“Do not think that because our Divine Lord does not stand before you that he is not with you. Do not think that because he does not lift the burdens from your shoulders, your troubles are unknown. And do not think that because you have escaped his judgment for the moment, he will not render justice unto you.”

– Proclamation read each day to the city’s children at their Standard Learning Centers.

When we healed Mumora, Sola had borrowed a miracle from another domain. That had been tricky and wasn’t something she couldn’t necessarily repeat. Burning though? Burning was a part of her and, when she needed to express Divine Wrath, was so natural as to barely be considered miraculous at all.

The miracle, if there was one, lay more in Vaingloth’s survival. Neither Sola nor I had been under the delusion that we would be capable of incinerating the Lord Eternal of Mount Gloria. The light that reduced the Inquisitor and patrollers to dust wasn’t like any I had ever conceived of. It was so bright it shown through the souls of everyone present. Even Vaingloth.

He tried to protect himself, but Sola’s power wasn’t scoped within mortal limitations. His power was worldly and real. Built up from before the Sun Fall, and rich with stolen divine might the gods had shed as they were torn to pieces by the beast that destroyed them. For all that though, he was still mortal and so very far from being ‘Eternal’.

I think it was Vaingloth’s stolen divine power that drove Sola’s rage, even more than her captivity had.

I wanted him dead for burning up my family, and friends, and because he was a miserable ass. He portrayed himself as a compassionate leader who was working oh so hard to help everyone, all the while making sure that his power base was as secure as it could possible be, and toying with the rest of us for nothing more than his own amusement.

Sola wanted him more than dead, and through me she could at last act.

I need to be clear though. It wasn’t all her. She didn’t take control of me. The sin we performed in that moment was real and I was as much or more a part of it than she was. It was her power and her choice, but it was my acceptance and my desire for it which allowed her miracle to flow into the world.

When it hit, Sola’s miracle lit the world. 

I’d been afraid of giving myself way by glowing but in that moment, there was so much light that shadows which had covered the city since before my grandparents were born were chased away.

It was so much light that it went past blinding and into a realm where it revealed a shining light within us all.

And I don’t mean ‘everyone in the melee’ or ‘everyone on the block’. I mean everyone in the city.

And then we squeezed.

Sola and I.

Faster than thought, we took the light from the city and focused it down into the bodies of our enemies. The patrollers didn’t even have time to glow. They were simply gone, and in their passing, I was struck speechless.

I called what we did a sin because there was no other term for it. We saved ourselves. We saved everyone who fought with us. We denied people who were bent on evil aims the ability to execute their cruel agendas.

But what we did was a sin.

As the souls of the patrollers were torn away from their lives, I felt each and every one of them. Through Sola’s eyes, I looked over the grand sweep of their lives.

Were they bad people? They had done evil. Reveled in it at times even. Were there reasons for what they’d done? Had they been protecting people? Had they done good while they drew breath? I didn’t want to see any of that, but to Sola’s eyes everything was laid bare.

I saw the regrets they carried – the ones which had made no difference, and the ones who had stayed their hands. I saw the hurts that had been done to them, the ones which filled them with rage oh so similar to my own and the ones they’d been asking for. I saw their fears, and their hopes, the love they carried, and all the broken paths which had prevented them from learning how to do better than they had.

I didn’t forgive them. I understood them, but I did not forgive. With all the power I wielded, I was not merciful.

I told myself that I couldn’t be, but it was a lie.

There were so many things I could have done in place of what I did. If all I wanted was to defend myself, I could have left them alive, left them with a chance to choose better actions. I could have made them safe, taken from them everything that would have let them hurt anyone again, but at least left them able to learn and grow.

Instead I condemned them and Sola joined me.

The Inquisitor had done the worse things of all of them and was the farthest gone, wrapped in his mania which turned every horrid practice he undertook into a holy offering. He would have been the hardest to disarm, but only to the extent that its harder to snap two matchsticks than one.

Sola burned him, both for the things he had done, the lives he’d ruined, but also to get to Vaingloth.

Vaingloth had only exposed so much of himself, so we could only hurt him to a limited extent.

But he was watching us.

So we invaded his eyes.

We reached out and placed a a fire bright as creation into each of his eyes and then added more, and still more.

He was too far away for me to hear his screams, but they rang loud and clear in my ears anyways. 

I wanted to listen to that song forever. To be lulled to sleep and softly woken by the mad, agonized screams Vaingloth couldn’t contain. I wanted to know that everytime the agony faded and he thought it was over, that was only the prelude to it crashing back even stronger than ever before.

I wanted that, but it was not to be. For all that he was mortal and Sola was a god, Sola’s vessel was me and I was weak and imperfect. My rage didn’t make me strong at all, it just focused me and substituted for the courage I’ve always lacked.

