Who is NEXT?

Who is NEXT?

The one they came to see, like all those before them, was hunched under a hooded cloak. A man... a creature, no longer capable of doing his own doing.... but one who connected with the arcana of the nine hells.
“I could finish what Besar started, I could end you now.” The latest visitor threatened, her voice frustrated, but confident. She knew what she could do, because the list of what she couldn't was very short. She brushes the hair from her face, revealing a large facial burn. Iris stepped forward. “They both fucked you, I havn't, so lets be realistic about outcomes here.”
The cloaked creature smiles, his yellow fangs the only thing visible in the deep shadow. “You came to my domain once.” His voice was weak, words almost hissing from his mouth. “You wished out of it very quickly.”
“It's as much your domain now as it is mine, if you don't have an answer for me, then I have no reason to be here.”
The sluggish creature unfurls and stands tall, over ten feet, towering over the Goddess of the Air and Darkness. “You wish to know how the pieces of Hell move? Perhaps you should speak to the God of Thieves who sought to take Hell from my kind.”
Iris shakes her head, “I shall find someone to take your place. I can move not only the pieces of hell but those of heroes and kings, students and villains.”

In a dark room, a massive rune painted on the floor, Iris awaits the man who prepared this blind spot. She doesn't wait long. The red skinned teifling with slicked back hair smiles slyly, “I'd love to hear the plan.” The Goddess smirks, “Wrath.”

A man with a tempered wildness in his eyes, salt washed and sun burnt. Skin peeling like a snake in molt smiles, still holding the ropes of his small boat. He worryingly asks “Why?” of the goddess before him. “Because I am to save your family. Your boy, and.... you daughter.”

“You expect me-” A golden dragonborn asks with a smirk. But the goddess interrupts, “I expect you to make money. That is what you do, isn't it?”

A young woman in a white shirt, buttoned up and almost bursting at the bust, raises a furrowed brow, “And I can't tell the Hood?” The burnt face of the goddess smiles condescendingly, “It's okay to call him Oliver, I know who he is, and the mistakes he's made.”

“It's a fun cover, high school teacher.” Iris laughs looking the toned wood elf up and down, admiring him, and the way he looked like her own Sinclair, maybe thats why her husband hired him. “But a time cop is a time cop is a time cop.” She laughed, looking to see if she raised any emotion in Agent Longbranch, but she failed to. “Well, perhaps the more important thing is keeping your students happy... and the time line stable.” She pauses, again waiting for a rise, “Or maybe its keeping you in my husbands eyes.”
“We must know balance for the world to know balance.” Cosmos says stoically.
Iris does not agree.
“The Treaty assures that we are equal.” Zortgelia argues, only to be denounced by all the gods not powerful to hold two sects of domains. “We are not supposed to break into parties!” He trys his luck, only to see the congress of the gods split into factions.
There are four Sects outlined in the treaty, Nature, Life, Arcana and Philosophy.
Nature can be the hunt, or chaos itself, perhaps death or the sea, or maybe the Tempest. The storms from above and from below. The storms from outside, and from within.
Life may be Art, or War, or Luck. It can be Music or Light or Blood. Or it can be Family. Both born and found.
Arcana is magic, separated by school and by thought. It is the Undeath of Victor, or the Paradox of Sinclair. It could be divination or illusion. Or it can be the Fey, and all the magic of that realm.
A weasel chokes on a cigarette.
Smoke fills your lungs for just long enough for you to know that the magic is there.
Philosophy is the fourth sect, ready and waiting for those able to explain the complexities of what remains. Balance. Between what? Good and Evil? Law and Order? Action and Inaction? Justice? For whom? For the little people or for the wealthy? Who decides? Or perhaps it is the interior emotion when one dies, when one loses, what is grief? Do we grieve only when we lose another? Or can we grieve ourselves?
Perhaps Sacrifice is the most powerful philosophy? The willingness to surrender yourself?
When do we ask ourselves when these gods begin to infringe on each other?
Is Order any different from Balance? Is it different from Justice?
Is knowledge worth it if you can't do anything about it?
Are lost causes still lost if you can fight it? Are they lost if you will fight it but still lose?
A goddess with a burnt face stands before a council of gods. “I am who comes next.”