Chapter 93: Loser club
As they entered the hall, nobody was looking at their side, and even the announcers weren’t introducing them.
That was the first thing Jake noticed.
In his experience, entrances were supposed to register—doors opening, heads turning, the social machinery of a gathering acknowledging new arrivals with at least minimal attention.
But when the three of them walked into the great hall of the Suspended Palace, the assembled gods and agents continued their conversations without interruption, drinks raised to lips, laughter floating across marble floors, a hundred separate dramas playing out simultaneously.
Asurani had been forgotten so thoroughly that her arrival didn’t even create a ripple. In the realm of gods, she wasn’t even considered a goddess anymore by her own kind.
Jake could tell that, but he didn’t say anything. He watched Asurani get hurt on the inside, and she was keeping a brave front for them.
An attendant appeared beside them—divine staff, clearly, moving with the smooth precision of someone whose entire existence was administrative.
"Lady Asurani. Agents."
The attendant noted them on a list that appeared to exist only in the air, made a small mark, and disappeared. It was like making a note of their presence.
That was the entirety of their welcome.
Jake looked around the hall with the observant attention he applied to everything. The space was enormous, with vaulted ceilings painted with divine imagery, long tables arranged for the feast not yet begun, and hundreds of people clustered in the standing groups that preceded formal seating. The divine attendees occupied a raised section at the hall’s far end—gods and entities of sufficient power that even standing still they bent the light around themselves; their agents arranged nearby with the particular posture of people representing their patron’s prestige.
The agents themselves were the more interesting study.
Jake catalogued them quickly—some wearing the casual confidence of people with established reputations, others performing that confidence, and a few genuinely relaxed in the way that only the very powerful or the very oblivious could manage. Their abilities left traces his blood sense could detect even at rest. Fire, lightning, temporal distortion, and something that felt like gravity moving in wrong directions from a man in gray who stood alone eating a piece of fruit like he’d rather be somewhere else.
"The tall woman near the eastern pillar," Asurani said quietly, angling her head barely enough to indicate direction.
"Covenant of Moros. Three agents, all battle-hardened, have been operating for decades. The god prefers quantity of experience over raw power."
"And the group by the fountain?" Elise asked.
"Covenant of Heleon: Light god’s people. Aggressive, physically enhanced, generally straightforward in the way that solar divine energy tends to produce—all heat and forward momentum, not much subtlety."
Asurani’s voice carried the particular tone of someone who had been at the bottom of the hierarchy long enough to have developed extensive opinions about everyone above them.
"The man in gold who looks like he’s never had an uncomfortable day in his life is their current star agent. He’s powerful. He’s also boring."
"What about—" Jake started.
"Elise."
The name came from across the hall like a thrown stone, sharp and surprised, cutting through the ambient conversation with enough force that nearby clusters of agents turned to look.
The goddess who’d spoken was tall and angular, her divine form carrying that particular cold beauty of someone who’d cultivated aesthetics as weaponry.
She crossed the hall toward them with the momentum of someone who had seen something unexpected and intended to make it everyone else’s problem.
Naktuna. Jake recognized her from Elise’s description—the abandoned covenant, the goddess who’d chosen her ego over a capable agent.
Elise went still beside Jake, the kind of stillness that wasn’t fear but the controlled response of someone deciding how to play a situation.
"What are you doing here?" Naktuna demanded, stopping before them with open astonishment that she made no effort to conceal.
"You don’t have a covenant. You shouldn’t be able to enter a—" Her eyes moved to Asurani and something shifted in her expression, recalculating.
"Oh. You didn’t."
"She did," Asurani said pleasantly.
"You took my abandoned agent." Naktuna’s voice carried across the surrounding space with the volume of someone who didn’t mind making a scene. Nearby conversations were dying. Heads were turning.
"Asurani, you took my discarded agent. You must be truly desperate."
"I found someone capable and offered her a covenant that treated her as a partner rather than a tool," Asurani said.
"I’d explain the distinction, but it seems like a concept you’ve struggled with historically."
Naktuna laughed, and it wasn’t a warm sound.
