1. Defeat

> “Before starting a war, make sure you know how it’s going to end” - Treatise of The War Gods, Sirius III

“You could have saved them,” Lucathar said. With the power he now had it was trivial to maintain form here in the astral plane whilst manifesting as a planet killing monster in the mortal plane. Giant tentacles wrapped around a distant planet, squeezing the life from it, crushing to the core. News of the terror he could inflict would spread throughout the galaxy and as the fervour of his followers grew so would his power.

Athena bent double with pain, feeling the deaths of every single one of the three billion inhabitants, nearly three billion of her followers, like daggers in her flesh.

She forced herself upright and stared back at Lucathar. Even the sky, monotonous grey as always, seemed to be trying to drain the strength from her. The faint red hue of the stone from which the Citadel was constructed was the only hint of colour in this place. It was just another reason that the Gods avoided coming here. It was ironic that what had once been their home was all-but deserted. This world held nothing for them, but Athena had been forced to return, to make one last-ditch effort to convince Lucathar to halt his attack.

She had failed.

“I couldn’t have saved them,” Athena spat back at Lucathar, “I could only have condemned them. Condemned them to become your obedient subjects,” she said, the pain of thousands more loyal souls perishing, forcing her to her knees.

“They would still be alive, wouldn’t they?” Lucathar said, taking a step towards the parapet. They were deep within the Walls, high above the Outer Rings, with only the haze of the Wastelands visible in the distance. “Would they still have worshipped you if they’d known you’d choose death on their behalf?”

He paced back and forth in front of her, his growing power in the mortal plane feeding his confidence.

“There was no need for you to bring exile upon yourself,” he continued, looking down at her, “Such a waste of talent.”

Athena looked up at Lucathar. She couldn’t even remember who had started this war, but there was never a question of her surrendering. It was better for her trillions of followers to die than whatever passed for life as one of Lucathar’s followers. They might not see it that way, but she knew there were worse things than death.

She winced as she felt another planet fall to Lucathar’s armies. Another five billion souls, their power now lost forever. It was a brutal display force; It was all Lucathar knew. Tales of each planet’s destruction would last through the ages, and so Lucathar’s followers would grow, and his power with it. She wondered if there was anyone or anything that could stop him.

“Finally there’ll be order in the Universe,” Lucathar said, gazing at the horizon.

“Order? Your order is nothing but chaos masked by obedience and the rule of fear. There’s no order, there’s just terror and subjugation.”

“Don’t you think the time for preaching your moral high ground passed a long time ago,” Lucathar replied, “Your lust for power has always been as strong as mine. How else could you have come so close to defeating me? You just won’t admit it to yourself.”

“You want war. I want peace. That’s the difference between us.”

“Peace?” Lucathar laughed, “Have you seen the statues they made of you? The ones with the sword and shield and head to toe armour? What is it they called you on your favourite little planet? Goddess of War, wasn’t it? It's not just your preaching, it's the hypocrisy that gets me. No, Athena, it’s about power for you as much as it is for me. But at least I can admit it to myself.”

Athena glared up at him. The difference between us, she thought, is that I sought power to help these people, not to make slaves of them. I sought power to save them from someone like you. To unite them under a banner of freedom that would last until the end of time.

“We defeated you once and we’ll do it again,” Athena said.

Millenia past, an alliance of ancient species, D’varsha, Elthenians, Jota and others, had fought and won a battle, begun on Earth, spread across half the galaxy, and then ended on Earth. An ending that had nearly destroyed the planet they had spent so much time nurturing. It was a battle that she had led. They had thought that Lucathar had been banished to the Wastelands, that he would forever be without followers, and therefore without power in the mortal plane. How wrong that assumption had been. Instead, he had hidden himself, faking his own banishment, to return when his strength had grown and the memories of his adversaries had faded.

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“Listen to yourself,” Lucathar said, “You say you want peace yet all you can think of is winning another battle.”

Athena was losing this war. Lucathar closed his eyes and smiled, absorbing power from increasingly zealous worshippers. Across the thousand civilised galaxies of the mortal plane they struck down the followers of Athena with laser cannon or axe or rifle in the name of their righteous lord and saviour. Not a single one could be spared, not if all traces of Athena”s religion were to be erased from the Universe.

Athena knew the moment was close. Her power was all but gone, her followers only surviving in pockets of a few hundred here and there, holding out against assault, but they only delayed the inevitable. Soon there would be left with nothing: no followers, and no power, for what is a god without believers?

