Chapter 97: Battle of Gods
"But he’s wrong about the delivery, and he’s wrong about you. The offer stands if you change your mind."
He rose, and his group rose with him.
"Enjoy the rest of the feast, Raikarndel."
They moved away through the hall, Draven last, who looked back once with the expression of someone filing a note for later.
Elise watched them go.
"That man is going to be a problem."
"Draven? Probably."
Jake picked up his wine again. "But predictable problems are manageable problems."
Asurani reappeared at their table before he could say more, settling into her chair with the particular energy of someone who had spent an hour in divine company and was glad to be back among mortals.
She looked at Jake and Elise, then at the direction Maxidred’s group had gone.
"Harmis’s covenant approached you," she said.
"Yes."
"And you declined."
"Yes."
Asurani tilted her head, and something in her expression was more curious than pleased or displeased.
"They’re one of the most powerful covenants currently operating in the realm. Twelve agents, established assets and a war god who is straightforward to work with by divine standards."
"I know," Jake said.
"Why?"
Jake considered giving her the full explanation—the origins question, the values question, the basic principle that shared background wasn’t a sufficient foundation for trust. Instead, he looked at her and shrugged.
"I didn’t like them."
Asurani studied him for a moment, and then something in her expression settled, the curiosity becoming something quieter.
"All right," she said simply.
"That’s it?" Elise asked.
"He turns down twelve allies and you accept ’I didn’t like them’ as the complete answer?"
"He has his reasons," Asurani said.
"And he’ll tell me when he decides it matters for me to know them."
She reached for the wine with the ease of someone who had made peace with her agent’s opaque decision-making style.
"Besides, Harmis’s agents are effective but they think like a military unit. Jake doesn’t."
Before Elise could respond to that, the hall’s ambient noise shifted.
It was a subtle change at first—conversations dropping in volume, movement slowing, attention orienting toward the raised divine section at the hall’s far end with the automatic social reflex of a gathering recognizing that someone with authority was about to speak.
A man was standing.
Artiemes.
He rose from the divine table with the ease of someone born to be watched, and the hall completed its transition to attentive silence by the time he was fully upright. He looked across the assembled covenants with the warm, commanding presence of a host who genuinely enjoyed these moments.
"Friends," he said, and his voice carried through the hall with a clarity that required no effort or volume.
"I’m grateful to each of you for making this evening possible. These gatherings matter—not just for the feast, which I understand was exceptional—" a ripple of genuine laughter went through the hall, "—but because the connections formed in rooms like this one shape what comes after."
He paused, and something in his bearing shifted slightly—still warm, still commanding, but carrying the additional weight of someone introducing news rather than pleasantries.
"Which brings me to an announcement I’ve been waiting to make until the right gathering. Until enough of the realm’s active agents were present to hear it directly rather than through report." His eyes moved across the hall with that golden assessment.
"In approximately one year, The PrimoRegent will be hosting the All-Glory Battle."
The hall’s silence became a different texture.
Some faces showed surprise—genuine, wide-eyed, the reaction of people encountering information they hadn’t anticipated. Others showed the controlled non-reaction of people who had heard rumors and were now confirming them. A few—the older agents, the ones who had been operating long enough to have seen cycles repeat—showed something closer to grim interest.
Jake looked at Elise.
Elise’s expression told him this was significant in ways she’d explain later.
"For those newer to our community," Artiemes continued with the inclusive consideration of a good host, "the All-Glory Battle is a tournament between covenants. Agents compete representing their gods, the results determining shifts in divine power and hierarchy that persist for years afterward. It is—" he smiled, "—the most consequential event in the realm’s divine politics, and it happens rarely enough that each occurrence reshapes the landscape entirely."
A god across the hall called out something in a language Jake didn’t recognize. Artiemes responded in the same language with what sounded like reassurance.
"The details will be distributed through official channels over the coming months," Artiemes said, returning to the common tongue.
"But I wanted you all to hear it here first. Use the year wisely. Train. Build your covenants. Form the alliances that will matter."
His smile remained warm.
"And enjoy what’s left of this evening, because I suspect we’ll all be considerably busier soon."
He sat, and the hall exhaled.
Conversation erupted around the tables with the particular volume of people who had been holding reactions in reserve and were now releasing them simultaneously.
Jake caught fragments—strategies being revised out loud, concerns about which covenants would align with which, questions about what Olympos stood to gain by hosting rather than participating.
Asurani sat very still beside them.
"You knew," Elise said to her quietly.
"I suspected it was coming," Asurani said. Her voice was calm but her eyes were working through calculations she wasn’t sharing.
"It’s been long enough since the last one."
"Is that why you’ve been collecting agents?" Jake asked.
"Not just general growth but specifically preparing for this?"
Asurani looked at him for a moment and then did something he hadn’t seen her do before—she answered honestly without the divine deflection.
"Yes," she said. "Among other reasons."
"What do the results actually mean?" Elise asked.
"If a covenant wins."
"Power redistribution between the gods," Asurani said.
"The stronger your covenant’s performance, the more divine energy flows to your god from the shared reserve that all gods maintain together. Win significantly and your god jumps several tiers in divine hierarchy."
She paused. "Lose badly and the opposite happens. Covenants have collapsed entirely after poor All-Glory performances when their god couldn’t sustain the power drain."
Jake looked across the hall at Maxidred’s group, now deep in urgent conversation. At Vikram, eating calmly while his god spoke to three others in the divine section with visible intensity. At Artiemes, sitting with the satisfied posture of someone who had released information strategically and was now watching the reactions with interest.
"A year," Jake said.
"Roughly," Asurani confirmed.
He thought about where he’d been a month ago. Class V, lazy, eating well, avoiding development, wandering to guild offices with Eskar and thinking the Greywood goblin hunts were exciting.
One month to here. To covenant-siblings and divine feasts and gods who crushed air with their existence and tournament announcements that reshaped divine hierarchies.
"We should go," he said.
"I need to think."
They stayed for the feast’s formal conclusion, the social obligations of departure performed correctly, brief farewells exchanged with Apsharathevi and Nadya, a nod at a distance toward Maxidred, who returned it without expression.
Naktuna was nowhere visible when they left, which either meant she’d departed early or was being careful, and Jake didn’t know which interpretation concerned him more.
The swan carriage was waiting on the floating marble platform, the divine birds standing in the cool night air with the patient stillness of creatures unbothered by waiting.
Jake climbed in and looked back once at the Suspended Palace glowing against the dark sky before the swans lifted them upward and Roakan’s distant lights appeared below.
"The All-Glory Battle," Elise said, after they’d been flying in silence for several minutes.
"In a year," Jake said.
"What are you thinking?" Elise asked.
Jake watched the clouds pass beneath the carriage and thought about pressure that crushed air, about a tournament that reshaped divine hierarchies, about a year that was simultaneously too short and exactly enough time if he used it correctly.
"I’m thinking," he said, "that I’ve had comfortable lives before."
He looked at Elise. "I’m done being comfortable."
Asurani, sitting across from them with the pale gold of her form softened in the night air, said nothing.
But she smiled.
