Period Piece

You are the Warrior.

And every God ever showered in the light of worship is laughing at you.

Deities above and deities below all mock your pain and sneer at your failures. Your sacred hunt is but a show to them. In each eye, holy and unholy alike, they can predict your every future, but amuse themselves watching you choose your own. Your struggle is their entertainment. Your tragedy their comedy.

But there is one future they all can see. Neither of them will mention it. They dare not spoil the mood, nor soil the mirth they reap from your strife. Though their nightmare remains a future possible, they refuse to accept it. And so also refuse to expect it.

This future is your future. The future you will choose as your own. The future in which the Gods' own heads shall adorn your spear. The future where YOU will laugh the last, and the loudest.

Fear not the Gods and their taunting, their shouting, their spitting. No. The Gods must learn to fear you. For you are the Warrior.

And no future is impossible.

"So this is it, huh?" she called up at the shimmering, shuddering image of "God" as its stained glass body hovered just inches off the ground, projecting tiny refracted rainbows all along the church's palatial insides. "Time to finally claim my vengeance and complete my quest...winner take all, loser sore balls!"

"Jacqui, are you sure kicking is even a possibility here?" Heqet called back from the safety of her podium perch, keeping The Good Book between herself and the monster. "Those family jewels seem to be made of...well, some kind of jewels!"

"A nice fragile pair of glass balls, eh?" Jacqui taunted, trying to no avail to get a peek up the goliath's gleaming, rippling-surface tunic. "Figures. Punk-ass little bitch gotta lay a curse on all women everywhere to compensate for his poor little pecker."

"One genital curse for another..." Heqet pondered aloud. "That sure sounds like something a god would do!"

"A MALE god, yeah," Jacqui specified with a roll of her eyes. "Might be different if God were a lady...".

She swore she saw the expression on God's face change as she said that, even if just in the slightest. Maybe it was just the way light shifted through its mirror-sheen body, highlighting different contours in various colors as it took a step closer.

Jacqui took a deep breath, shifting backwards a step to match and keeping her eyes fixed on his, reading ahead for his next laser beam. Behind her eyes, her brain crackled with activity, scanning the environment to plot the complex attack combo with which she could at last execute her quest's ultimate purpose.

...the wrenching knife pain within wasn't helping.

"What's the matter, God?" she challenged, flipping the silver candelabra in her hand impatiently. "Nothin' to say for yourself? You got any burning confessions you wanna get off your dick before I shatter those dreams of ever fathering another Jesus?"

She wasn't sure what she'd expected him to answer with. He didn't seem sure how to answer anyway, opting to stare down upon her blankly instead.

"...to be honest I didn't think it'd be this easy," she continued, hoping sustained swagger would keep her the upper hand. "Always figured you were some kinda coward, but other than the laser beams a second ago, you're not even puttin' up a fight. What gives?"

In an unsurprising lack of response, as if he were some Titan condemned to hold up an increasingly heavy sky for all eternity, God shrugged.

A single bead of sweat emerged on Jacqui's forehead as she tried not to break her intimidating stare. Why isn't he saying anything? Is he hiding something? Is there like, a sneak attack coming up behind me? And WHERE THE HELL IS THE FIGHT SCENE MUSIC?

Her mouth moved to one side of her face. "...Heqet? Any helpful advice you can helpfully provide me right now would certainly be helpful...".

"I'd be honored to oblige!" Heqet ventured, but stopped short. "...if you have any specific ideas, that is!"

"I don't know, give me some analysis on him or something!" Jacqui shout-whispered back, refusing to uncouple her gaze from God's glittering pupils. "Check the Bible, maybe it's got like, a strategy guide or something! Hurry, before he fries my ass with another laser!"

Heqet nodded dutifully and began flipping the massive pages one by one - no small task for a frog with a body much smaller than the book itself - awkwardly skimming the text for just such a passage. "...uhhm...wow, this is quite a long book, Jacqui. I might need some time if I'm going to properly dissect this for meaning and contextual clues!"

"We don't HAVE any time!" Jacqui hissed through clenched teeth, voice going up a notch from whisper to seethe. "I think he's plotting something...".

God's fingers twitched and seemed to light up with energy. Or maybe it was just another trickle of light phasing through his glass body again. She felt her knees bend and her butt clench in anticipation anyway.

"...ahhhm...well, I don't see anything explicitly labeled as 'known weaknesses' in here..." Heqet continued, skipping ahead in fits and bursts. "From what I can gather at a glance, there seems to be an awfully specific focus on the historical accounts of involved humans, as if their stories were more important than the accounts of the God himself, but...I don't see anything especially noteworthy!"

