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Finally, Discordia found the right combination, the wooden door popping open to reveal a void beyond.

‘Go home, and get ready to fight,’ said Discordia. ‘You are needed there.’

‘How are you sure this is the right door?’

‘I’m not,’ she shrugged. ‘But if Proserpina is right, you should be waking up any time now. You’ll find your way back… Probably.’

‘Thank you, Discordia.’

Claudia pulled her into a hug. Discordia didn’t return it, standing stiffly in her arms, but her snakes wrapped around them and closed their eyes, joining the strange embrace.

‘I will see you again,’ said Claudia, passing through the door.

‘Sooner than you think,’ said Discordia, waving.

In Elysium, the palace of Mars was burning, casting bright red flames up into the twilit sky. Soldiers poured out of the building as the shadows of winged women flocked overhead, scooping the fire up like snowballs to toss at the priests and servants now fleeing in haste. Some rode on the backs of black Pegasi, their equine silhouettes cast large by the growing inferno. Whoops and screams formed a cacophony, as a series of small explosions resounded from within the building, echoing so loudly it could be heard in Asphodel.

In helmet and armour, Minerva crouched on a nearby hill, holding upright her spear as she watched the unfolding carnage. It wouldn’t be long before Mars appeared with his armies to fight.

Soon, all of the gods would assemble here, and the war would truly begin.

Fire crumbled another tower.

In this moment, Minerva debated whether allying with Bellona was the right move after all. Her sister would show no mercy and take no prisoners. She had no patience for subtlety. But Minerva had always known it, right from the beginning. She’d shaken her hand anyway. That was the risk she’d chosen to take. Perhaps a part of her knew she needed someone more ruthless than her, to make the first move.

She just hoped it would be worth it, in the end.

‘Veni, vidi, vici!’ Bellona screamed, as another explosion rocked the palace.

There was no reversing the turn of the wheel. Fortuna had taught her that. What was done, was done. She could only keep moving. If she ended up a constellation, frozen in the sky next to Vulcan and Neptune, so be it.

She had made her choices.

Minerva left Bellona and her women warriors to ransack the house of Mars, while she set out to find her consort Mercury.

As the god of borders and boundaries, commerce and travel, he was a difficult deity to track down. He moved between the worlds above and below, as well as in the mortal realm. But she traced him by following word of mouth, connecting him to the messages he’d been entrusted to deliver. His name was carried by whispers, while birds followed in his wake.

The grapevine worked both ways, however, and by the time she found him, he was already waiting for her.

‘Minerva,’ he said, though he did not turn to face her.

She approached him from behind, cloaked in his winged hat and holding his caduceus, floating through a lonely red-heathered valley in Asphodel.

‘Mercury.’

Their relationship wasn’t romantic (Mercury preferred the company of nymphs) but they’d known each other for as long as she had existed, and Minerva found him to be one of the more reasonable gods. She hadn’t intended to make any of the gods her ally in this war against her father, but Mercury could still be useful, despite his duplicity.

‘I see you’ve been doing Jupiter’s bidding in my absence,’ she said.

‘I do what I have to, to remain alive.’

‘Even if it threatens the foundations of Rome itself?’ she said.

‘We have had this conversation before, Minerva,’ he said.

‘Yes, which is how I know your real positions on pantheon politics. This servitude is beneath you. You do not follow him out of honour or admiration. You have no respect for his warfare. You do his duty out of fear.’

‘Vulcan and Neptune stood against him, and they are merely stars now.’