A lot of things happened somewhat quickly after that. Among the most important, if least urgent, was that we received a message, somehow, from the Generals with the advanced force. I am not exactly clear on the details; it might have been magic, or a messenger pigeon, but I am pretty sure it wasn't a person riding a horse through the night and day to reach us. The message in general was that the advanced force was falling back and that we should strengthen our defenses.

A little late on that. If we'd waited for that message, the Rakshasa spy would have been inside our camp. Who knows if he had some other, more powerful ability that he would have used, or if he would have just assassinated our commanders... or maybe he would have used all the blood flame he was using as a disguise, and the blood flame that I destroyed attacking him, to power that explosion spell at a much higher level.

In any case, we posted several guards and made sure that they prayed to the God of Eyes for the ability to see invisible enemies, which of course I granted.

Generally speaking, the tone of the camp had changed a lot overnight as a result of my speech. In a way, there wasn't a lot of good that could be done out there--we weren't in a place where troops could go looking for thieves and murderers and bring them to justice, or anything--but the mood at least among those who heard the speech was completely recovered from having just faced flesh-eating hell-monsters. The site in particular where it happened had that lingering good feeling that I'd sensed, and I found that many people came back to that site the next day and just lingered quietly, as though soaking in the remnants.

Which was interesting. I wasn't the sort to try to seize every last advantage, but I could see that for people interested in building churches and religions, sites like that--sites where powerful religious moments had happened--were useful, maybe even critical to building a good church. The real goal, of course, was to build a church and then create such moments within them, but once you already have a church, generally the people who are there are the ones who already want to believe... or already need your services and are willing to trade for it.

I also started getting a lot of non-prayer contacts from people, and as I processed them, I began to realize what they were--they were casual curses. If someone spat my name out while looking at something disgusting--cursing their eyes, as it were--then I got kind of a ping. It was a two-way connection, however brief; if I wanted to, I realized, I could smite them for taking my name in vain (as it were), for daring to invoke a god for such a silly thing. But also... each ping came with information. Although I couldn't really take the time to process it all, it was interesting just how much was being leaked.

It wasn't something that I would have thought about if I wasn't from Earth--if it weren't for our history of companies harvesting user data and hoovering up every indication of who people were in order to create a profile. Obviously I wasn't running an internet advertising company here, nor the godly equivalent, and so a lot of that data wasn't of any use... but it still felt like it could be. Like somewhere among the little connections here and there was a hint of fate, a thread of the future that could be teased out and studied to know what was happening in advance.

Of course, over time, ad companies had been in many circles reviled for their privacy invasions and poor security of data, and so on and so forth... so even after the thought occurred to me, it wasn't like I was immediately on board with the idea of creating a 'divine surveillance state', so to speak. But as I considered the idea, I realized that sooner or later I, as a god, was going to run into a problem; I was just one man--just one god--and I would need to handle hundreds if not thousands of prayer requests per day, more if I become popular, global, or both. This fair-like atmosphere in the wake of my sermon gave me a hint of it, because people here were praying or cursing or doing other religious things frequently enough that I was running into situations where I had to deal with two or three things at once, and didn't always have cool-down time from one thing to the next.

If godhood were a technology, it would be easy--add more servers to handle the load. Web services had long since solved that issue. As a god, though? As someone whose abilities were dependent on flesh, even if it were somehow super-deity-flesh? I resolved to ask Alanna about it later, but I couldn't help wondering if that was why, the few times I'd seen her, she was frustrated and drained. Either she had to spend flame to handle multiple requests at once, or it was simply that taxing on her, even with all the powers her godhood gave her.

By far the most complicated problem was that a few of the warriors took time out of their day to sit down and have real in-depth prayer sessions, and I although I left part of that to my avatar, it and I both agreed that we got the best results when I was "whole", two halves being one whole rather than disconnected pieces. For the average soldier, it might not matter much, but if I ended up with a more sophisticated clientele, my Avatar might not be enough to keep people interested.

Oddly enough, my Avatar provided me a viewpoint on that question that I was too busy to think of myself. Basically, I didn't immediately realize that I was being a little snooty in assuming that my Avatar was inherently less good at talking to people than "real me". As soon as I brought that up with myself (or myself brought that up with me?) of course I felt ashamed, but there was a kind of shrugging dismissal of the offense. Apparently there was something of a real divide between the two of me, and most of my social skills were "here" while most of my godly skills were "there". I could straddle the two, but there was a kind of mental block that prevented me from just copying certain parts of me and running both at once.

Apparently in the distant past other gods had tried it and screwed up royally. So, the mental block was put in place in order to gently dissuade anyone from trying again.

Given the creep factor of watching my godly body act without my conscious control, it made sense. If I was afraid of myself, it would be too easy for that to become two-way; if both of me were afraid of the other, we would simply become two people, and that would be that. It took conscious effort by me to just accept that I was one person split between two bodies, even when it was in many ways pretty obvious.