"Well there's gotta be SOMETHING!" Jacqui's eyes darted from side to side, casing the area for an escape route if necessary. "Just...pick a page at random and start reading out loud!"

Heqet shook her head and smiled. "Well, even if it goes against my usual protocol, if I've learned nothing else tonight, it's that you don't want me to worry about things! After all, it's not MY quest, and I have no right to argue the method in which we solve your problems, do I? Ha ha! I'll just have to trust your impeccable instincts on this one, won't I?"

"JUST! READ!"

Heqet cleared her throat.

God reared back.

Jacqui leapt ahead.

"Ahem! '...and then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, "Surely a bloody husband art thou to me."'."

And Jacqui pitched forward, falling face first as she dove between God's ankles, a loud and ugly cackle exploding from her mouth.

Heqet blinked, cocked her head, mouthed the passage again silently to herself before following up. "...foreskin? Cast as WHOSE feet? A sharp stone? Is that some sort of common ritual practice for humans? Why do they sacrifice only the foreskin and not the entire penis? What a strange ceremony!"

Rolling to avoid being stepped on, Jacqui staggered her way back to her feet, clutching her side in its searing pain as she continued to wheeze with laughter. "What...the fuck...is that doing...in the Bible???"

"Beats me!" Heqet answered, rubbing her head in confusion. "It sounds awfully bizarre with no context...maybe if I try reading from a few paragraphs back...?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever it takes to get me some answers!"

Struggling to get back on her feet without another fit of laughter, and in spite of the vice grip pain in her insides, Jacqui shook her head and resumed taking the defensive. This was not at all how she'd envisioned her final encounter with God himself.

What, like ANYTHING in this Nyquil-overdose dream-simulation has played out how I expected it to? I didn't think it'd be a long, drawn-out quest for vengeance. I couldn't have guessed my traveling companion and sister in vengeance would be a bright-eyed ball of glitter and sunshine. And I definitely didn't expect God to be a stained-glass freak of nature brought to life by own sharp-dressed inner demon...

But most of all, I never really expected God would actually fight back...

As Jacqui dove left to avoid his crushing foot, Heqet finally rejoined the conversation. "...Jacqui, I don't think I'm cut out for this 'random selection' approach!" she called out, frantically flipping back and forth as she read. "Nothing is clearly labeled in this book! Without an understanding of human history or belief structures, I have no frame of reference for whether any of these passages are relevant to your situation or not!"

"That never stopped any preacher I ever heard of!" she yelled back, leaping off the stage and diving for the pews.

Heqet continued shuffling through the pages, the intensity of her sunshine dimming by a few stray lumens. "That may be fine for humans, but I could never forgive myself as a spiritual guide and ambassador for the Great Will of the Macrocosmic Universe if I ever turned out to be incorrect and mistakenly led you astray!"

"Heqet!" Jacqui steamed through grit teeth, flipping over the end table and holding out the candelabra defensively, "...I appreciate your dedication to excellence, baby, but we're kind of in a situation here and I need something, ANYTHING, to work with! I can't do it without you!"

"Ahhh...ahm..." the frog babbled, swiping as fast as her nubby fingers would swipe. "...Jacqui, I-I can't...!"

She took a powerful, yet entirely futile swing with the candelabra, the sound of vibrating glass echoing all around her. "C'mon, I believe in you! If a stupid-ass preacher can do it, then you've gotta be a fuckin' PRO!"

"Dammit Jacqui, I'm a GUIDE, not a preacher!" Heqet shouted back, then immediately clamped both hands over her mouth in embarrassment. "...oh righteousness, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to shout! Please forgive me!"

Groaning subtly and tossing the bent candelabra aside, Jacqui shook her head and rebuffed, through a thin-stretched layer of calm and control, "It's okay, it's fine, don't worry...try not to think about failure, okay? Just relax and do what you do best, which is listening to me and obeying my every word without question. Okay? Can you do that?"

The sound of Heqet's worried humming was barely audible over the sound of God's grating body movements.

"Listen to me, just stay calm and open the book to…" she paused to pluck a number out of the air in front of her before diving to shelter as God took a swipe at her head. "...page 316! What does page 316 say?"

"...o-okay! Right, 316..." Heqet took a deep breath and obediently turned to the page. "...here! 'Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then, spitting on the man's eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, "Can you see anything now?".' Er...does that help?"