When Vaingloth cut the link the remaining fire we were sending into him had nowhere to go beside the Inquisitor and he withstood no more than half a blink of it before his body was reduced to a concept rather than anything which retained a physical reality.

For a moment, as the last motes of the light dwindled away, there was silence.

For a moment afterward there was too.

All across the city.

For the first time in living memory, a miracle had touched everyone’s life. It had been too big and too undeniable for any to claim it was anything other than what it was.

I’d wanted to stay secret and hidden, but I should have known that the truth of the gods returning wasn’t a secret someone as small as me could keep. Sola was too big, and too important.

The Killing Word hit before the silence faded.

Vaingloth wasn’t dead, and he was far from defenseless.

I felt my blood freeze and my heart burst. All strength left me and the abyss yawned around me.

I would have fallen then except for one tiny detail.

I wasn’t alone.

My blood rebelled against the cold with a warmth that could never be quenched (Thank you Sola). My heart, which had broken so many times before, held strong, bolstered by a fire that roared inside it (Thank you again Sola!). And my strength, which had never been much to begin with, was drawn away like water leaking down a drain, only to be refilled by the ocean of my communion with Sola.

Vaingloth wasn’t finished though. He’d been at the “smashing problems with magic” game for a long time and, as it turned out, this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with a god being mad at him.

The threads of spellcraft that followed the Killing Word, showed that the deadly attack had been a feint. Oh, it definitely would have killed me. The best feints were perfectly viable attacks if they weren’t responded to after all. Mostly though it had been intended as a distraction. In keeping me alive through the Killing Word, Sola had been focused on our connection and missed the attack Vaingloth directed against her.

I felt like that was a forgivable mistake since Vaingloth wasn’t anywhere near powerful to hurt Sola. Entrapping someone is not the same as harming them however. I felt his spellcraft wrapping around us like threads of spider silk.

Unbreakable spider silk.

I was able to move my body but my connection to Sola began to drown in shadows as thread after thread was layered down between us.

I felt Sola moving against it, but she hesitated.

I can’t smite this without hurting you, she said in a whisper as her voice and presence became distant and faint.

Go ahead! I said. I can take it!

I had no idea whether I could or not, but I also knew that it Vaingloth could spit a Killing Word across the space between us once then he could almost certainly do it a second time just as easily.

It was too late though.

Sola was gone.

Or? Not gone. She was still with me. I knew she was. I couldn’t feel her, or hear her, or sense any scrap of her power, but who needed any of that? She was a god.

No.

She was MY god.

I looked around the street at the people who were just coming around from their awe-inspired trances. I was glowing like a star thanks to all of the Divine Wrath I’d channeled, so there was no chance I’d be able to hide anymore.

Except…

The threads that had cut me off from Sola? Yeah, they weren’t just metaphysical in nature. I’d been able to move freely for a moment, but in place of a second Killing Word, Vaingloth had turned the spell he’d woven against Sola to include me.

Or rather to include smothering me.

Glowing wasn’t a problem, largely because I wound up cocooned and drowning in very real threads of pure spellcraft.

And I wasn’t alone.

The last thing I saw before the spell working closed over my head was Vaingloth being thorough and covering everyone else who was present with a flood of spell threads.

He wasn’t going to leave any of us alive.

He couldn’t.

We’d seen him for what he was.

In the light of Sola’s wrath, his soul had been revealed just like the rest of ours had been.

It’s one thing to reject a Neoteric Lord’s claims of supremacy out of anger, or spite, or simply a refusal to accept that the work could be that screwed up that someone like Vaingloth would be the best person to be in charge. That belief is easy to come to but frail in the face of even the simplest demonstrations of a Lord’s power.

What Sola’s light had shown us was what Vaingloth really was. A petty, and very mortal man. One who was desperate for power and had done unthinkable things to acquire and maintain it. However great the power he’d stolen made him though, nothing was ever going to change that at his core, and for all his accomplishments, Vaingloth was a pathetic, hateful coward.

As final thoughts went, I wasn’t happy with them.

I’d run out of options and struck back. I’d killed a few people who the world might have been better off without. I’d blinded and hurt the Lord of all Mount Gloria and shown him how very much he was hated. I should have felt better about that. Like I’d at least done one thing that mattered.

It wasn’t enough though.

Hurting people wasn’t what I was here for.

I’d run away all my life because I didn’t want to hurt people. 

I hated it.

I wanted to help them. At least the ones who helped me. And maybe the ones who needed help but didn’t think there was anyone who would listen.

Maybe because no one had ever been there for me, and that felt wrong.

Darkness closed over me, and silence, both shepherding me to the grave.

And then I was moving.

Carried by strong arms which were holding me tight as we slipped past the wind itself.