It occurred to many of us at once, be only being one of those many, that now would be a good time to have mages on our side, if we had any; I knew that we had a few weaker ones standing by during the previous engagement, but I suspected most of them had gone forward with the invading army, an army that might well be coming back here eventually, but would be days away right now. I however was party of none of the decisions that the army made, and so I had no idea.

It was with some relief, then, that someone stepped up quickly to prove that we had at least one here. A thin woman stepped briefly out of the line of soldiers and hurled a javelin with what would have been superhuman strength; I felt clearly that it was a use of mostly Wind magic. As with the arrows, the goblin army raised some kind of magic shield to stop it... but somehow, although they bit the javelin in half, the half that did get through suddenly straightened and accelerated at a target--one of the tall, evolved Rakshasa--and struck it in the chest. When he was pierced, a jet of flame erupted, as though the metal javelin head had exploded.

The barrier that was covering the army wavered when he was hit. To my eyes--probably to everyone else, now, too--the barrier suddenly looked like a series of overlapping bubbles, one of which was suddenly shaky. The commanders took a moment to process this, and then arrows fell through the gap. That was good, but it did little to help me, since I wasn't in front of that bubble. My eyes could see a total of seven of the taller Rakshasa, and if it took a mage to kill each one...

I didn't have a javelin and wasn't ready to give up my sword quite yet, but I picked up a good fist-sized rock and weighed it in my hands. I had already used wind magic to jump, but that was throwing it "out" behind me; putting that same force behind a rock might be trickier, and would definitely be different. What I really wanted was a gun or cannon. If that was the goal, it shouldn't be that hard...

I grabbed at my Sky Essence and tried to imagine it building up in a container, like a cannon in the moment after it lit and before it pushed the shot out. Not surprisingly, it didn't want to stay contained... but I knew that that was the point, that the whole point of a cannon was explosive release of something that didn't want to be contained in the first place. My hands, meanwhile, weighed the rock and tried to figure out about where the center of it was. With the two of those together, I held the rock in front of me and tried to aim through the center of the rock, right towards the nearest--

Somehow, although I had been envisioning a cannon, it shocked me that releasing all that energy both made a loud noise and knocked me over. I scrambled to my feet to find that I had missed, but the rock moved fast enough that it took the Rakshasa powering the barrier by surprise; it had smashed the head of a smaller goblin somewhere to the left and well short of the target. When that goblin's head was smashed, it, too, exploded into flame.

From what I've read, Alanna told me, Rakshasa actually are basically fire inside a fleshy shell. Dangerous to fight, but easy to kill; open any hole in them and it all leaks out. The real problem is fighting them in the underworld, where there is enough fire in the air that simply cutting them open doesn't put out the flames within. The surface world is just too cold for them.

We didn't have a lot of time, but I picked up two more vaguely round rocks and tried to repeat the trick. Both times my "cannon" fired, but the accuracy was terrible--and the Rakshasa put the barrier up early, so both rocks were smashed to pieces before they got close.

But if he was getting scared, I could work with that. I picked up a rock, aimed it, and did nothing. The goblins front near me slowed down, and the Rakshasa that led them put the barrier up, waiting. I couldn't protect the whole front--I could see the rest of the goblin horde advancing in spite of the pause in front of me--but if there was any chance I could make it better, I had to do it.

I wanted to use godly power, but using my powers offensively had eaten up a lot. Directly countering blood flame was not easy; I had to guess that if I had been fighting animals or humans with no mage to support them, it would be trivial to use the Eye of Mars. This fight was different.

When the Rakshasa finally dropped the barrier again and pushed his troops to advance, finally I let loose another shot. This one just barely missed; I wished immediately that I had real round, perfectly weighted cannonballs that would frigging go where I want them to... but I had never prepared for this. It was only obvious in retrospect that I might, just maybe, need a magic weapon on a battlefield to do something nobody else could.

After I let that shot go, a hand on my shoulder made me turn. It was Bard, and he pulled me back behind the front line. There were still a few seconds before they would get here--maybe half a minute at most--but he had the head on his shoulders to recognize that I didn't, and that's what it took. As he pulled me back, I pushed more power into my Eye so that I could continue to see past the soldiers and mark the enemies--but once I got completely out of sight of them, I had to let the power lapse. I could feel the tension and fear, but at least we knew exactly how close they were.

As it turned out, the concealment spell fell as the forces met on the battlefield. I was no longer at the front, but I felt a great swell of morale as people realized they wouldn't have to fight goblins that were invisible. That swell of morale was like a silver mist hanging above the battle--along with a green mist that was their fear from before.