...well, shit.

"...you sure you're readin' the right Bible?" Jacqui asked over her shoulder.

"No, not at all!" Heqet wailed with a dismal shake of her head. "I told you, I have no context to go on, Jacqui! I'm an EXPERT on spirituality in the general sense, but not on the specifics of every individual religion in every individual universe! There's no way for me to know which pieces of this text are important without taking years to analyze and decipher them! I'm not FROM this dimension, so I have no grasp on the nuances that shape whatever belief system this book is employing! I have no reference! It's like...like I suddenly know nothing at all!"

...some spirit guide you are then, Jacqui almost replied, but didn't have the heart to do so out loud.

"...some spirit guide I am," Heqet said it for her, pushing The Good Book aside.

Scrapping the idea of climbing God's leg to get a better shot at his family jewels, Jacqui sighed aloud and decided to opt for damage control instead. "...c'mon now Heqet, don't beat yourself up over this. You're doing a great job, okay? I wouldn't even have gotten THIS far, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a stained glass Jesus over here, if it hadn't been for your guidance!"

"I know, I know...". Even in doubt and despair, a faint flicker of Heqet's unquenchable sincerity and energy still burned from the inside, like rays of illustrious sunlight trying their damnedest to penetrate a thick cover of clouds. "I just…I have no power as your guide for this battle! Every tidbit of my holy knowledge is just anchorless trivia at this point! I'm...I'm afraid you might truly be on your own for this one, Jacqui!"

"Nuh-uh, bullshit!" she shouted back, making her way over just to slam her palms on the pulpit, shaking Heqet out of her thoughts before she resumed dodging laser beams. "Think about why you're here right now, Heqet! You're here to guide me on my quest, right? That's YOUR quest! That's your JOB! And you need to accept it, along with all the challenges and frustrations that come with it!"

Heqet's golden eyes stared blankly ahead for a moment. The lights came on as her thoughts came home.

"You think YOU'RE useless in this universe?" Jacqui continued, leaning against a marble column to catch her breath and not think about the dagger driving through her bladder. "I fuckin' LIVE HERE, and look at me! I'm sittin' over here incapacitated by my own vagina and out-matched by a fuckin' hunk of glass!...who I should probably be paying closer attention to so I don't get squished or zapped or whatever!"

Heqet gazed down at the podium ponderously, granting the words a few passing moments to slowly sink into her permeable, amphibian skin. "...as always, Jacqui, you know how to make a spear out of a point! Nobody said my job would be an easy one...and that doesn't stop it from being my job, doesn't it? Why else would I have been brought to this universe, if not to do MY job? For what other purpose would I even exist?"

"Not really the best time to get existential on me, Heqet!" Jacqui pointed out, chucking a second candelabra up at God uselessly. It bounced harmlessly off his purple-tinted arm, leaving not so much as even a crack. "Just stick with me and do what you know how to do best!"

Heqet blinked as she felt the relentless magic of empowerment and encouragement flow through her froggy veins once more. "...Jacqui, that's it! My skills! I'm not just living here in this world, I was SENT here! I was flung into this universe by the Great Will of the Macrocosmic Universe for an express and explicit purpose! ME! I was sent here because I have the right skills for the job! That IS my purpose, isn't it?!"

"Sure, let's go with that!"

"I'm here because the Great Will believes in me!" she repeated, doubling down on optimism. "I'm right where I need to be to make the most of my skills! I believe in a power higher than my own, and conversely, that higher power believes in me right back!"

"Kinda vague, but sure, whatever butters your biscuits!"

And in a sustained voice powered by the valiant zeal of its own righteous fires above and within, Heqet shouted into the constant universe, "I MATTER!!!"

...and when her voice stopped echoing in the cavernous auditorium of the church, leaving naught but the horrible scraping sound made by the floating smoke-glass God, Heqet took an epic stance on the edge of the pulpit and reaffirmed her ordained purpose to her young charge: "Time to put my skills to use!"

"Alright, let's do it!" Jacqui confirmed with a short nod before taking a wild dive into the pews to avoid another blast of blood red beaming from God's eyes. "Let's dig us up some good dirt on this fucker, cause I'm dyin' out here without it."

"Can do!" Heqet replied stoutly, repositioning herself for prime book-reading activity after the bible had been knocked ajar. "But if interpreting religious texts are my Universe-ordained skill, then I'm gonna have to do so on my own terms! So - and I really hope you'll find this acceptable, Jacqui - I'm going to read the entire book aloud from one cover to the other while you keep God distracted! You can help point out any information that might be pertinent as I come across it!"

