So the pattern is simple and undeniable. Yet it is one thing to see correlation, it is another to ascribe causation. Yet I think here, the causation is just as simple. When Fer, Maisara and Fortia incarnated, Titans walked Arda and Dragons dominated its skies. It wasn’t until the Rhomaion Concordat that humanity actually settled down to make cities. Before that the only way a tribe could even have hope of staying alive was in one of two fashions:

They could either constantly stay on the move and avoid notice by the apex predators of Arda or they could seek the assistance of Divinity.

In that regard, someone like Halkus, someone even like Kavaa would simply be not good enough. A Divine needed to have the strength of Fer to even qualify for the role. Now? Now not so much. Fer would not appear now because Fer’s strength is simply not required. Peace now is embraced, it is not enforced through fear of retaliation. Light now is not the blade that shines bright as it splits the night apart but a banner to rally around. Even magic. I am so utterly grateful I formed during Worldbreaking when magicians were feared, hated, cursed and respected. Imagine how I would have turned out if I formed now? When mages are little more than circus shows!?

So I posit Perpetual Decline. As human society advances they do not stop needing Gods but rather the roles of the Gods themselves change. From protectors against extinction to protectors of kingdoms to leaders of state to leaders of holy orders. We have seen this. This has happened. This is the history of Arda. There is nothing to argue here.

A theory’s value is not in its sense but in its predictive power. Here, I will cast my own prediction and the logical conclusion of Perpetual Decline Theory: There will come a time when the only thing Divines fight against is humanity’s boredom and they’ll be so dispensable that humans won’t even bother learning our names.

- Excerpt from “Perpetual Decline Theory”, written by Goddess Elassa, of Magic.

Kassandora stood in centre of the maelstrom that was happening on the bridge. “TELL THE LIGHTHOUSE TO POWER ON THE SECOND TURBINE!” Crew members ran about, crew members screamed commands into radios and crew members relayed commands between each other. “LIGHTHOUSE REQUESTS PERMISSION TO SLOW DOWN!” Kassandora stood in her black coat, her black cap, her black boots as she bit her bottom lip with the sheer excitement that was going on right now. “CAPACITORS STILL WARMING UP!” A man ran between monitors carrying a stack of papers as the Goddess whose presence dominated the room. “RAILGUN TEAM REPORT NEEDING MORE POWER TO EVEN START POWERING IT ON!”

The INS Resolution was anchored with its rear facing towards the shore. “DAWNBRINGER REPORTS BOTH GENERATORS STABLE!” In the distance were the ruins of Ordeaux, still ablaze with the devouring set by napalm. “POWER TRANSFER STARTED FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE!” Above the ruins of Ordeaux was Elassa’s floating mounting, the Goddess of Magic had torn it into pieces and she was throwing huge chunks of rock down. “CAPACITORS TWENTY SECONDS FROM BEING HOT ENOUGH!” And immediately through the window were the locked missiles pods the INS Resolution. “RESOLUTION REPORTS ENGINES GOING HOT!” The missiles had long been expended in the initial bombardment of Ordeaux, now strapped on top of them was the huge railgun. “LIGHTHOUSE REPORTS REACTOR TWO GOING OUT OF CONTROL!” Held down by heavy chain, the cannon was just two rails connected by some crazed mechanism and powered by huge cables, each one as large and as wide as a car. “CAPACITORS ARE STARTING TO CHARGE!”

Kassandora looked over the chaos with nothing but sheer pride. She smiled wide at the chaos. The scurrying men. The generators starting to spin up. The slow roar of power plants followed by the scream of their steaming cooling towers. And straight ahead, on a monitor above the window, the most important number was displayed:

Capacitor Charge: 0%

And there it went! Capacitor Charge: 1%

Captain Evans felt his ship rock from side to side he looked through the glass window of the bridge. From here, he could inside the massive container ship, at the two reactors in the middle of its cargo holds, each one with its own steam tower. “Captain!” A man, in a uniform of blue and white rather than the dark greys and blues that the military crews were, shouted as he slammed open the door to the bridge. Immediately the roar of the ocean, the ferocious roars of waves, the howls of gas reactors and the screams of cooling water turning into steam filled the bridge of the ICS Lighthouse. “ARE YOU THERE?!” The man half-screamed, half-shouted as his eyes tried to swallow everything going on in the room.

“I’m here!”

“Engineers on Reactor Two are asking to prep the emergency valves!” Immediately Captain Evans turned and inspected one of the huge screens that filled the entire right side of the ship. Reactor One was stable, operating at full power. Reactor Two had an issue with the cable, power was not being fed through, emergency capacitors were trying to contain the surge but the temperature was rising.

“Are we melting down?” Then realised there wasn’t time for such questions. “YES! YES! GO GO GO RUN MAN RUN!”

