Book of Revels: Fear & Panic

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Vancouver drifted into a caustic disquiet, the rain bitter and consuming. Traffic burst in stilted rushes, arguments broke out at transit stops. The rush of air past Magni's face chided his ascent through Delilah's strange building back to the flat. So many disconnected people within the same building, none who spoke to each other or seemed to rely on mutual community. Ferments of panic rumbled through his godly skin, terror its' closest companion. Twin war-rhythms beat the shock of hearty yet expedient heartbeats, a clash and scream extended as long as the fearsome twins lived. There was no time. 
Inside the flat, Magni saw the slight depression of where Lilith's suitcase resided on the carpet, gone with the girl when she and Caleb fled. Good. The child's essence returned in the reverse flow of a river, as a river flowed uphill, so the child's soul returned in trickles. He busied his mind to the dilemma, a child of Asgard locked on this earthly realm by a mother far from the unexceptional populae of humanity.
These humans did not whimper less in fears and terrors, they were as given to outbursts and prayers as when they sacrificed seven horses and rams and fellows to the Alfather in times of dire need. The irony lied not in their motivations but their vectors. Praying to a universe of calculations and con men, while those who held faith ate themselves and others' dreams alive. 
Battle was no more a sacrifice now as it was when Magni was Jarl of his Jarldome, young folk (men and women now, these non-binary persons would take further research to understand) running off with guns and strapped boxes of what they called ammunition to their chests. 
But the girl.
Caleb's daughter, inside was the spark of divinity, a miasma of mercy contained in life by her mother's chiding, her mother's control, her mother's will. As he stood in front of the doors to Delilah's bower, he watched her curl Stana up on the bed. Echoes of soothing words and Stana's terrified moans floated from the shields and wards, which while protective against the physical, did nothing to tame the essence of gods. She smoothed Stana's hair, let the young woman grip at her arms, drag the cloth she loved beyond compare in rakes of stubby fingernails. 
Had Delilah learned through the ache in her eyes the capricious nature of being seen by a god? Of being known in her frailty and power by the divine? Why else would she empty out her daughter, a life to be protected and coddled until she grew into the chieftain's daughter or shield maiden, or Queen? He bit down on the rationality of Delilah's parenting along with his cheek, as the door did not so much fling open as explode into shrapnel and shard.
Two lanky and gawking faces heaved into the space. 
"Deimos. Phobos." Magni knew the stories, as he wrapped a belt around one of his fists and secured it to his wrist. Remembered the campfire moments, when Ares was too overcome with blood or wine to refrain from the tale of their making, his loyal and proud sons. In the wake of Hephaestus' cuckolded marriage to Aphrodite, the indestructible gossamer net, Aphrodite's shock and panic caused the bristling new life in her belly to twist, to feel their mother's terror as a singular love. If Aphrodite was the goddess of love was not her terror party to it? Was panic not the milk in her breast? 
Sons for their father's work, where Eros and Harmonia were children for their mother's. 
'All gods are born of need, Magni.' Thor spoke grim, mouth thick with mead. Tears glossed his red beard, Baldr's body fresh in stillness. Caught by Magni's hands at the conclusion of the damned dart. They huddled outside Sif and Thor's bedroom in Bilskírnir, the magnificence of the pristine hall as empty as the restless chill which grew in Magni's chest. 
'My brother, then...' 
'Borr's sack, I hope he's a new Baldr.' Thor's head craned backward at Sif's labour screams, the grunts of childbirth surrounded by Frigg and the other women. The hammer's massive weight rested against Thor's leg. Thor patted its' handle, one of the gauntlets on his arm 'in case... in case'. 
Magni's brother was not born as a new Beauty, nor the promise of happy and fruitful seasons. Modthi was the brother of woe, a child born of wrath more impenetrable than a shield wall. Wrapped in furs and wool, Magni remembered how little Modthi weighted, when Odin placed the child in his arms. Thor would not do it, for Thor was entangled in Freyr and Tyr's arms, he who Magni would know later as Ares helped Freyr hold Thor back. Stripped of his belt and gauntlets and hammer, a warrior's wroth taken form, while Sif wailed. The god of Thunder overwhelmed by his infant son's anger was as catastrophic as Jormungandr released upon the realms too early. Too soon. 
'Out. Send the brothers out.' 
If Ares were told by the Delphic Oracle to sent his and Aphrodite's twins to the mountainside, he spat in her eye.
A man loved his sons.
Ares loved his sons and weathered the aching screams of Aphrodite with her. Created a bastion for them in Thrace, Deimos and Phobos as thorough in their use in War as Eros, Heimeros and Anteros were in Love.
"Magni! Look, brother, it's a Magni!" 
"I know what a Magni looks like, Phobos!" 
"Yes, it's a Magni. You've got cheek being out in the open."
"We're alone in a room, Phobos." Magni spread his stance and staggered his feet, stood in front of the bemagicked door. "Go. You will not succeed this night." 
Eyelids aflutter, Phobos' neck craned too loosely, snapped too suddenly to seem normal or unbroken. Each quiver of his limbs took the quality of a dying man, a soldier in a pit whose bones were shattered and pain drifted to oblique physical shock. The same dumb smile of a dying soldier, of the mania Ares brought with him at first in toddler's strides then a youth's paces. 
"So you're right." 
