Emerald’s tail,” he said.

“Sure, sure. Like you’re the God here,” Nowun grumbled, but, as expected, He didn’t truly seem annoyed. He was very, very intrigued by Emerald. Silas wondered how well the summoning would’ve gone if he had picked someone less unique.

Nowun prodded Emerald’s tail, causing it to immediately split in half and bare its shark-esque teeth, drooling like the thing was rabid. He was rapidly re-arranging His body to dodge the tail’s biting, but it was just for show; Nowun was antimatter. He only interacted with the world when He wanted to.

In normal circumstances, Nowun wouldn’t be very phased by the biting tail. Just another strange mortal creature. He could emulate that, if He wanted.

These were decidedly not normal circumstances.

Nothing about this body was right. It was violated by every single God that has touched the planet. A felid’s tail should not be slimy, and a felid’s tail-mouth should definitely not have a Saccharide-signature blue tongue, speckled with white. It should certainly not be cold to the touch.

But that’s what Saccharide was all about. Silas wondered how Nowun felt about being cast in the “devil” role when Saccharide was among the demigods surveying the Earth. Every myth she stars in reads like pins and needles, like getting beaten up and left in a dumpster. A storm-maker, a havoc-wreaker…

A kidnapper.

Silas suddenly doesn’t want to think about Saccharide either.

“Fascinating,” Nowun chortles, inspecting the three telling marks on Emerald’s body again and again. “Very fascinating subject you’ve brought me. You win. I’m invested.”

Silas lights up. He turns to MJ, who doesn’t seem as happy about winning a God’s favor as she should. Ah, right. He turns away from MJ.

“What did you want again?” Nowun asked. He let Emerald go, letting them float above the sigils as He zipped around to get a better look at the marks. He’s probably devising ways to cut them out, removing all traces of the Earth demigods.

The thing about Nowun, consistent through every myth, is that the guy hates, hates, hates the Earth’s Magic Trio. To them, He is evil. He is abhorrent, disgraceful, a pain in the ass. So, that’s what the Trio relayed to the prophets, and that’s what they wrote. “Nowun’s a piece of shit who wants to destroy the Earth.”

Silas has been in contact with the professional mystic scientists about this. His… Dad’s coworkers. He asked them about Nowun while his own Dad was wheezing in his gurney, while they were scared for their business partner.

He learned to read between the stories’ lines. He learned that Nowun loved Earth, otherwise He wouldn’t visit so often. He simply finds the Magic Trio irritating.

So, Silas has assumed, He would never pass up an opportunity to mess with them.

By getting to torture a mortal all three of them had taken interest in, for instance.

“Free my father, Damien Basilica,” Silas said. “Free MJ’s father, Hawthorne Raina Phoenix. Free anyone else you have begun to ascend who is involved in mystical science.”

Nowun whistled lowly. “Tough ask.”

He winced. “...How many people are you doing that to?”

Nowun makes a motion like He’s adjusting something on His neck. A pendant, if the prehistoric art is to be believed. “2,228,” He said. “Not a big field. A lot of you don’t think I’m real.”

He suddenly whizzed toward Silas, nearly blinding him, leaving him stumbling backwards as He pressed His shadowy form closer. “But I’m very real.”

Silas gulped. “Mm-hmm. Yup. You’re very real,” he agreed. Nowun drew back, satisfied.

By the side of the altar, Silas heard MJ retch.

He steeled himself. “All right. How many people are you ascending specifically at my father’s workplace?”

“Six.” Nowun paused. “Including your annoying parents, yes.”

Six. Silas could work with that. “Free those six mystic scientists,” he insisted, “and you can have Emerald. Yours to keep.”

Nowun seemed to weigh His options. He looked floating Emerald up and down, and then away from them, presumably comparing how fun Emerald would be to tear apart in Alpha Centauri-land versus the six scientists.

He grabbed Emerald, allowed the two of them to reach the floor, and stroked their Vermillion-heart in a way that had Silas feeling like he should look away. He doesn’t, of course.