Jacqui's teeth ground together finely. Guess I don't really have a choice at this point, do I?

"...as long as you're doing your best, I really can't ask you for more than that."

That was a little white confidence-building lie, of course. By all means, every God present in the room knew she could ask more than that, much more. But in the heat of that moment she'd made, the words had sounded so motivational, so gung-ho go-get-em, so dripping with magical inspiration they could very well have been spoken by Heqet herself, and it just seemed a shame to waste them.

...besides, it isn't THAT bad, is it? I can keep up with a little back-and-forth battle of attrition long enough for Heqet to find some ball-crushing weakness buried in the bowels of the Bible, right? I'm Jacqui fucking Bourdelon, aren't I?!

...but even that didn't stop the lovechild of menstruation and impatience from being a fickle little son-of-a-bitch.

"Any chance you could speed it up even a tiny bit?"

Heqet gave a disconcerted hum of confusion in response. "Jacqui, I don't mean to insult all of humankind and their incredibly unique way of shaping their religious texts, but this book seems completely devoid of any logical structure altogether!"

"C'mon baby, now's not the time to get picky," she replied, popping up and ducking back down in a game of Whack-A-Jacqui between laser beam shots. "If there's anybody alive that can untangle a mess of religious man-wank like that, it's you!"

"No, I mean this book literally has no consistency!" Heqet continued, gesturing to the pages. "It's like I'm reading an entirely different book from the one I had just a few minutes ago! Did a shady and sharply-dressed so-and-so in a teal business suit swap Bibles on me during my unnecessary but entirely understandable and relatable moment of self-doubt?"

"What makes you think it's a different book?"

Heqet jabbed a single word on the page. "...when did we establish that the God in this story had a name? Who in the world is 'Zeus'?"

In a single blink of creation's eye, the very moment the words left her mouth, the exact instant in time that the syllables were uttered into existence via air vibrations against the vocal cords that normal Earth frogs should not logically have and Jacqui's brain was able to interpret them from abstract analog audio waves into coherent and catalogued understanding, God's entire body appeared to flicker and glitch out in the light, changing color and shape and attitude altogether.

His hair bleached itself a brilliant white, curling up into a tight thicket atop his head. Shoulders broadened. Biceps bulged. Even the nipples bulked up. And with a refreshing polish of bronze paint, the stained-glass Jesus had assumed the form of what could only be described as a finely-sculpted bodybuilder at a toga party.

But, more importantly, he seemed to now be equipped with a cartoonishly boiling bolt of lightning in one hand that crackled and surged with very real electric energy.

Jacqui regarded him with an asynchronous blink.

"...well, fuck me."

Frowning at her choice of language, God - ...Zeus?...no, Je-Zeus! - drew back his lightning hand and thrust it forward in her direction, an enormous clap of thunder rumbling tremendously throughout the grand dome of the chapel overhead.

Fortunately possessing the instinctive wherewithal to stop, drop and roll in the face of oncoming danger, Jacqui safely rose unharmed from behind the pew - which had now already caught fire - and shouted back at her Biblical translator, "...did you just summon fucking ZEUS?!"

"Assuming it would be a problem if I did," Heqet answered, still entrenched in page-digging panic, "...please allow me to preface that arming God with lightning powers was absolutely NOT my intention!"

"Whether you meant it or not, this is exactly the opposite of what I asked you to do!" Jacqui groaned, patience and forgiveness running thin as she whipped her head left and right, looking for another weapon of some kind. Any kind. "Keep looking!"

Heqet shook her head. "No Jacqui, I told you! It's like the entire book has changed! I can't even find the 'In the beginning' creation myth anymore! It's like I'm reading an altogether different Bible about the chronicles of an altogether different pantheon of gods! And you'll note I used the plural word 'GODS' this time!"

Narrowly ducking another explosive shaft of electricity, Jacqui politely screamed, "Well fix it then!"

Pressure and anxiety clouded around Heqet's sputtered reply as she scrambled her way through page after page of altered text. Herself no stranger to anxiety's effects on time-sensitive situations, Jacqui hated the idea of rushing her friend along, but if she didn't get her enchanted frog ass in gear, this new and improved Je-Zeus was bound to fry her up into a delicious Jacqui filet any minute now.