I knew what that had to be, and not knowing what else to do, I collected it as soulflame. It wasn't dedicated to me, but I would use it for us; that would need to be enough. I felt Alanna seemingly approve, but something told me she wasn't any more used to fighting on the front lines than I was. Maybe collecting the silver mist would hurt morale; I hoped not, but it was possible.

In any case, once I was behind the line, all I could do was wait. Without a lot of soulflame or the ability to be a great warrior, I wasn't much use here... not anymore. This was where actual soldiers needed to actually fight.

I did feel a great number of people pledging kills, for whatever good that did... some in my name, some in Alanna's, some in the name of Ciel'ostra. There were even a couple pledging to gods I didn't know, but since I didn't recognize the gods, I couldn't understand who they were from the "feel" of the prayers.

What was odd was that the kills, the dedications, were little bits of ashen flame. That didn't make sense at first, because I thought ashen flame was what someone left when they died--the "dying wishes" of a follower. But as I watched the battle, bit by bit I understood. Parts of these people were dying. Even if a man survived this battlefield, they would lose a part of themselves. Those dying parts were dedicated to their god...

But with Ashen Flame came a wish. I knew immediately that the wish was victory--survival, if at all possible, but victory if not. If I accepted that flame in a losing battle, it would merge to form some kind of wraith, to spite me for letting my people down. Perhaps only a weak one; the small pieces I received were less than one dying soul all together. But I could not take credit for this battle without being responsible for the consequences.

That... made a lot of sense.

Still, in this case, my own survival was on the line. I accepted the ashen flame, the dedication from the warriors, and turned it back to the people who dedicated to me. I tried to give them just that little bit of extra ability, made it just a little easier to track the movements of their enemy, just a little faster to process--

It's dangerous to bless people with their own worship like that, warned Alanna. They will think of themselves as Chosen. They think that the blessing will always be there. They think they can take for themselves in the name of a god. Ciel'ostra does that, for those who pledge to act in her name, but she is also very harsh with people that disobey her. You... I think you're too soft to be so hard on your people.

All of that made sense too, I supposed, but this was a battle for my own survival. Privately I resolved to not make a habit of it, and in response, I felt like the power my Avatar was returning shifted just a little. Instead of it being a reward for the people who worshiped me, it was a reward for fighting in a battle that I, personally, felt strongly about.

I realized as I did it that I was creating my first crusade--that I was a god leading a holy battle to defend my people. It was an odd feeling and I didn't much like it, but I also couldn't deny that there was a part of me that was very thrilled to be a part of it.

All of a sudden, though, I felt something odd, something I definitely didn't like. I heard a yell, "For Xethram!" and felt one person in particular trying to latch onto me, as he rushed forward further into the enemy line, counting on my blessing to help keep him alive. I knew, more from Earth's history than from anything else, what he was doing--if I blessed him, if he survived, he would dedicate his life to me, and it might even go beyond reason and into pure zealotry. He was placing absolute faith in me, reducing himself to be no more than a piece I could use.

It felt awful. I wanted this battle to be won, and I didn't want to watch him yell my name and then die, but I didn't like the implication that he was nothing more than a pawn. I didn't want any of my followers to think that they were nothing but a piece on the board, either to me or in general. It was like I had said in Alanna's church--as a god, and also as a person myself, I loved the potential of people. I didn't want him to limit his potential by hanging his whole identity off of me.

In that moment of conflict, I merged with my Avatar fully, trying to find a way to answer his prayer and my own at the same time--to answer his prayer for purpose, guidance, and safety, and my own prayer that I could find a way to do the impossible, to answer his prayer without losing the man who made it. The strange thing was, in that one moment, as I prayed as though to something greater even than myself, I caught a glimpse of something... or someone.

Someone sitting in a carpeted room with a roaring fire, in a well-padded chair, reading a book.

Then the image was gone, and my whole being--self and Avatar--connected with this champion, pushing an overwhelming feeling to him that I didn't need or want him to court death so wantonly. It was too late now; he was before the tall Rakshasa, the hunter. So I put a metaphorical hand on his back and blessed him, but it was also a chiding: don't throw your life away like that again.

I lost sight of what he saw, but after a moment, I felt a massive shift in the battle closest to me. That hunter is dead, I think, explained Alanna. They lead the others directly, because the weak ones have almost no mind. The only way to win this will be to take them out... the commanders know this, I'm sure. They do fight them from time to time.

Sure enough, pretty soon the force closest to me pushed forward and split, half attacking the enemy flank on our left and half attacking those on our right. That gave me a chance to move back up towards the top of the hill, so I could get a look at the battle again.

Even when I used the Eye to the Horizon, though, I could barely make out what was going on. I simply did not have enough experience to keep track of hundreds of soldiers and hundreds of goblins. What I did know, and I had kind of known all along, was that we were losing.

Not quickly, and not decisively, but we were losing.

