There is distance, but not enough.

The corpses move slowly, with an inexorable momentum. They cannot maneuver. They will not form complicated battle lines, or strike with technique immaculate. But they will reach. They will grasp with hungry thorns. And only one of them needs to take hold of you. There is distance, but not enough.

She’d filled her hours with pasta mistakes. Hestia taught her the ways of kitchens, homes, and comfort, and she survived on nothing but her lessons. She fled down paths of long-forgotten memory, chasing after a girl she knew, a girl she was, a girl she never reached. Once more she found home, held close to a heart she feared she’d lose forever. And today, in the driving rains, she feels the thorns burning her skin, the grip of the goddess breaking her down piece by piece. There is distance, but not enough.

The Master of Assassins cackles to have pulled such a trick. She throws her head back, too drunk to even see the ants formed up against her. Too far gone to count the bodies she will expend, for the weary work of finding more will belong to the Master of tomorrow. She stands, untouchable, atop her stone altar, so flush with divine favor that none, not even the heretic, might touch her. 

There is distance, but by thunder it will not be enough.

“Zeus!” Her voice peals across the field, to meet the mad laugher of the Master of Assassins. “Who raises thrones and tears them down! Who casts her lightning, and obliterates her target without fail! Who stands atop the peak of Olympus!”

“Are you [i]seeing[/i] this shit?!”

“She comes groveling to you, pretending to be outnumbered and hard put-upon, when all along she has such a host in her back pocket! She cries faithfulness to her office, when all along she plans to murder the very daughter her leige commanded her to retrieve! [i]Your[/i] very daughter! Let her deny it before you, if she dares! If this is the sort of person you want carrying your favor, then let it be so! Your favor is yours, and you need answer to no one for how you spend it.”

“But we have not forgotten you either! [i]I[/i] have not forgotten you! How could I?! Incorrigible meddler! Insufferable in your generosity! She of loudest, and most ill-timed laugh!” And lest you think she could exhaust your titles in such a short span of time, hold off the enemy for a few weeks and see how far down the list she can go! “We have no fancy tricks! We have no scheme to fall back upon! We throw our courage to the sticking place, and if that not be enough, then let no one say we held back a whit!”

“If she is to carry your blessing, then let it be so. But if you’re looking for an instrument, to show that no one may play lightly with the Thunderer’s favor, well!” Her hand traced the grip of her pistol. “Here are two, hanging from my belt, that will not put you to shame!”

No one hears the Captain, exchanging his own quiet words with the gods. But that is fine; the one he prays to prefers the quiet anyway. “Lord Hades, this is [i]wrong.[/i]” His voice buckles beneath the horror, but he must carry on. “Please. Allow us to set it right. We will put them to rest. All of them. Only, let us do it properly. Let us carry the courage, the memory of all who have come before us. Let their hearts stand alongside our own, that whatever terror may strike us in the task, we will not break before it.”

For that, then, is the order passed down to their legions. The garden of Demeter, however fearsome, is slow, too many to achieve any complicated formation. It will fall, then, to the Kaeri, and the Plovers, and whatever other horrors she possesses, to be the hammer driving them against the anvil of Demeter. Do not forget which way you face. Do not let them take you where they want to. Stand strong, and show them the limits of fear.