Somewhere, buried deep in the morbidly curious attic of her brain, was a part of her that secretly WANTED to take the Heqet approach to this situation, to try and deduce why God had suddenly levelled up and evolved terrifying new lightning-elemental powers; the hidden desire to LEARN. But, presently living right on the surface of her brain, the survival instinct part of her was stronger, and proceeded to kick the curious part in the metaphorical shin, then pushed it down in the metaphorical mud, and then took a metaphorical piss on its metaphorical face. Je-Zeus was legitimately dangerous now, and there was no time for curiosity during the stay-alive game.

"...hm?...ohhh...oh my me, wow! Would you look at that!" The familiar sparkle of Heqet's usual sunshine voice cut her thoughts right in half as another lightning bolt exploded behind her. "Gosh, isn't THAT just delightfully fascinating!"

"It sure WOULD be delightfully fascinating if you shared with the class!" Jacqui prompted from the audience, patting her hair just in case it too had caught fire.

"Is this normal behavior for human books to change like this?" Heqet asked in pure wonder as she shifted the book's position back and forth on the podium. "What an intriguing technology! Wow, imagine just how much this sort of discovery could help explain about the perception and alteration of religion over time!"

"HEQET!!!"

The next thunderclap seemed to jar the frog out of her delightful fascination and back into the real world - er, the dream-simulation world, as it were. "Oops! Sorry, I should clarify, shouldn't I?"

"Might be nice, yeah!"

She croaked excitedly and tapped the pages with her fingers. "As I mentioned, it's like all the text in the book has transformed into that of an entirely different religion! And now I can see that that's exactly what's happening! Look, whenever I rotate the angle of the book, the entire text rematerializes into something completely new! What a fascinating magic process! Do you think it's caused by the angle of light reflecting from the pages, or does it operate on a more directional magic similar to my Position Arrow? Either way, it's utterly astounding!"

"Heqet, that's...oh, wait, no, I think I know what you're talking about," Jacqui replied, reluctantly groping around for something else to heave at Je-Zeus's finely-coifed head as she crawled her way between burning pews. "It's not magic, it's like...an optical illusion thing. They print slanted pictures on top of each other or something, it's called, uh...shit, what was it?...Lenticular! That's what it is."

She snapped back to attention as Je-Zeus plucked yet another glimmering bolt of lightning out of hammerspace and took aim, "...but that still doesn't really help me in the here and now, does it!"

"Aha," Heqet rejoined with a smile, holding up one digit. "But! I bet in this case it still works like my Arrow! All I need to do is find the correct orientation and God's weakness will be revealed!"

Jacqui replied with a doubtful groan as the gleaming foe took a step closer.

"Hmmm," Heqet paused as she flipped her way back and forth through the pages, "...not sure if this counts as a WEAKNESS per se, but it sure seems like THIS incarnation of God is extremely active in his sexual pursuits, so perhaps you could--"

"No."

A few flaps of flimsy paper later, Heqet nodded resolutely. "Alrighty, seems like this character might be a little too powerful for us right now! So, what say we even the score!"

With a flick of her wrist, Heqet tapped one corner of the book, shifting it just ever so slightly on its axis and watching in bemused amazement as one fiction melted into another right before her eyes. She glanced up expectantly at Je-Zeus.

He remained the same gleaming beefcake as before, armed with the fury of the storm in his hand.

"...umm...well then...".

"Use words, Heqet!" Jacqui shouted from behind the pillar of smoke that had seconds ago been a mighty marble column at the end of the far left set of pews. "Why didn't he change this time?!"

"I'm...not sure!" she replied, the crack in her voice showing if you were looking for it. "I thought the text was what changed his appearance last time! And the words on this page are all inarguably different than they were just a second ago! I'm definitely not reading about a god named 'Zeus' anymore!"

"Okay, so who ARE you reading about?" Jacqui demanded, opting for a heavy vase off the end table, even though she knew it wouldn't be of any use. "Who's God supposed to be now?"

"Uhh...have you ever heard of a god named...Budai? No, sorry, I mean...Buddha?"

Again, the moment Jacqui heard the name, Je-Zeus transformed again. His taut six-pack abs disappeared into an expanding beer belly paunch, his earlobes lowered and dangled down about his jawline, and across his chubby, cheeky face came to rest the most ambiguous smile Jacqui had ever seen, as if this plump, jovial man knew every intimate secret of the known universe and might be willing to share his knowledge with you, but only in the form of keenly-worded riddles that you'd never solve without strong hints from a mysterious and charming spirit frog from another dimension.

It was a face that was begging to be smashed with an antique vase.