She had heard of other Gods being banished to the Wastelands, but had never seen it happen. It was supposed to be almost instantaneous: one moment they were there, the next moment they were gone. And nobody ever returned to tell of what had happened to them. BUt she would soon know exactly what happened.

“You still don’t have enough power to get in, do you?” she asked, looking at the tall spire in the centre of the Walls: the Tower. A flash of anger clouded Lucathar’s expression for a second before he caught himself. If she could just provoke him, make him lose concentration, perhaps just one battle could be won. Perhaps one small group of followers could escape, preserving her religion, keeping the flame alive until she was strong enough to return.

“I’ll get in,” Lucathar replied, “Sooner than you’d believe.”

“How?” she asked. Even with so many followers, he still didn’t have enough power. Who was left to convert? Where would the new followers come from? Sure, without competition his would become the dominant, or even sole, religion in the Universe, but there were many who would pay lip service only. They may fill the coffers of Lucathar’s churches, but their belief would add very little to his power.

She looked again at theTower. Solid stone that emitted a faint red hue, and was utterly unbreakable. How was it that nobody had managed to breach its gate, even after so many aeons? Her and Lucathar’s people, the Aeseri, with all the power of gods in the mortal plane, were locked out of the innermost Tower of Jashard, their own capital city.

There were legends, of course, legends even older than the oldest Aeseri could remember. A tower built before time itself; a tower built at the end of time that had pulled the Aeseri to it; a tower that tethered time itself. Some believed that should it ever fall then time itself would end. Some believed it could never fall. Nobody had anything except stories, though.

The only truth about the Tower was that nobody had ever been able to penetrate the entrance. The Engella had watched over it for as long as the Aeseri had existed, generation after generation taking station at the doors that never opened and through which nobody could ever pass. If they knew what they were guarding or why they were guarding it then nobody had ever been able to make them divulge those secrets.

“You may fool your Engella,” Athena said, “But you can’t fool me. There aren’t enough followers in the Universe, and there’s not enough faith, and not even enough fear, to give you that power.”

Lucathar’s face wore a smile that unnerved her. As if he knew something; as if he were itching to tell her a secret, to be able to gloat, and he was barely able to stop himself.

“Or have those Elementals you’ve got on your side learned a new trick for their master?” Athena taunted, hoping to at least get a glimpse of Lucathar’s plan. For all the good she would do with it, she thought.

“Oh, Athena,” Lucathar said, “By the time you find out it’ll be far too late. I know there’s no way you can stop me, but honestly I just don’t care enough about you to waste my time explaining.”

Athena wanted to rise up and fight Lucathar here, within the Walls, on the Astral plane, where all his powers from followers out there counted for nothing. Yet she knew there was no point; there was no way she could harm him. It was both their blessing and their curse. And she was too weak, even here, her energy sapped from the death of so many.

“What about Gael?” Athena asked. Her Engels had been taken from her the moment she had lost the strength to protect him.

“The Engella look after their own. You know that. There’ll be no place for him here, not when you’re gone. It’s a strange creed they live by, that’s for sure, but at least it saves me time trying to turn him to my cause. Perhaps you’ll see him one day in the Wastelands.” Lucathar’s eyes narrowed and filled with spite for a second. “And perhaps you’ll see what he really thinks of you when there’s no oath to keep to.”

Gael had served Athena for millenia, as he had sworn to do, but he would be a living testament to her fall from grace. It had never occurred to her that the Engella may come to resent those that they serve, no matter how well the service was performed. They lived by oaths, they drew their energy from them, and those oaths constrained their choices in life. Who knew what Gael might do when freed from his bonds? Athena saw no reason for him to resent her, but the possibility that he might was another weight on her mind. He would make a fearsome enemy.

“It’s cruel that we can’t die, don’t you think?” Lucathar continued, “Within minutes you’ll have nothing. For the rest of time you’ll have nothing. It would be better to die than to suffer so, especially having tasted power.” He put his hand beneath her chin, forcing her head up to look at him. “We’ll not meet again,” he said.

An asteroid crashed into the planet that Athena had helped to create. Earth, and the last of its inhabitants, the last of her followers, the species she had helped to shape, briefly glimpsed a flash in the sky before the impact ignited a fireball that wrapped around the globe, turning every living thing to ash in an instant.

Athena squeezed her eyes shut, the grief of each death too intense for her to bear, too intense even for tears. Pain overtook her and as she passed out she fell to the ground, and she knew, like all Aeseri knew, where she would wake up. It was where all fallen gods awoke.