"Desperate gods and their charity cases. This is what the bottom of the pantheon produces—other people’s leftovers."
Her eyes swept over Jake and Elise with the particular contempt of someone performing dismissiveness for an audience.
"All the losers gathered in one place."
The conversation was taking a turn, and people were starting to pay attention.
Other gods were noticing now. Divine heads turning with the careful attention of powerful beings who sensed conflict and wanted to observe the outcome. Several agents had moved slightly closer, the social equivalent of pulling up chairs to watch something entertaining unfold.
Elise’s jaw was tight. Jake could feel the tension in her arm where it was linked through his.
"That’s an interesting analysis," Jake said, stepping slightly forward with the casual ease of someone joining a conversation they’ve been included in.
"Losers gathering together. Let me think about that."
Naktuna’s eyes moved to him.
"The Raikarndel heir," she said, assessing.
"The one she picked up in the lost lands." She knew about the boy Asurani had accepted into her covenant.
"That’s me," Jake agreed.
"Though I’d push back slightly on the framing."
He tilted his head, and his voice carried the particular quality of someone thinking out loud while being entirely deliberate about every word.
"You abandoned Elise because she refused to be obedient. And then you spent fifteen years watching her build a fleet, control a major trade route, and expand her abilities without any divine support whatsoever."
He paused to look at her for a moment.
"And now she’s joined Asurani’s covenant, and you’re calling her a loser."
He looked at Naktuna with genuine curiosity.
"I’m trying to understand the logic. The agent you abandoned—without support, alone, starting from nothing—built something that required an official guild suppression contract to address. Meanwhile, you called her a loser and moved on to presumably more obedient agents."
He glanced around. "How are those working out?"
Naktuna’s expression tightened.
"I’m not mocking you," Jake continued, which was a complete lie delivered with absolute sincerity.
"I’m genuinely asking what the outcome of your strategy has been. Because from where I’m standing, you discarded a capable person because she had standards, spent fifteen years without her contribution to your power base, and now she’s in someone else’s covenant, and you’re standing here informing us that we’re the losers."
He smiled pleasantly.
"The math seems off."
The silence around them had a quality to it that suggested the surrounding audience was enjoying this considerably.
Naktuna’s composure had developed visible cracks. "You’re a child who’s been awake for less than a month—"
"And yet here I am," Jake said simply.
"At a feast I wasn’t invited to, representing a goddess everyone forgot existed, having a conversation with a deity who apparently can’t stop thinking about the agent she abandoned."
He let that land cleanly. "Forgive me, but who’s the one who can’t move on?"
Naktuna opened her mouth.
"Perhaps," said a voice from Jake’s left, "we might allow our guests to settle in before the evening becomes complicated."
The man who arrived walked with the unhurried confidence of someone who owned every room he entered, not through aggression but through absolute comfort with himself occupying space. Golden-haired and tall, wearing formal clothing that suggested expense without displaying it obviously. He was handsome with the symmetrical precision of someone divine-touched, and when he smiled, it reached his eyes with warmth that looked genuine.
Artiemes. Their host.
He positioned himself beside Naktuna with the gentle authority of someone redirecting traffic away from an accident, his presence inserting itself into the confrontation without demanding anything from it.
"Lady Naktuna, the high table is being prepared. I believe your agents were looking for you earlier."
It was a graceful dismissal delivered as a suggestion, and Naktuna took it with the dignified retreat of someone choosing when to disengage. She gave Elise one final look that carried promises of later complications, then moved away through the crowd.
Artiemes turned to them with his full attention, and Jake watched his eyes.
That was where the truth lived—not in the warmth of the smile or the correct positioning of his intervention or the generous welcome in his voice.
The eyes held something else underneath all of it.
A measurement happening behind the performance of graciousness, the deep habitual assessment of someone who needed to know precisely where every person in the room ranked relative to himself.
Superiority as compass.
Everything navigated in relation to his own position at the top.
"Lady Asurani," Artiemes said, inclining his head with perfect courtesy.
"Welcome. It’s been too long."