"Uh oh..." one such mysterious and charming frog spoke up just now. "Jacqui, wait! If I'm reading this text correctly, it would be very wise to NOT attack God in this form!"

Jacqui, pausing in mid wind-up with the vase still in hand, tilted her head just a tick to cast a restrained glance over at her. "...why not?"

"This 'Budai' character seems to invoke a certain passive ability known as 'karma'!" Heqet explained, direly. "If you attack him without justification, that unprovoked attack will eventually trigger an equal or greater counter-attack against you later!"

"Karma shawarma," Jacqui shot back, her arm tiring from holding back the pitch. "Back in the real world, we just call that Newton's Third Law of Thermodynamics!"

"Now's not the time for semantics, Jacqui!" Heqet replied with a wave and a hop. "Besides, I think I've MORE IMPORTANTLY discovered a weakness for this particular incarnation of God that we might be able to exploit!"

"Oh thank fuck," Jacqui sighed with relief, but still not yet lowering her guard in case Buddha-Je-Zeus - Je-Zeus...dha?...no?...no wait, Bu-Je-Zeus! - decided to try and squish her with his - its? - massive girth when she wasn't looking.

Heqet traced the line in the book as she read. "Listen, it says here that this particular deity was famous for speaking in koans! We might be able to use that against him to catch him off his guard!"

Blink. "...like...ice cream cones?"

"No, no," Heqet explained, "...koans are like riddles! To be specific, they're riddles that are built on deceptively simple questions designed to subvert logic and invoke paradox! Riddles which may or may not even have an answer at all!"

"Oh...more riddles, huh?" Jacqui deflated, slowly lowering the vase. "Back in the real world, we just call shit like that 'politics'."

"An ideological construct by any other name would stump as smartly!" Heqet carried on, bubbly as ever. "If all we have to do is confuse this 'Budai' character with an egregiously simple oxymoron, his testicles should remain wide open for a patented Jacqui-attack!"

The Jacqui in charge of such attacks, having already made her stance on riddles very unambiguously clear this evening, remained unimpressed by the proposition.

"Look, the text has even provided us a great example for starters!" Heqet read, blind to Jacqui's ambivalence. "'Two hands clap, and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?' See? Koans are built on simple logical fallacies that ask innocent questions with no correct answers, so if we come up with a simple oxymoron and get God to think hard enough about it-- "

Jacqui didn't just sigh. It was a one-ton sigh dredged up from the most abysmal depths of antipathy her soul had to offer. There really was no end to this madness, was there? She had been indelibly cursed to an eternal stream of subconsciousness, whose sole purpose was to keep her locked inside this nightmare until she had "completed her quest".

But that was it, wasn't it? No matter how many puzzles she solved, no matter how close she came to victory, there would always be another layer to the insanity, another riddle forged of broken questions with meaningless answers.

...another koan with no ice cream.

"...Heqet."

"Yes, fair lady?"

"...this is stupid."

"I agree entirely!" Heqet replied cheerfully. "Koans aren't about dispersing knowledge, they're about presenting a question devoid of all literal meaning, so that in search of an answer one can discover the universe's many paradoxical--"

"NO," Jacqui cut her off, letting her makeshift weapon fall to the floor with a loud clunk as the fire in the pews became the only noise filling the gaps between her words. "This whole thing...the quest, this dream, simulation, living hell, all of it is absolutely fucking stupid. And I'm just...I'm done."

Heqet cocked her head curiously. "...done with what?"

"All of it!" she explained, throwing her hands out in some vague gesture. "There's no fucking point to any of this shit, is there? You just said yourself, that's the answer to the stupid koan. There IS no answer. All this riddle, puzzle, journey bullshit is nothing but a fuckin' waste of time, because there IS no answer to it."

For one single, shocking moment, Heqet actually didn't respond at all. Her very core of gooey caramel optimism seemed to be blocked up, the outflow of joy put on hold. She seemed to be processing the response in some strange and alien way - strange and alien for HER, that is - by remaining both silent and motionless...

...well, for a single, shocking moment, anyway.

"Yeah! That's definitely the right idea, Jacqui!" she encouraged with a smile. "...but I know you know there's more to it than that!"

"There's ALWAYS more to it, that's the fucking point!" Jacqui yelled back, kicking the end table on its side as Bu-Je-Zeus tilted his citrine head curiously behind them. "Didn't you hear Specter earlier? We're still at square one here! We haven't made a goddamn square of progress! Every 'answer' we get just opens up another question! Every time we get 'closer', there's another fucking battle to fight! There IS no answer! There IS no ending! This quest only ends when I decide I'm done livin' it, and that's exactly what I am, starting right now! I'm DONE!"