Capacitor Charge: 7%

Kassandora sipped her whiskey as she picked out the important words that were being shouted in this chaos. Some people found such scenes terrible and overwhelming. To her though? Her eyes passed over a man who had fainted was being hauled to the wall by two others. She saw an accident rush in with documents detailing the massive cables that fed the two huge power capacitors which were for the railgun. The ICS Dawnbringer was operating hot but stable, the ICS Lighthouse was reporting issues with cable two. She listened to men as they shouted coordinates for the railgun. She heard radio operators shout orders over each other as they tried to organise three ships, three crews, four reactors and the operators of an untested and experimental weapon. She saw a man test his radio again, throw his headset off and run out with a shout about how he was going to inform the capacitor team from the Lighthouse. And she listened to that great hum as electricity flowed into her cannon. The coils were starting to heat up. Kassandora’s eyes travelled to the most important sight in view: the screen above the window of the bridge.

Capacitor Charge: 18%

Apparently, the Lightbringer-Class was the best ship to work on. It would sail to a shore, it would deploy anchor, it would stay and refuel for as long as needed, and another ship would bring after a month to changeover. These ships were meant to provide the slow hum of electricity for construction teams and their spotlight, maybe they had a week or two in them of powering a small town or a series of villages that had been hit by a natural disaster. Private Blake cursed the ICS Dawnbringer as he dived under a pipe and to manually release yet another bolt. He inched away from the melting that was starting to melt and tried to ignore the heat.

His hexagonal wrench caught the bolt. His mouth went dry, he twisted once. Twice. And then he roared and summoned what strength he had. The sort of adrenaline that only paced through a man when he got into a street brawl filled his veins as he realised either the bolt would go or the entirety of Reactor One. With both hands on the hot wrench he shouted and twisted. The bolt went, the screw ejected and immediately seawater filled the cooling pipe.

Moments later, the temperature began to drop. Blake threw his wrench back and felt Privates Treves and Walker pull him out from under the pipe by his legs. He slid across the warm ground, felt cool air over him and grabbed the water bottle Treves handed him. Blake stood up as he breathed heavily. The huge bays that held the reactors were covered in shadow still as they hummed and vibrated slightly from the generators. Seawater raced through pipes surrounding the reactor and immediately the steam being expelled from the cooling tower doubled.

That should do it, right?

Capacitor Charge: 29%

“DAWNBRINGER REPORTS REACTOR ONE COOLING DOWN! MELTDOWN AVERTED!” Kassandora sipped some more of her whiskey as she felt her cheeks go rosy. It wasn’t from the alcohol, it was from the sheer ecstasy of her plan coming together. She tried to look and everything at once. Men scurried around the railgun, others raised around the two huge capacitors which sat on the Resolution’s landing pads. Men within the bridge organised shouted more orders. Others opened windows to try and cool the bridge down. Kassandora had ordered even the Resolution’s own generators to be diverted to the railgun’s capacitors. Anything non-essential was to be switched off, that included the air conditioning.

And then Kassandora’s eyes travelled to the most important object in the whole room.

Capacitor Charge: 41%

Chief Engineer Davis raced pressed every button and every combination of buttons on control panel. He reactivated the fans, he transferred more power to the pumps until he was afraid of the water pipes bursting. He increased flow and pressure in the cooling circuit. The white cloud of hot steam coming from the tower next to the reactor was now as thick as a heavy fog. Davis inspected the temperature again. Water was boiling the moment it got to the centre of the reactor, the entrance was doing fine, the exit point though was overheating.

Lubrication pipes for the massive generator were starting to shake as the lubricant within them expanded from the sheer heat. The power coils themselves were disfiguring. After this mission was done, the Lighthouse would not continue to Arika, it would return to Rilia in order to be scuttled. Reactor Two was working on sheer inertia and nothing else. And then, someone, Chief Engineer Davis got the worst news of the day. It came in over the communications, from the men stood on the side of the ship around the massive power cables that had been dragged through sea in order to power that contraption on the INS Resolution. “Linking cable is starting to warm up. Rubber casing near the Reactor is starting to melt.”

Davis made the call.

Capacitor Charge: 53%

Kassandora saw a man stand up from the organised chaos happening on the bridge and take off only one of the huge speakers that sat on his head. “GODDESS KASSANDORA! CAPTAIN EVANS OF THE LIGHTHOUSE IS ON THE LINE!”

“Cut him through to me.” Kassandora’s voice boomed as she took off her cap and put on her own headset. Immediately, she heard a man whose voice was shaking as he tried to control himself.

“Goddess Kassandora.” Captain Evans said. “I ask for permission to drop Reactor Two into the ocean.” Kassandora’s eyes went to the screen at the top. The railgun capacitors were charging steady. They were almost there in fact. If she allowed…

“Are you about to explode?”

“Engineers report reactor casing disfiguring from the heat and that the linking cable is going to pop.” Captain Evans said again. Kassandora looked at the screen at the top, then she shouted to one of the men who had been with maintaining communication with the special weapons team. Those men weren’t even soldiers, they were the scientists and designers brought over from Iboud who were now scurrying around on the rear deck of the Resolution in a mad panic as they tried to make sure that all the calibrations on the railgun were correct. 

