I

In the days when Theros' clay earth was still warm and pliable, the gods met in Nyx to settle an important matter:

To whom went the stars?

The Pantheon, by Jason A. Engle

"The stars belong to me," Purphoros shouted, furnace-bellied, "for stars are orbs of flame, and I am god of flame!"

"True," Thassa conceded, her voice lapping and undulous, "but what lies in the depths is my dominion, and stars lie deep within the sky."

Nylea pursed her lips, plucking her bowstring irritably. "Do you lofty fools so easily forget nature's majesty? The stars would be unobserved, unimportant, were there no earth from which to view them."

Erebos knelt. "I make no claim to the stars. They are incarnations of light, and as such are Heliod’s domain.”

“Well said, my kin!” the sun god chortled. "I alone can hold up the breadth of heaven!" With each word, his lumosity swelled, until the other gods could no longer gaze upon him.

"Come, then," Erebos spoke. "Collect your prize."

Heliod turned to pluck the choicest star from the sky, but found he could not see it. His brightness now outshone the stars'!

Erebos rose. "Let this be a lesson. Stars need fires, depths, earth, light. But above all, they need darkness to shine against."

So wounded was Heliod's pride that he fled the assembly, never to stride the night sky again, lest it remind him of his humiliation.

And that, child, is why stars can only be found once ink-black night has crept up the horizon.

II

Aliexos had scrabbled halfway up the gate to his family home when he saw the key was in the lock.

With a minced oath, the young man hopped down to twist the key into place. He stopped. The key was turning, yes, but his hands told him it was parchment, not bronze.

Wrapped around the shaft was a piece of paper, tied in place with thread. Aliexos unrolled it. There were words on it - his father’s handwriting.

Lock up when you return. I know where you’re going. I understand.

But he didn't understand. He never understood. For a philosopher, he understood so little . Every truth-filled song Aliexos wrote, every mortifying injustice he raged against - all met with the same snort and the same flat "hmm".

At least his father "approved" for once.

Aliexos made his way over to his slit-thin window, below which he’d left a small, sopping sack earlier. It smelled of basil. His father must've found it and sprinkled some herbs to mask the stink. For a fool, his father was perceptive.

He continued to the walls of Meletis, following them for two miles before taking an acute turn into a shallow gully. The gully twisted like a thrashing fish - often intersecting tangles of bramble, which Aliexos cut through rather than dare lose the trail. Eventually, the gully emptied out near the base of a steep hill, made slick by the week's incessant storm. Aliexos cursed softly, tied his sack around his waist, and grabbed at the clay incline. His muscles ached the entire climb. He had taken this route before, yes, but never in the rain. Never while carrying a heavy load. And experience was a poor substitute for upper arm strength. But with time and sweat, Aliexos reached the top - a cliff overlooking Karile, one of the five world-ringing rivers separating Theros from its Underworld.

Swamp, by Adam Paquette

Aliexos breathed deeply, until his fast-pumping blood was cool once more. Undoing the bag from his waist, he emptied its contents onto the earth.

Sprigs of laurel.

A tobacco-pouch.

A vial of blackberry wine.

Skipping-smooth stones, taken from the river bank that morning.

And, though it took further effort to jostle it from the bag,

a sow's head.

The prayer was rough. Aliexos had performed it before, as a child in school, but only once. To ensure children like young Ali knew all fifteen major prayers. Because so rarely did it work. For fear it might.

But still, Aliexos uttered the words, or at least their cousins, as he handed his offerings over to gravity and they plummeted into the river. He fixed his eyes upwards, scanning the heavens for his prayers’ target. His gaze broke only to look into the pig-head's eyes and thank it for its service.

He first recognized The Coinsmith, his three-star outstretched arm pointed to a thin diamond mask, and beyond that, to The Harvestguards, their crecent-cupped formation holding the feet of the proud-standing Glory Bearers, whose urn billowed nebula light -

This was foolish.

- sending the light-loathing The Lamia fleeing towards The Lionfish, its spikes enmeshed with those of Spirespine as they eternally fought to prove which was fiercer, and leaping off Spirespine's head was The Oread -

Even with the fabric between Underworld and World crumbling, it would never work.

- and The Oread hid beneath The Evangel, who pointed to the minor pantheon, which encircled the major, which contained -

Erebos was there.

Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, by Chase Stone

Most gods commanded entrances befitting their station. Fawns flocked to attend Nylea's flowering from the earth. Mogis burst forth in eruptions of blood and sinew. But right now - first, nothing, then, Erebos, with the impact of a heavy sack of grain hitting the floor of reality.

Erebos was there.

“AN ANSWERED PRAYER MUST BE ANSWERED IN TURN, CHILD.”

Erebos was there, and he was waiting for Aliexos to speak.

"O Erebos! Black-dressed god of death! Stalwart of the Underworld, the-"

“I KNOW MY NAMES. STATE YOUR PURPOSE.”

Aliexos fumbled to string the words together. "It is... my..." Gods, he had rehearsed this. Erebos' eyes squinted, and it all came out at once, a burst of breath as if Aliexos had been punched in the stomach. "There’s a boy I knew. A childhood friend. His regiment died fighting Uro."

Erebos stared.

"And I want him back."

At this, Erebos intensified, the stars that covered his figure sharpening until they were pinpricks into the eye.

"I AM THE GOD OF DEATH, CHILD, NOT BARGAINS."

Aliexos stumbled backwards underneath the weight of this accusation. He chose his next words with care. Erebos’ domain was death, not killing, but angered immortals lashed out all alike.

“You are the god of acceptance, though? Aren’t you?”