There was a hiss and a pop behind her as the fires began spreading to the next row of pews, artfully highlighting her sudden fury.

Heqet hummed back uncertainly, her frog tongue flicking out over her nose. "...'done'? Forgive my bluntness, Jacqui, but...whether or not you're willing to fight anymore, the quest is most definitely NOT finished yet! You still have a very dangerous enemy standing right before you!"

Jacqui snorted. "This fucker ain't gonna hurt me. I think I've got him figured out."

"You found the answer???" Heqet's face sparked up with excitement, and not just from the flickering lights of the smoldering flame still actively burning in the pews. "That's great, Jacqui! I knew you had to be right on the verge of it, so I didn't want to ruin your victorious moment by blurting it out! Let's maybe get out of this towering inferno before it collapses on top of us, and you can tell me all about what you've learned?"

Jacqui crossed her arms and glared back, still running on the fumes of contempt. She felt her anger suggesting she stay and sulk to prove her point through sheer grumpy stubbornness, but a second, more hesitant glance at the fires quickly clawing their way up the silken drapes all around them seemed to insist otherwise. She wisely chose to listen, but begrudgingly so.

"Fine, but bring the Book with us."

Stepping carefully, coughing beneath the clouds of purple smoke she hadn't noticed were amassing all around them, and trying even harder not to collapse from the continued abdominal torment of the Woman's Curse, Jacqui lugged the massive Lenticular Bible from its place of honor out into the crisp pre-morning air just outside the church. Both of them inhaled deeply, grateful for the gift of crystal clear breath once more. And once she'd taken her fill and banished the smoke from her lungs, Jacqui took a seat on the front steps, shoved her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie, and spoke in the plainest, most textbook-serious voice she'd conjured up all evening:

"...we made it, Heqet. This is the final answer, right here. The last chapter. The end of our little Quest."

Heqet's mouth opened, but found a pair of fingers rudely buttoning it closed again.

"See, this 'koan' shit..." Jacqui continued, period pain robbing her voice of all color and character, "...'a riddle with no answer'? That's exactly what this quest is. We're out here spending all this time trying to extract meaning from a bullshit puzzle, when really we were supposed to think about how bullshit it was in the first place."

It should have been Heqet's turn to interject, but Jacqui carried on anyway.

"I think maybe you were right after all," she said, emptily. "It's about the journey, not the answer to the question. Hell, there IS no answer. There was no question...".

She paused here to look Heqet dead in the eye. "...and there is no God."

Fazed for but a moment, her very-clearly-supernatural spirit guide faded back into a smile and a wagging finger. "Now Jacqui, I remember us already visiting this point in our religious conjecture! If you'll recall along with me, we previously established that a God MUST exist, because I, your mysterious and charming spirit frog from another dimension, ALSO exist!"

"No..." Jacqui continued softly, even pausing to chuckle a bit. "I mean...God EXISTS, clearly, that stained glass motherfucker over there is a thing that exists, yeah, but...God ALSO doesn't exist. Y'see? It's just another fuckin' koan."

Heqet's eyebrow raised in equal parts matronly pride and patronly intrigue. "Well listen to you gettin' all metaphysical over here! I'm so proud of how far you've come on your religious journey, cupcake! Please, go on! Enlighten me on how you've managed to arrive at this fascinating and emergent conclusion?"

The frog's incessant enthusiasm slowly brought a contagious color back to Jacqui's words. With a half-assed flourish, she pointed to the Bu-Je-Zeus hovering just inside the church's doorway, too big to fit through and too dumb to duck down. "It all makes sense cause of this asshole right here...he keeps changing shape, right?"

"That certainly is a fact no one can deny!"

"But it's not JUST the book that controls his shape, y'see," Jacqui explained, keeping a watchful eye on the pudgy man just in case. "Go on, give it a spin. Watch in amazement as the mighty and powerful God does absolutely fuck-all in response."

She placed the book on her lap and Heqet obediently rotated the book by its corner to the left. Her eyes flicked back and forth as the text on the pages shifted and shimmered in the firelight, sliding back and forth between the holy words of a dozen religions, each one spoken in different tongues of the different gods, and yet, no matter which angle she rotated to, no matter where the religious rollercoaster seemed to ride, the stained glass being behind them remained the same old potbellied smiling Bu-Je-Zeus.