“You!” Kassandora snapped her fingers and pointed to the man. He noticed immediately. “Call the Iboud team, what is our time looking like!?” In the distance, more rocks fell down from Elassa’s floating mountain onto Maisara and Anarchia. And more of Anarchia’s sorcery ripped them apart as if it was doing nothing more than swatting flies. The man immediately started screaming into his radio and he had a reply a few moments later. “One minute Goddess! Under one minute even but one minute at the current rate!” Kassandora looked out over to Anarchia and Maisara. She couldn’t see the Goddesses from this distance, but she wasn’t going to bet on luck that Maisara was someone invincible to Anarchia’s power. Even if the woman proved resistant to it, Kassandora’s gut simply told her to hurry up.

Maybe if Arascus was here, Arascus would tell her to keep composure and think of the men. Maybe Kavaa would slow her down. Maybe Fer would tell her she was being callous and stupid. She knew she was. But they weren’t here and Kassandora did not believe that such a thing as a bloodless victory could happen. She was here to win. One ship was a small price to pay for an entire Goddess. She gave her reply. “Do everything you can but keep the reactor running. Evacuate the damn ship if you have to, but keep it on.”

Capacitor Charge: 66%

Captain Evans smashed down the huge, round, red button as he put on his coat. The emergency light started to flash. The ship’s alarm started to blare. Men jumped up as all the voices suddenly went silent. That didn’t help much, Reactor Two still screamed as it was torn apart by its own pressure and re-formed by its own terrible heat. Reactor One was starting to whine. The rubber of Reactor Two’s linking cable suddenly ignited with a flame that burned with a smoke of pure tar. The fire spread downwards. And Captain Evans gave the command: “ALL CREW ARE TO EVACUATE SHIP. ALL CREW ARE TO EVACUATE SHIP. LEAVE REACTOR TWO RUNNING AND GET OFF THE SHIP!”

The white paint of the cooling towers suddenly set alight as if it was fuel or paper. The INS Lighthouse lit up with fire as men raced away from the melting down reactor. Some of them tried to drop the pontoons and rescue boats on the side of the ship but the vast majority sprinted along the walkways, straight off the edge and dived into the sea to escape the flames. Captain Evans pulled away from the speaker and began to shout to the bridge crew. It didn’t matter if everyone jumped off the ship, if the liquid gas was to ignite, it would be over.

Without the gas spheres, the ship would sink in a matter of minutes. Good thing Kassandora had asked for only one. “TRANSFER GAS FROM SPHERE THREE!” That was the smallest one, it officially wasn’t even supposed to be for the reactors and instead to power the ship itself. “DROP SPHERES ONE AND TWO INTO THE OCEAN. SINK THE SHIP AND DROP THE SPHERES!”

Capacitor Charge: 89%

“ICS Lighthouse has issued an evacuation. It’s set alight.” Someone shouted. Kassandora didn’t bother. “ICS reports its transferring gas from backup sphere and dropping its main load.” Kassandora smiled at the quick thinking, although there was no need to say anything. Quick thinking like that earned a medal for the captain if he survived and two if he didn’t.

Instead, her eyes to the fight in the distance. A huge landmass was above the clouds, probably out of breathable atmosphere at this point. Elassa stood on it like a sapphire light house. Her magic shone down like a star in the light-blue sky of dawn. It flashed every time another one of those rocks came hurling down. “Aim at Anarchia! Give me a view!” Kassandora shouted. One of the screens, the one next to the capacitor display turned on as its feed switched to redirecting the camera feed of the railgun.

Capacitor Charge: 97%

Kassandora watched reticule in the middle of the screen settle on Anarchia. Was she draining Maisara? The Goddess of Order was smaller than the last time Kassandora saw her. Probably. Well, it worked anyway. At this range, there was no chance Anarchia would hear the railgun as its coils started to whine. Lights on the turned on and ran down its entire length. A crane loaded the shell into position. Anarchia looked up at the sky as she held onto Maisara’s axe and Kassandora saw another pair of rocks be smashed apart by red sorcery.

Capacitor Charge: 98%

The whine of the coils became a scream as they turned and charged up. Men started to shout out readings. Everything stable. The gun needed a few more seconds to calibrate. The Resolution had redirected its own capacitors to the railgun. The Lighthouse was sinking. The Dawnbringer was giving warning of temperatures approaching critical. The reticule finished settling on Anarchia. Kassandora bit her lip. She saw the screen next to it.

Capacitor Charge: 99%

Kassandora felt her knees shake as the noise in the room changed from a thousand voices she could pick out to a single burst of noise. She felt her own breath. She heard her own heartbeat. She smelled her own whiskey and sweat. How long could a moment go on for? She even refused herself a blink, to make sure that she could give the command the very instant she saw that holy number change.

It did and Kassandora gave the command immediately.

Capacitor Charge: 100%

“FIRE!”