I'd often heard the old saw about life in the military being long periods of boredom dotted with moments of absolute panic. One thing was for sure--when things started moving, somehow, there was a strange sense of momentum that pushed everything along together.

I spent some time following up on Muir, to find that the enemy that survived my attack had scattered and was hanging back, but had not been completely routed. I used the rain to try to keep track of them, but that told me nothing of their plans except that they weren't all running.

I was also somewhat certain that there was a necromantic stain in the area that I hadn't fully managed to clear out. Picking the necromancer's corpse up and throwing flame at him had reduced the black flame and black mist by a lot, but the whole area gave me the heebie-jeebies now. If I had enough power, I would gladly have gone out and scoured the lands--and I ought to, later, I supposed--but with the enemy still lurking, I couldn't even direct Muir to do it, let alone go out there myself.

As for the necromancer... with this one gone, I was now certain that there were more than one of them in the enemy army. That made sense--Alanna and Xenma had taken care of one in the ship months ago, who was doubtless going to some kind of meetup or alliance. But even with two down, there was still something gnawing at me, a sense that Miana and I were still being chased.

This bastard also made it clear that Necromancers could be strong as hell. While I can't speak for how powerful the lightning I threw at him was, magically speaking, I could be certain that it wasn't trivial. And--not to be elitist--it was also clear that the necromancer, at least, didn't understand lightning. The bolts I'd thrown were guided a little bit by magic, but mostly natural; if he'd put up a lightning rod of any kind instead of a shield, I would have had to do something else. As it was, the shield he put up resisted and deflected the power, but only by throwing a lot of black power around.

I couldn't afford to be naive, though. I needed a form of storm power that wouldn't be so easily blocked, while not being as energy intensive as the the tornado I'd summoned. That had been at least an F3, I would judge, not that I had eyes on it or even a good way to judge wind speed; all I knew is that if I'd had more power to throw at it, I could definitely have made something far more deadly.

And energy, alas, was a problem. The storm batteries that Xenma had created were almost entirely drained, now. Fortunately, they were also intended to recover some amount of charge from the aftermath of a large storm like this, so I shifted one to the area and let it absorb the swirling currents, but there was no way it would be powerful enough to repeat the performance within the next week.

My real hope was that the Order's builders could get Erika's generator up in time for me to use that as a source of lightning, but that simply didn't make a lot of sense, time-wise. They were, right now, hustling to get the church built and finishing some detail work on the nearby buildings. As I stepped back up out of the shadow to get a look at things, I was impressed at how quickly my temple was coming together--but while it would be ready to receive visitors, that meant the builders weren't focusing on the cave system that would hold the generator.

If I had the generator, maybe I could repeat the same battle plan here that I'd done for Muir, with a smaller storm and more lightning. And if there were no necromancers here--and no magicians capable of blocking the lightning--or if the necromancers who were chasing after the remnants of the town were weaker than the ones that had followed Xechi and Muir... that plan might work.

With any other combination of factors, even if Miana somehow experienced a powerful surge in her ability to fight, I had trouble believing we'd get through this.

I considered that as I watched the workers stacking huge stone blocks like they were lego. Herdy had suggested that if we were serious about hiding from the enemy, we needed to lose the fight here, which was obvious in a sense but also disheartening. Hiding was, frankly, an admission that the enemy was stronger. Some part of me wanted to ride a high from winning even one small battle, but it wasn't enough.

As though echoing my thoughts, Miana appeared behind me again, and I could sense her discontent.

"I don't like it," I said quietly. Then, realizing what I was watching, I shook my head. "Not the temple. I mean... I don't like it, but... assuming the enemy follows the town here, I'm not sure we can do anything but hide the Temple women in the cliff and let the enemy do what they want with everything above."

"You would sacrifice my people," said Miana, but there was a lot less cruelty in the sound of her voice than in her choice of words.

"I am open to suggestions, but I don't see another way to survive this." In all honesty, I was starting to feel weak and wanted to sit down, but I didn't give in, not for the moment. "This is what this whole plan was about, and as it gets closer, I hate it more and more. We can't hide everyone, can't make the entire town disappear, but we can hide the remnants of your religion, make them seem to have disappeared. But that means that the townspeople that followed along are--"

"A feint, a sacrifice, and more than that, they are people lied to by the gods, deceived, manipulated, and led to their doom." Miana's voice was cold. "I do understand strategy, Ryan of Eyes. And if I did not, I would hate you with every fiber of my being, because this is a betrayal of the highest order." I could vaguely sense it as Miana let her eyes range over the buildings, and I felt her measuring everything. "Or so it feels like."

I turned to look at her, concern apparent on my face, and I just watched her.

"But the truth is," Miana paused and ground her teeth together. "Without the rains, the enemy would already have caught my people. I felt what you were doing, and it seems that the ruling Clans have evaded the enemy for now, if perhaps not forever. One of my Vicars is in the area and will help keep them at bay, but... it is rare that a Vicar turns an enemy army away on their own. If the Goddess has limits, the Vicar will have even more."

"In the history of this war, there has never been such a successful rout of a city. Usually, when an army takes a town, they burn it and slaughter whoever they can reach, because the most influential already left, but those people cannot return if the masons and farmers are dead and the fields and buildings gutted. If they did the same when the entire town was assembled, they would have killed everyone. I would like to think that they would not, but..."

"But they had a Necromancer," I said quietly. "A creature that takes blood and black flame the way we take the other flames. And that necromancer expected to find a goddess' key in the Temple. They would have demanded the town be slaughtered to make their power greater, and then..."

Miana closed her eyes and, I suspected, tried hard not to think about what came next.