"That's what I said!" Deimos slapped his hand on the entryway table. It shattered in splinters, which clung to the air without feeling gravity's pull.
"You didn't say it, Deimos. Lying is not loving." Phobos turned on his brother, who shrank in dreaded terror, curled inward as those who lost their grit in battle sunk into their deaths for a release unbecoming. Recoiling snake. Good, let the brothers bicker, the more they concentrated on themselves the less Stana's whimpers burned in Magni's ear. 
"I would have said it! Was going to say it!" Deimos' hand wrenched up from the bric-a-brac, wood and metal splintered into needle-thin abrasions in the air. A baleful bawl ripped the air to ribbons, mirrored in the women Magni stood sentinel to protect. 
"But you didn't! You! Didn't! Say! It!" Phobos shrieked and the air pitched into a sickness which curled in Magni's stomach like spoiled meat. He grunted and staggered one foot, Delilah clucked her tongue in her periphery. Whispered a mother's love into Stana's soiled hair. The boys surged together, each slap and smack inducted the gut-rot coiled into the base of Magni's brain. Bodies slopped to the floor in tangled antagonism, Deimos struck his brother's head against the floor until Phobos' neck cranked and flopped. 
And flopped, eyes lolled into his skull.
And flopped, tongue half bit through, a caricature of death when warfare wasn't about bullets or mortar fire like he'd seen on the motion pictures Delilah sat him in front of. Magni cast his gaze back. She whispered at Stana, Aphrodite's blessing coursed through her maternal instincts, tempered them to see what Stana's innermost soul wanted: a mother's love. 
"Oh... ooohh, tricksy Northman. Tricks and trickies..." Deimos rose from the floor, popped limbs back in place and rolled a broken hip until it snapped and popped back to the pelvic girdle. "Brother, Mummy's gone and done a trick, huh?" 
"W-" Phobos rolled to his knees and snapped his jaw back as the crimson ichor painting his lip before touching the floor. "We aren't here for you and your playdate games, Magni Einridsen." 
"Wouldn't it be more fun?" Magni shuffled in front of the door, prayed Delilah's eyes stayed down even as he felt them stabbing his shoulders. "Do you really want to waste your time terrifying a defeated girl?"
"But she's not defeated, she's upset." Deimos stalked toward Delilah's door, sniffed the air for its' fragrance of Delilah's perfume. "Noooooo defeat here. Not for the one who killed the Judge's lover. We knew her, we knew Tuija, she fought us and fought beside us." 
"She won't fight you, Deimos! I will fight you!" He shifted in front of the Olympian, raised one fist then the other. Yet, the demonic deity's words rattled Magni's resolve enough to hold firm to one more truth: Caleb had a lover? One fit to fight beside gods? The ache in his nephew's chest clarified all the greater, the defeat in Caleb's bones. 
The man wasn't weak, he was grieving. 
"She threatened Mummy." Matter of fact, emotionless and grim, Phobos spoke the consuming curse upon the atmosphere. It radiated past the guards and sigils, past shields and buffers to stroke Stana's ears. The Keeper screeched and curled into a ball on Delilah's bed, no shush or comfort Delilah gave the woman halted the moans. Phobos' head wobbled on its bent stalk, "She is stealing Names, using them for cantrips and calling it justice. Killing Judge's lovers with forbidden spells." 
"Why are you protecting her, Magni?" Deimos' eyes narrowed to the same slits Magni imagined in Hellene armour, a plumed helmet faded in and out of existence, no reminder but the mohawk of brown hair straight and high. 
Magni glanced backward, gulped the blood-fever of the twins down his throat like a balm against the impending cold. 
"Delilah rescued me from the bowels of the middling plane. I owe her this." 
"We're not here for her. Mummy took care of the enchantress." 
"I cannot let you through." How did he explain their mother's curse brought them down on the woman through osmosis? That unlike the emptied state of her and Caleb's daughter, now Delilah began to know how disastrous a mother's love burned? He saw the love in her, when she sent Caleb and the girl off, the push to remove them from their impending disaster. 
Magni knew as adamantine as the shiver to Delilah's arms as she held Stana, Caleb would have fought the brothers with every ounce of his divine blood. Anything to keep justice, to avenge his loss. Yet, Caleb was again treated to the cruelty of his former beloved: for love was as cruel as the edge of pilum or blade. 
What was love but hate disguised by desire? She neither desired him, nor wished his ire when he saw the confounded bond between Delilah and Stana grow. As he levelled a blow to Deimos' cheek, felt the bite of Phobos' knee connect with the back of his thigh, Magni prepared for a long war. 
One hard fought enough to absolve him of his responsibilities toward the woman who found him in the dank hole of a mine, who forged his identity to take over Marick Breytenbach's domains. One who twisted his kin and coddled those who murdered their lovers. Every slice of skin and thunderous strike was another moment of absolution. 
No, Magni would not be beholden to Delilah nor would he trust the Keeper who stole the true Name of his grand-niece, when she made no play to have it returned. A girl so emptied her Name held little more than paltry humanity's power.
Each shred of terror and filter of ice in his soul from these bastard twins was emancipation. 
Struck to the ground, Magni eyed Delilah and in her fretful gaze, she saw not even an enchantress' call on the heart could stand forever. 
There was no love between them to be lost.