--Day 1, City of Messus. Roof of the Messus City Police Department. 13:00 Messus Standard Time--

Lightning cracked across the sky. The wind screamed, drowned most of voices out of the air. Rain fell in torrents, near horizontal when the gales picked up. Wet, freezing bullets pierced charcoal feathers. Kestrel shook himself and adjusted his feet against the mesh under him. It wasn’t comfortable to walk on, but it was better than the bare marble of the roof. Kestrel shook himself, as though it would do anything to dispel the endless wall of water soaking him to the bone.
At least he wasn’t alone in this mess. Whisper sat at his side, silken feathers flattened to her neck with water. Across the way, Arianna stood on a podium, barking orders to the gathered fighters. A familiar crimson kadin stood at her side, handing out hot soup to keep combatants warm during the coming fight. Shani, Kestrel recalled. She ran a soup kitchen, and the entire criminal underground of Messus was terrified of her. It wasn’t his business anymore, of course, but he was curious what a hero like Arianna was doing standing side by side with someone like that. Even more curious was the human talking to Shani, gesticulating wildly as he explained… Something. A large man, heavy, with his hair all pushed to one…

“Naveen?” he demanded over the roar of the rain. Orange eyes snapped to meet his, and the man’s face split into a wide, fanged grin.

“Kestrel!” Naveen waved. “Glad you could make it! You seen Fieris yet?”

It was Arianna who answer the question, however. “He couldn’t make it this time.”

“Huh? Why not? It’s not like Fieris to miss a raid…” Naveen’s expression softened and he almost seemed to wilt, disappointment in every line of his body.

“His mate’s cubbing.” Kestrel explained. “And he’s been avoiding Messus for… some time now. I’ve got a question of my own--Why the hell are we on the roof instead of inside in the offices? As wonderful as the vantage point is…”

“Put simply,” it was Shani who spoke, pouring soup into a large bowl and passing it to Naveen. The toa squealed and drank from it without even waiting for a spoon, “if Danuoc takes the building down, we aren’t stuck inside the death trap.”

That made a certain amount of sense, Kestrel had to admit. And with the way the rain was coming down…
Messus would be completely under water in three days. “So what’s our plan without the old man? Aside from getting horrific water rash. Gonna be weird fighting a god without him.”

“Our current plan is you and Whisper do what you do best. Snipe Danuoc whenever you can while Shani and I keep her busy.” Arianna waved her tail as she explained, momentarily turning to bark more orders at another group. “Naveen of course is our healer, as always.”

At the mention of his name, Naveen perked from his disappointment over Fieris’s no-show. “Leave the injuries to me!”

Reasonable enough. Kestrel nodded and stood, shaking himself again. “Perfect. Weaver and I are gonna find a better perch then. Dryer.” He spun, and with a flash of Talik, vanished into the topmost floor of the neighboring building. With the Crack of lightning, Weaver followed.

--Day 1, Rajhanai Foothills. Edge of The Deeps. 15:00, Messus Standard Time.--

“Danuoc!”

It was impossible to tell who was shouting. The voice carried the tenors of both Life and Death, could have been either.
Green lightning cracked over the river, illuminated the water and the figures there. Danuoc, her teeth clamped around exposed bone, thrashed against the shore to try to drag the massive figure of Freyja into the deepening water. Death snarled, her breath churning the river beneath them, and with a flap of her wings carried the otter-like god another meter out of the water. Danuoc’s scream was wild, unrecongizeable as the kind, playful being who guarded Messus.

Neve soared above the scene. The whole pack seemed to be here. Evermore’s flames sizzled in the pouring rain, but the bird-shaped goddess shrieked and dove for Danuoc’s back. Neve herself found her own mark, lightning crackled between her fangs, and pink-blue sparks flew down to strike Danuoc’s eye.
Her old friend’s scream was swallowed by the crack of thunder that followed. She released her jaws from Freyja’s tail and dropped back into the water, snarling and bellowing with all the fury of a bear.

“Keep going!” Antiopa’s voice called, and teal sparks danced across the water. Rifted onto relatively dry ground.

More shouts. Splashes. Neve dove down, plunged her hooves into the water. It came to her belly, in this form. Tugged at her belly fur.
And it’s getting deeper, she thought to herself. The various non-gods present hid up on the taller hills… but they’d run out of hilltops, and quickly. “Danuoc!” Neve snarled, and flared her wings. Her old friend shoved herself to all fours, eyes wild and unfocused.
Lightning crackled in Neve’s jaws. Like this, Danuoc’s head was bigger than her own body… but fear never had been something Neve paid any heed to. She reared and charged.