“I accept your offer,” Nowun said easily. MJ was having a breakdown or something in the corner, but Silas still saw one of her ears perk up. Good sign, he thought weakly.

Nowun regarded the crude sigils Silas had drawn on the floor eons ago, and shrugged, as if to say, “Good enough.”

He gripped Emerald by the feet, before the cathedral’s gravity suddenly began to shift. Silas panicked as his shoes lifted from the ground, harshly wrapping his arms around a marble pillar. MJ didn’t look like she noticed at all; she was still curled up in a ball, one ear up, floating around the whirlwind Nowun was causing at the altar.

The meager supplies Silas and MJ brought to the ritual spun around as Nowun lifted Emerald to the rift. The hole in the universe was expanding; Silas wanted to watch the two of them ascend so, so badly, just to satisfy his son-of-a-mystic-scientist brain, but he knew he had to avert his gaze.

As he felt the storm reach its peak, Silas called, “Bye, Emerald!”

“Who’s Emerald?” Nowun shouted, His voice vibrating the entire building. “This is Amulet. My Amulet.”

Of course they were.

“Oh, and by the way,” Nowun added. “Your sigils were dogshit. Should look a little more like this.”

Silas’s eyes were forced open, hot, hot, burning with light, blind, painful, hot. Nowun had burned a shape into his retinas. It looked like– he didn’t know. He didn’t know how to describe it. It hurt like four Gods with ten laserbeams. He grabbed his ears roughly, squeezing them against his head to try to stop the ringing. He must’ve been screaming. He didn’t know.

Silas recovered eventually. He opened his eyes– and, ow, ow, closed them again. Take two. The incomprehensible shape was still forever seared into his eyes, but he could see. He could see. Huh.

The color had returned. Same blue-yellow-green rose windows. Same dark, wooden pews. Same ornate, glistening bishop seat.

His ritual materials were still scattered around the apse. The sacrifice– no, he means A– no, he means… What was their name? Silas couldn’t remember what their name was.

He knew it wasn’t Amulet, but it felt right to call them that. Amulet.

Silas rose to his feet at the same time MJ did. She looked horrible. Dried bile ran down her sweater, her beanie was… on the ceiling, Silas noticed. Her hair was wild. Her eyes were wilder.

MJ looked at him in a way Silas didn’t like. She picked up the empty, battered duffel bag. She approached him.

She swung it as hard as she could across Silas’s face, which was pretty hard. Very hard. She did it again, and again, and again.

“I’m sorry,” Silas said.

“You are a monster,” MJ seethed. She tossed the bag aside. Her boots on the floor were so, so loud.

“I know. I know.”

“You are a monster,” she repeated. “You are a monster. You are a monster.” She jabbed a phalange into his chest. “You. Are. A. Monster.”

She turned away from him. Silas wouldn’t want to look at himself either. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to look at himself ever again.

“You agreed to this,” Silas said. “You tied up Amulet. You helped. You agreed.”

MJ cackled witheringly, violently, running a hand through her hair, letting her knees sink to the floor. Her phone rang.

“Mika!” The voice said. It was the nurse the Phoenixes hired. “Your father’s made a full recovery! Where are you? We couldn’t find you in your room. Please come quick. He wants to–” MJ threw the phone at a pew, hard. It shattered on impact.

“Y– you weren’t supposed to bring your phone,” Silas stammered.

“No,” she agreed. “I wasn’t.”

MJ pulled her hood up and hopped into the aisle. “Where are you going?” He called.

“I’m skipping town. They’ll find out what we– what you did to Amulet,” she replied. It was scary how well the not-quite-right name slipped off her tongue. “I’m not going to be there when it happens.”

She swung open the front gate, and she was gone.

Silas gathered his things into the bag MJ struck him with. Spellbook. Chalk. Flowers. MJ’s blood. The hunk of flesh.

The amulet was nowhere to be found.