I picked up a rock and tried just throwing it, with a little boost from Sky Essence, but my aim was terrible and although I doubt I hit any of our people, I don't think I did any good either. I simply wasn't any use here.

No, that wasn't true. I switched to the Eye of Mars and bided my time, trying to find any higher ranking Rakshasa to snipe into dust. It took a while to find one, and longer to get a clean shot, but when I could convince myself I had him, I blew his head off with minimal use of flame.

The nice thing about a sight-based power is, what you see is what you get.

I had to run along the hill to find other hunter Rakshasa, but eventually I did. Twice more that battle I took one down, and each time the battle changed. The other hunter Rakshasa, I had to imagine, were already killed by archers or even our warriors on foot, because by the time I had killed the second one, no part of the battle seemed to be coherent anymore. The enemy goblins were no longer an army, they were a scattered pack of monsters, ones that seemed too stupid to flee, ones that seemed mostly to start eating the dead if they didn't have someone immediately trying to kill them.

Still, the more I watched the battle, the more I soured on the whole thing. Stabbing a goblin released flame at the person who did the stabbing. We were mostly using swords of one sort of another, although there were a few polearms; anyone without a long enough sword was getting very shocky about using it, because their hands and faces sometimes got burned by the released jet of flame. No matter where I looked, it was the same; with the higher Rakshasa dead, the battle was more or less ours, but the soldiers were getting less and less willing to stab things to death, especially if they were no longer fighting us.

The commanders insisted, yelling loudly and consistently, trying to get spearmen to do the bulk of the work, but demanding that people fight. And as soldiers had to watch goblins eat human flesh, most found the courage to strike them down again and again. Others fled the battle, either running off or just falling back and refusing to be a part of the cleanup.

There was a thick green soulflame mist here--a mist of fear, pain, and hate--and much of it swirled straight at me as people cursed their eyes, and me by extension. As I looked over the field and saw dozens of human bodies being eaten, I understood the feeling. When I saw people I had known being treated like... not even like good food, like "food" in the sense that a garbage can is food to a wild animal. That was how our dead were seen to these things. How people I knew were seen by these things.

Somehow, I realized later, the fact that I resonated so strongly with those feelings of hate and disgust must have taken some of the bitterness out of the green mist, because I didn't get as much green flame from it as I should have. It would be one thing if people hated their eyes and I was upset with them in return... but we were united against a common enemy here.

Because of our troops reluctance, it took a long time for the battle to really be done, but in the end, we killed them all. We lost probably two-fifths of our troops, and virtually all that remained were injured, including me; although I hadn't paid much attention to my head wounds, all the running around clearly made them worse, and by the time it was all over, I had to see a medic, because I was really hurting, and pretty weak.

I spent the rest of the day with bandages covering my face, under orders from a medic not to strain myself. I had already let go of my godly eye, and only a normal human eye was left in that socket... but that one eye was the healthiest part of my face right now. As for Alanna, she had left around the time I offed the last hunter Rakshasa, and I resolved to do whatever I could for her in return... someday. This had been a day, an awful, awful day, and I needed it to be over.

When finally the camp settled enough that I could get a place to pretend to be asleep, I did, shifting over to my Avatar. He, of course, was fine, although I sensed that my use of green flame had done something to his appearance--just a little, a few wrinkles, but it felt like he'd become just a bit uglier. It was balanced, I suppose, by my use of silver flame, which made him just a little bit better looking.

What a fussy thing. I fashioned a small mirror out of a bit of shiny metal from my previous experiments, finally deciding that the changes weren't really notable, but I could see how if a trend towards green or silver continued for a hundred years, or a thousand, it would add up. Alanna, perhaps, had been careful to never use green flame; she had made a lot of effort to make sure her avatar stayed beautiful.

I considered that quietly as I looked at myself in the mirror. In some ways, it reminded me of Earth--of people who stayed at home and did nothing, who left behind a beautiful corpse and nothing else. For a woman who claimed to be goddess of knowledge... I didn't like that.

Fighting for my life had been dirty, and it made me just a little bit uglier. That mist of ashen flame had been the same--it had been people getting a little uglier, a little more lost, as they went out of their way to do what was necessary to survive, for others to survive. Doing the right thing made us uglier. As long as I used green flame because I had to, as long as I used it to do the right thing, I didn't care if I got uglier. I didn't care, necessarily, if my mortal body was missing an eye and badly scarred... although, I suspected, it would probably be better to find a way to replace that eye, by divine means if there was no mortal magic to do it. For a Vicar of Eyes, being one eyed was... well, it would be a handicap.

One thing for sure: I would need to figure out about moving that key sooner rather than later. This whole thing about maybe dying was suddenly a lot more real than it had been.