a little under that thoughtful gaze, even if they didn't remember why. She made them feel nervous, unworthy, on some deep and primal level. As though she knew something they had tried very hard to forget, or, if never known, had somehow always suspected.

"I am Lilith," she said finally. "First wife to Adam, thrown out of Eden for refusing to acknowledge any authority but mine own. I descended into Hell and lay down with demons, and gave birth to monsters. All my marvellous children—the first to be invited to dwell in my Nightside. You are all my children, or descendants of my children. You are not gods, and never were. It takes more than worship to make you divine. I made you to be splendid and free, but you have grown small and limited down the many years, seduced by worship and acclaim, allowed yourselves to be shaped and enslaved by the imaginations of humanity. Well, playtime is over now, children. I am back, in the place I made for us, and it's time to go to work. I've been away too long, and there is much to be put right.

"I have been here for some time, watching and learning. I walked among you, and you knew me not. You've been playing at being gods for so long you've forgotten you were ever anything else. But you owe your existence and loyalty to me. Your lives are mine, to do with as I please."

The Beings and Forces and Powers looked at each other, stirring uneasily. It was all happening so fast. One minute they were being worshipped as divine, and the next… Some of them were beginning to remember. Some shook their heads in hopeless denial, even as tears ran down their faces. Some didn't take at all kindly to being reminded of their true origins and obligations, and shouted defiance. And quite a large number were distinctly resentful at finding out they weren't gods at all and never had been. The watching worshippers retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance, and let the gods argue it out amongst themselves. The argument was getting quite noisy, if not actually raucous, when Lilith silenced them all with a single sharp gesture.

"You," she said, pointing to a single figure at the front of the pack. "I don't know you. You're not one of mine. What are you?"

The Engineer stared calmly back at her, while everyone else edged away from him. He was squat and broad and only vaguely humanoid, with blue steel shapes piercing blue flesh, and long strips of bare muscle tissue held together with bolts and springs. Steam hissed from his naked joints, his eyes glowed like coals, and if you got close enough you could hear his heart ticking. He was surrounded and protected by a group of gangling metal constructions, of intricate design and baroque sensibilities, though whether they were the engineer's worshippers or his creations was unclear.

"I am a Transient Being," said the Engineer, in a voice like metal scraping against metal. "A physical incarnation of an abstract idea. I am immortal because I am a concept, not because I have your unnatural blood in my ancestry. The world has become so much more complex since your time, Lilith. All of this… is none of my business. So I'll leave you to get on with it."

He turned and walked sideways from the world, disappearing down a direction most of those present couldn't even comprehend, let alone identify, and in a moment he was gone. The steel-and-brass constructions he left behind collapsed emptily, so much scrap metal littering the ground. Lilith stood silent for a moment, nonplussed. That hadn't been in the script. Emboldened by the Engineer's defiance, some of the Beings stepped forward to confront Lilith.

"We heard you were banished," drawled the Splendid, leaving a shimmering trail behind him as he moved. "Forced out of the world you made, by those you trusted and empowered."

"Thrust into Limbo," said La Belle Dame du Rocher, in her watery voice. "Until some damned fool let you out, let you back into the Nightside to trouble us again with bad dreams of our beginnings."

"Some say you've been here for years," said Molly Widdershins, showing her stained and blocky teeth in something that was only nominally a smile. "So where have you been hiding, all this time?"

"Not hiding," said Lilith, and the chill in her voice made them all fall back a pace. "I've been… preparing. So much to do,