"In the battle in the fields, I killed one necromancer," I said, mostly unclear on whether she knew about that or not. "but there must be more. I think... that the only thing we can do here aside from keeping things hidden is to keep any enemy necromancers away from here. How... I don't know. I don't think I have the power to do that again, not yet. But if we hide the Temple people, and the Necromancer is angry, they could try to take the rest... and that we can't allow."

"No." Miana's reply was crisp, but offered no suggestions.

"But even with all the advantages that we have stacked together, right now, I'm not sure how we can fight a necromancer, to say nothing of the army they're bringing. If we merely bluff, they'll attack the people." I finally gave in and sat down on the ground, somewhat undignified. "This is what it all comes down to, and I'm not sure how we're going to survive this."

There was a pause before Miana spoke up again. "I wonder if even Erika has thought this through well enough. For all that she likes to give the appearance of being in control, she is not wise enough to have an answer to all problems, either."

I gave a noncommittal hum in reply. She had a lot of information that we didn't have, but was it enough to turn the situation to our advantage? Without great sacrifice? That was hard to know. The fact that she didn't show up immediately to advise us might have been an admission, or she might have been busy; we simply didn't know.

As far as other allies...

"There is one more important secret I haven't told you," I admitted quietly, then glanced at the workers, who might or might not have been listening. "It's about the artifact that is hiding us."

"A very strange power, indeed." Miana squinted at me, as though studying some tell of mine that I wasn't aware of, but I was too tired to worry about it. "It is too impressive for a young god such as yourself, but it is not something that Erika or Alanna would have made."

"It was given to me by an elder goddess..." I pursed my lips, but I Sensed that a phrase I didn't say, an elder Djinn, slipped out and was heard, anyway. I shifted my eyes to look directly into Miana's, and saw her eyes widen in shock. I worried about that, but let it pass. "...someone who I don't think is going to try to help us, but I don't believe that she is an enemy. She is used to... being forgotten."

"I would meet her, if it can be arranged," suggested Miana, and I flinched, not entirely sure why.

Miana didn't expect that the ancient thing that she had seemingly summoned would be so much like a dead thing, a twisted corpse, something so far lost that she would never otherwise have considered it a real Goddess. And along with that sense, that the ancient woman was close to death, was another: a sense of erratic vulnerability, of pain on the verge of panic, of misery that wanted to smother her and send her down into the deep darkness that lay in forgotten places of the world.

Miana blinked, and decided that the more poetic of the thoughts racing through her head were not her own, a realization that was met with a laugh.

"I should have expected that that one would only make acquaintances with other interesting people," came a whisper, but before she could think too much about the source of the whisper, a fake meeting room appeared before her, one where a mask of decency was slipped over the woman, along with a lot of accouterments that suggested she was insanely powerful. And, given the circumstances, Miana had to assume that that was very true, if she was the source of that divine enchantment.

"I..." Miana was not able to come up with an appropriate response to that in the next few moments, so the woman continued.

"You wish to know if I will help you. I won't. I find it stimulating that you, like he, are someone who would willingly talk to me. But I do not interfere with your world."

"Because you are Djinn," replied Miana, mostly certain that the accusation was a good summary.

"If I were human, nothing would change." The image of the woman--sanitized and clean, apparently full of life, stood up from her place by the fire and moved closer to Miana. "You are too young to be considered a goddess--you are a mortal handed a bauble and nothing more. That one at least understands death and rebirth, but you understand nothing, child. In time, when the people who today are your entire life are ten generations buried, you will question your place in the world. If you remain goddess until they are a thousand generations buried, the world will question your place. You will have been born in a different time."

"In the course of ten generations, you will see the first sign of it," whispered the Djinn as she stalked in a circle around Miana. "That one sees it because he has seen two versions of history. His people and yours have different understandings of human purpose, of human ability, and of human meaning. When you have lived long enough to see the purpose and meaning of your people change, you will understand that the weight of your history is enough to drown you. Your own purpose and meaning will not change--cannot, and you would never willingly give that up, for when your people are gone, your meaning and purpose will be all that you have left."

"But the world will change, and your people will change, for your people will be gone, replaced. And that is the way of life, both for the Rakshasa and for the humanoids that walk the surface today."

Miana listened to the whispered words around and behind this Djinn, trying to keep her wits about her despite something inside of her wanting to scream and flee from her. "What... what was the purpose and meaning of your life?"

"To change Fate," the Djinn replied. "You do not understand a world without magic, mortal. The Djinn were born to create the impossible--to grant wishes. But while the first few Djinn were truly able to break the world free, were able to forcibly evolve our people so that they could become greater, and truly thrive for the first time... once Djinn existed, the meaning and purpose of us changed. We were no longer there to change all of creation. We were there to change individual lives. We went from goddesses to tools."

"I was the third Djinn to be enslaved, and the last to have ever tasted freedom. Your world knows only a naive lie, believing powerful people to be above. You believe that you can lead. But you will be used, and led, and if your people discover the means, you will be chained."

The whispers around the Djinn were hoarse and pained, and with some difficulty, Miana tuned them out, because she was understanding more and more that she already knew what they were saying. "But you can change Fate," she suggested, not really sure what more she could contribute.

"I already have." The Djinn stepped back, seemingly satisfied, and returned to her place by the fire. "I do not need you to find a meaning or purpose for me, mortal. The Fate that I foresaw and changed was more awful than any fate that may yet come to pass. A thing that could have been, will never be. But my time is over, and all that is left..." For a moment, Miana saw the gaunt form that she sensed but had never seen, the 'true' form of the Djinn. "...is a corpse from a time long past."

Miana studied the Djinn for a long moment, but shook her head. "That is not all you are," she said, but found the words flat and uninspiring on her tongue.

The Djinn simply gave her a bland smile, and then her presence, and the false scene in front of her, both vanished.