Anyway, some of the conversations I (and my avatar without me) were having were interesting. It was just kind of difficult to do, because I was busy. Not terribly busy, since I was also still wounded... but at one point during the day I was talking with someone out loud and also handling a prayer that involved what was effectively another conversation. Fortunately, the way I had upgraded my brain meant that I could multitask more effectively than I would have otherwise--in this case, I treated the godly conversation like a text chat, with my Avatar as a... chat avatar, as it were. So I probably had some uncomfortable pauses and hesitations, but the person on the other end did get my attention, even if it probably seemed pretty weird.

Mostly, the kind of conversations I was having were about people looking for perspective on what they could have done differently in the past, and what they should do in the future. Honestly, I was never that good at that kind of advice, but I quickly found that these were simpler times and people had simpler ways of looking at things; for example, a soldier (female halfbreed, some kind of cat-type I think) had run away from home because nobody there was worth marrying. Her question wasn't some kind of question about where should she go to find the best husband, but rather, a simple question about whether it was right to put herself above her family.

Which, okay, in context it seemed like her family could probably use her help, but the answer was obvious--at the time she ran away, her parents were mature adults who had watched her personality grow year by year for a good fifteen years. If they didn't see this coming, they should have; if they saw it coming but didn't plan for it, they were just being idiots; if they meant well but didn't have the resources, well, she ought to send some money from her job back to them, but she had every right to choose her own fate. If her parents were genuinely expecting her to crush her own feelings and simply do what she was told, forever, then they were being both stupid and cruel.

After a pause, though, in which I thought the conversation had ended, she asked a different question--she asked what it meant that she had found nobody worth marrying in her home town. She recounted many different people and their flaws--not that they were ugly or not, but sadism, cowardice, undue arrogance, willful ignorance, bigotry... a lot of things. As she thought things through, my avatar noted dryly that she seemed to be only realizing some of those things in retrospect, although she had felt them before.

I took some time to rest my head and thought about the question before answering. "How much," I asked her, "have your feelings changed since you started to have hope? How much have your feelings changed since you started being independent? The reflections you see in them are who you might have become if your parents had broken you. If you lived without hope, without independence, if you did not truly believe you could change your own fate, then everyone in the world around you becomes an obstacle, a piece that the world uses to keep you trapped. You had the strength to fight and run away, the health to tackle life's obstacles without being crushed. Those without health are sick; those that cannot fight are beaten. That is what you see in those people."

The woman, very introspective now, ended her prayer and spent some time thinking. If I had more time, I would have loved to chase her around, follow up, try to find out what effect my advice had... but no, within an hour I was busy with two other things at once, and I could only try to commit her to memory and move on.

The other prayers tended to be like that. Most of the questions asked were not really in the domain of Eyes, although they were clearly intended for "a god who sees all". I had probably gotten myself in a bit too deep with that appellation, but whatever, I needed to add at least a little hype to my speech or I could have been talking about any mortal and his opinions on life. And I tried, honestly and earnestly, to give each person my attention in turn. But as the hours turned to days, it started to feel like if this went on, my job would be full-time psychiatrist or counselor, not one who granted gifts in exchange for payment.

Which... wasn't terrible, I mean, if I had the resources to do it. But it made immediate sense why a god would have churches with mortal pastors who could answer these same few questions again and again without bothering the one in charge. It was not yet a thing that I needed, but if word spread quickly, I would need it soon... especially if I continued to have a day job to support myself.

Alanna and her quiet lifestyle with the church made a lot more sense in that context. Ciel'ostra, in contrast, seemed much more transactional, which made sense. Most people wouldn't look to the Lady of Blades for advice about their parents anyway.

The upside of being such a busy god should have been an influx of flame, and there was a decent amount, but there was also an expense when I needed to accelerate my thinking to handle more than one thing at once, or whenever I needed to pry into the background of a person I was talking with in order to get more information. I could have refused to do that and given general advice or asked questions, but as a god who was supposed to just See things, I needed to keep an air of mysterious wisdom.

That, and honestly, I just didn't like disappointing people.

It was only a couple days before we caught sight of the troops returning. I felt some kind of probing sense from Ciel'ostra as she approached, one that seemed to notice our injuries and losses and our general disposition--practical, effective, and quick; it was impressive, although I doubted she was going to advertise that she had the ability, except perhaps to the other generals. As it turned out, we had also just spotted a caravan with supplies from the rear, and the rearguard company was escorting them in. So, for the first time since the first battle, we were pretty much all together.

Of course, the first thing that Murn and the other generals did was call together the commanders... and me, for my part in guiding the battle. Which, although I had been too busy to dwell on it, was suddenly a conversation I was dreading. Me still with my key, having almost died, and having basically (if not officially) disobeyed Murn when she said that the Goddess of Blades would handle the Rakshasa problem... and I had no additional insight to give, except that the enemy had lost a lot in the fight.

It wouldn't surprise me if I got chewed out a lot, or worse. I hoped it not worse.