We were obliged to camp out in place for the night because of an abundance of wounded people, but nobody wanted to stay here, not with a crack in the world that probably had even more Rakshasa, somewhere nearby. That meant, in the morning, emptying out the supply carts and using them for the wounded. I certainly understood that--by morning my entire face was swollen and throbbing from blood flame explosion, and I was sometimes dizzy, probably due to some inflammation putting pressure on my ears--but Mietra threw a fit. She shouldn't have; as long as we got our next scheduled resupply, the amount we left behind shouldn't matter, which was something my reports to her should have made clear, if she read them. But lives came before spare food, and it should have.

The medics did clear a bunch of people to march, so in the end, we weren't exactly leaving everything behind, but the wagons we did have for supplies were reserved for medicine. Overnight and through the morning, there were a bunch of burials. Among those was Clent, who I was actually kind of guilty that I didn't look out for at all... and at least three officers I remembered from the Chaos Martial Arts lessons that we'd gotten in camp. There were no funerals for me to attend; I mostly was tasked with paperwork duty, since I couldn't do much more work than that with as dizzy as I was getting, so I made a list of who was lost.

Idly, as we marched away, I confirmed with my godly half that Clent had never offered any prayers at all. For all his talk about what he would do if he had godly powers, he never even tried to offer something in return. That... didn't surprise me much.

What did surprise me was that the three dead officers all had, and in fact after checking, pretty much all officers below the rank of Commander had offered at least one prayer at some point. I wondered if it was some kind of policy (I had gotten a promise from the three commanders in camp, after all) or if it was something else. Maybe they had gotten to the level of officer by seizing every advantage, and I was just one of many? It didn't really matter.

Overall, the battle would have put me slightly ahead in flame if I hadn't blasted the Rakshasa... what did Alanna call him? Scholar? Weird name for such a monster. Countering blood flame with another flame was expensive. Not necessarily more expensive than healing myself--that was another expensive addition--but word had circulated over dinner of how fighting in the name of the God of Eyes had given them the ability to see through their enemy's movements, and the survivors were a lot more pious after that.

I realized again something I had been told earlier, though--I had no input on the rumors about the God of Eyes that were circulating. Although I had tweaked my power mid-battle so that I wasn't just blessing everyone who fought in my name, that's still the way people took it. Without a preacher to explain my official stance (and I would have to be the one, which wasn't something I was eager to do), whatever crackpot rumors people came up with would become people's understanding of... me.

Not a lot of people came to me for answers, either, although some did, as I sat on the front of a wagon on the way back. At first I answered questions piecemeal--yes, Xethram had blessed the battle, no he wouldn't do it every time--but as I found myself answering the same few questions over and over again, I realized I would need to do something more formal.

So I spread the word that I would be leading a prayer to Xethram at dusk, and spent the rest of the day trying to get my swollen, dizzy little brain to come up with a decent-sounding sermon. It wasn't easy, not least because what I most wanted to tell my followers was, "Xethram blessed this battle to protect me, not you" and that would most likely piss everyone off.

And well it should. For all I'd said about what a god should do and be, I was being pretty selfish. Granted, I was still very, very new at all this, but if I said something like "Your lives aren't as important as mine," that would just be... corruption, I guess. It would definitely be me being a spoiled brat, if I only gave to others when I needed something myself. That's not leadership, it's not wisdom, it's just greed.

But you are more powerful, and more important, than they are, said a voice inside of me, and somehow the voice came with the flavor of a comfortable chair by the fire--the same sense I'd gotten as I wrestled with my godly powers in the battle. Should you spend a gold coin in order to save ten copper coins? No. Your value is not equal to theirs.

I tried to push against that feeling and drag the person on the other side into a shared white space... but it felt like waving my arms at a person on the other side of a canyon. Either they were somehow too far for me to reach, or powerful enough to make resisting me look trivially easy. As I struggled to reach them, though, I felt their words crossing that gap like clouds of sand driven by a series of small explosions--each powerful, but only a fraction of the power reached me, by sheer virtue (it seemed) of distance.

I suppose you consider it humble, the voice continued, to remain one in being with those that you govern. Some of your people do the same. But it is not humility, not at all. You do not understand the value of a god, and so you would claim that any given individual may be equal in worth. This is an insult to godhood, an insult to [...]. I blinked, because the last word didn't translate; it was a specific place. The closest concept in my head was Shangri-La, a fictitious hidden valley somewhere in Asia... but it was obviously not that, for numerous reasons that I couldn't translate and therefore didn't understand.

With that, the god on the other end--if that's what they were--went quiet, although I suspected they were still watching. I considered the argument, not having anything better to do, but in the end, I knew about what I wanted to say, because I wanted to say it before, when I felt the corruption sneaking up on me.

But I am human, I replied mentally, hoping my voice carried across that gulf. And I have seen mortals in my life who have done more than I can do even as a god.

That is an illusion, the other replied. You are thinking of leaders who stand on the shoulders of many. You, too, will be lifted above the horizon by others. But no individual, nor any hundred people, is your equal. Become what you were meant to be, and no million people will be worth your life to save. There are those whose lives are worth more than your whole race. A sense of a smile, and for the first time, I got the impression that the person on the other side of the voice was female. I am one of them.

If all you are saying is that I should not let myself die, then that is fine, I argued in return. But if you are saying I think too highly of mortals, then I defy you. I have seen great things--done without magic, only hard work, labors of my world that you would think mortals, like ants, cannot accomplish. With that message, I included a myriad of thoughts, including the space race, the pyramids, skyscrapers, the internet...

That says nothing of the value of individuals. In those times, there are always people worth less, and more. In each task, there were leaders, and there were those that were led. Is this not so?

Of course, I replied. But the tasks were only possible because the leaders knew what those beneath them were capable of. To dismiss mortals as small is to forget how high they can reach, if taken care of, if guided and strengthened. I was a mortal once, goddess, and given the right tools, I could do greater things as a mortal than some gods in this world can do. Unbidden, the thought of a nuclear bomb crossed my mind, but I quashed it.

Hm. This time, I received an image from the other end of the link of a woman in a very large, very posh fur coat sitting by the fire, a large goblet in her hand full of... well, something. I was going to guess alcohol, but the longer the image held, the more I thought it was golden flame. Her coat, too, was lined with flame instead of fur--ashen flame, from the color of it, with silver flame woven in decorative patterns. You are, at least, halfway amusing to talk to. That is rare, for your people. We will talk again.

And she was gone, and I was alone on the cart. I realized quickly that the tension from this mysterious godly conversation was not only increasing my blood pressure (and therefore the pain of my wound), but it was also visible to those around. So, after explaining just a time or two that no, I was not receiving some kind of awful vision of something bad happening, and explaining a few more times that I would speak at dusk... I leaned back against the cart and closed my eye and tried to rest.

The woman was strange, but the thing I found strangest of all was just how solid the concept of soulflame made into objects was, from that vision. Certainly, I had made things like my Avatar using soulflame, but not... out of soulflame. I had seen nothing from Alanna or Xenma so far that suggested it, and even the council of the gods I'd seen when I had gotten my name had no such expensive, luxurious uses of flame.

Part of that, perhaps, was our attempt to hide the fact that soulflame was a thing in the first place--out of fear, I assumed, that mortal mages would turn to something like Necromancy or blood flame to create it. But certainly if you disguised the use of it... I considered the thought for a long time, until we reached camp and I had to force myself back to thinking about the sermon I would give.

If I wanted any control over my image as a god, it would need to be a pretty good one.