"See?" Jacqui nodded, slamming the book shut and pushing it aside. "It makes no difference who the book SAYS he is. He just is who he is because that's his function."

Heqet took center stage on the end of Jacqui's knee. "Function? Ooh, I smell an interesting plot twist coming on!"

"This thing," said Jacqui, gesturing with her thumb, "...is NOT a God. I bet it doesn't even have a brain. It's more like...a tool or something. A representation. It's what a God CAN be. It only ever changes shape when I THINK it's something different."

"Whoa!!" Heqet gawked, genuinely impressed. "You're certain of that? It would be an unmitigated honor to see this hypothesis in action!"

"Uhh, sure, why not?" She rolled up her sleeves, positivity slowly but surely restoring her usual animated personality. "I mean, right now I think he's Buddha, right?"

"Budai, I think is the correct pronunciation!"

"Says the frog spirit who shouldn't know jack shit about human religion in the first place."

"Fair point!"

Jacqui took a breath, trying hard to recall any possible mythology she could think of, outside of comic book movies. "But now let's say I think he's...uhhm, shit, let's see...now he's Thor."

Fuck, why did I have to pick another god of thunder? she scolded herself as Bu-Je-Zeus suddenly acquired a decidedly Scandinavian helmet, a medieval forge hammer, a flowing red cape, and luscious golden locks that all but begged to be stroked tenderly. It's like all I can think of tonight are gods of thunder, and rock and roll...

Why is everything 80s night tonight...?

"Wow, what could this mean?" Heqet marveled at Thor-Bu-Je-Zeus. "Are you suggesting perhaps you were born with some kind of...power? Or control over the Gods of this universe? Have you secretly been the Chosen One all this time, and have only JUST NOW unlocked this knowledge through the hard labors of your quest?"

"Nah, it's nowhere near as cool as that," Jacqui replied with a shrug. "In fact, it's something we were just talking about before that old dickhead Specter made this old dickhead show up."

A momentary frown appeared on Heqet's face at the drop of the Demon's name, but it was quickly lost in the shimmer of the triumphant smile.

"God was invented by humans," Jacqui continued, nodding vaguely at the Viking behind her. "The 'holy book' or whatever was just written by a bunch of human men. And then they tried to turn that around, said God invented humans, so that people would respect this God they made up. Some invisible supernatural dipshit we all apparently owe our very existence to. What does he look like? Oh, he just looks like whoever you think he looks like. See what I'm saying? God isn't REAL, he's just an idea. And over time people just sort of, y'know, accepted that as the truth. God was invented by men, and then those men made everyone believe it was the other way around. They even added that line, 'God created men in his image', that's probably why men think they're Gods. Get it?"

Heqet did seem to get it, but didn't seem to accept it. "Hmm...well, your points of data do make a beautiful line, Jacqui, but I certainly hope you're still treating this revelation as only a theory! I mean, maybe it's just me talking - on account of how many parallel universes I've seen first, second, and third-hand! - but it seems that people in your universe have a very tenuous grasp on the concept of existence! You sound very sure that Gods are nothing but a fabrication around here, but what if perhaps you just lack the technology or comprehension to access the proof you otherwise don't have?"

"Don't give me that shit, this is EXACTLY why I always tell people I'm agnostic," Jacqui replied with an exasperated grimace. "Okay, yeah, sure, maybe God exists and we just can't pick him up on radar. Or maybe he doesn't exist and we're all idiots for trying in the first place. But until we GET to the point where we can understand the difference, he may as well just NOT exist at all. Gettin' real tired of havin' to re-explain this shit...".

"Well, you sure are consistent, I'll give you that much!" Heqet nodded proudly. Unfortunately, the dreaded 'friendly reminder' face followed after. "Just in the interest of relevant discourse though, I would, once again, like to point out that I - a corporeal manifestation of a spiritual concept sent to help you in your quest for knowledge - am still physically here, in this very universe, simulated or otherwise! My existence here has to count for something, right? Ha ha!"

"...well, if nothing else, you're cute," Jacqui replied with a half-smile.

"Or maybe I'm the key to the doorway of comprehension you've been trying to unlock all night!"

Jacqui snorted. "...or maybe I'm just batshit crazy and YOU don't exist either."

And just like that, in a horrible puff of black smoke, a shadow washed over Heqet's body, both vanishing as the smoke cleared.

And the fire inside the church continued to burn.

Jacqui felt a prick of adrenaline in her chest as she failed to wake up in her bed.

"...Heqet?"