The stars on Erebos’ brow softened. If less hung in the balance, Aliexos might have even used the word “twinkled”.

"Acceptance of fate? Of the world's cruelty? I know he's not coming back. It’s one of the many things wrong with the world I can’t accept. I want to fix it all. But... I know I can't fix this. Yet something within me screams out that I still need to stand up."

"And I want you to kill it."

A deep silence stretched between the heavens and the earth. Finally, Erobos stirred, and he... sat down, his body blanketing a row of mountains that would take a week for mortal feet to traverse. The god reached out a massive palm that lay level with the clifftop.

“COME, CHILD. I HAVE MUCH WORK TO ATTEND TO. BUT I WILL AFFORD YOU WHAT TIME I CAN.”

Omen of the Dead, by Piotr Dura

III

The mortal weighs lightly on my palm - lighter even than an anvil. I bring it close to my face until I can see it in detail. Oak-knot curls. Small frame. Crying eyes. Mortals are always crying.

I press my other hand firm into a mountainside, touching-yet-not-touching, searching for a hold on the World, resisting the forces that stretch me thin to cover every grave.

The mortal is speaking.

I realize I have been lost in myself. A newer occurrence - one that only began when mortals started taking names and piling stones - but now a frequent one. I listen.

It speaks of time spent with its lost one. Spring afternoons emptying wine-jugs under olive trees. Warm summer evenings made warmer by close embraces. I nod. Mortals often nod when I speak of matters beyond their understanding. Perhaps it works in reverse.

There is silence.

I prompt it to repeat its request. To shout it over the other pleas assaulting me from all directions.

God of gold, grant me wealth.

Erebos, but an hour more.

Lord beyond the veil, take my enemies now.

Each prayer shapes my godhood as it strikes me, like a sculptor's chisel into marble. But I shield myself against these other words, revealing my vulnerability only to the one before me.

The mortal's effect is subtle. Not a sculptor's chisel, but a potter's thumb, smoothing my blunter edges. It beseeches me again to deaden some organ that refuses to accept. An unusual request. I close my eyes and sink into myself.

I have answered this plea before. Where?

Some say this is my doing in Phylias, the Tedium-Agora, home to souls who did not strive in life. Slander. The Underworld’s punishments are not my work. They are but collections on debts accrued in life.

Dreadful Apathy, by Mark Zug

The mortal continues babbling. I recenter my focus.

It speaks of its friend being too young.

Its breath blows the dust of years off of my memories. I remember whose spirits I once killed.

My own.

The first one Heliod brought me was bent-backed with sagging skin. Take her, he decreed; she is too broken to worship the rising sun. So I led her across the river - for Athreos was still nebulous in those days - and laid her to rest on a soft patch of dirt.

Others soon followed. I found room for them all, for my dominion is bounded by the Five Rivers on one side and by nothing on the other. It was not long until Heliod brought me half-ripe ones - ones slain by monsters and by the elements and by their brothers. I welcomed them in kind.

And then Heliod brought me a baby.

I will not take this one, I told him. It has yet to fulfill any destiny; it brims with potential. There is no potential here, he rebuffed. Its heart is fractured, its lips blue. It will never open its eyes to witness the sun. I still refused. It is too young, I said.

There is no “too young”, Heliod snarled. There is only what I claim, and what I do not, and I do not claim this infant. Take it and put it wherever you put the rest of my refuse. With this, he threw the child at me and stomped away, leaving me with only the baby and the river.

So it came to pass that I hardened my heart. Not intentionally. Not swiftly or maliciously. But slowly, with strength, as rivers kill plains and leave canyon corpses. To stop the pain of dealing with ones who were too young. Until there was no pain, no feeling, no "too young".

I rarely make wishes. To whom would I direct them?

But I wish now.

I wish this mortal does not become like me.

I feel the World slipping from my hand. The weight of my duties in the Underworld drag me away. I let go. As acceptance of my fate, and to free my hand for greater purpose.

I put my thumb and forefinger in front of the mortal, as if to pinch the head off a cyclops. I ask for a token. He stammers, not understanding. I elaborate. Mortals seem to often bear reminders of mortals they care for. The newly dead often bargain to bring such a possession into my realm, for they prize it above all others. It never brings me pleasure to deny them. I presume the mortal carries such an item.

He fumbles and produces it: A cypress-wood toy soldier. A remnant of a youth shared with his lost one. A pawn in fake battles that encouraged his comrade to be a pawn in real ones. He cries more.

I ask him to place it between my fingers. He does.

I throw it as hard as I can.

Upwards, high upwards, past mountaintops, past clouds, until it crashes against Nyx with a horrible noise and a brilliant light. The mortal throws his face into the crook of his arm. Even I squint to abey the burning whiteness.

Silence accompanies the fade back to night, as intense as its brother noise.

The mortal lowers his guard.

I motion to a raw portion of the sky, where ten white holes puncture the cloth of night. Behold, I say: The Soldier.

Eidolon of Inspiration, by Bram Sels

The mortal's mouth opens; no sound emerges.

I tell him I will not harden his heart, for in my limited experience, they exist to be soft. Instead, I will give him a blazing soldier, a hero who guards his precious memories instead of smothering them.

The mortal stares. He cries anew. Then he laughs. He laughs and cries. Between heaves, he says it does not resemble a soldier.

I turn my head to study it better. I admit imperfection in my work. But I implore him to look not just at the ten sky-specks. To look at the black space between - the imaginary lines making up the haft of the spear, the tendons of the leg, informing the light while being its cold antithesis.

The mortal nods.

I taste the wet carrion air of the Underworld on my tongue. My time with this mortal nears its end.

I ask if he knows why stars can only be found at night.