Miana was finding it hard to be Goddess of Blades ever since the incident. It'd not do much that she couldn't be a Goddess of Blades; instead, she just couldn't stand being nothing but the Goddess of Blades.

When her religion left her alone to think for herself (and she discovered there was a deliberate pattern to their behavior that was manageable) she ended up thinking time and time again about Lu'nella and her long life with the Temple of Blades. She must have felt trapped, over and over again, by the fact that she and her seemingly unchanging nature were a bedrock upon which the nation was built. While she must have been many things to many people, above all else, she was a tool used to kill, and she could never escape it.

A sword had no thoughts. A bandit and a white knight could each arm themselves with the exact same blade. Miana had examined some of discarded Blades of the Fallen and read some of the exhaustive instructions on creating new ones, but the ritual bothered her; it seemed to imply, to the deceased, that they were becoming one with the Goddess, when the ritual itself merely placed them within the sword and sustained them there.

She had felt the Hall of Records. She knew that they were happy there, but there was much to that Hall--the blades were cared for, and still a part of the lives of the living, and there were simply so many; the ritual was not short, and even if Miana had a second body to dedicate to the task, it would take hours per sword, after the swords were created and properly cleansed to house a spirit, which was a task others undertook for the High Priestess.

And yet Miana and many others had lived in the temple many years and not believed, not understood. This afterlife was simply another way to make weapons. The spirits of the dead, though allowed to linger and cared for, were just another weapon in the arsenal of the Goddess. Miana found that distasteful--and perhaps more importantly, for now it seemed impossible to manufacture and prepare the swords. She privately was prepared to never revive the tradition, even though it had saved them, but her feelings on the matter were not so firm that she could not be swayed if matters changed.

She was sure that she did not want the dead to become nothing more than weapons. Perhaps--perhaps--it was better than death, than becoming nothing. But the thought of doing the deed upset her. In the same way, it began very, very quickly to wear on her that people--those who could commune spiritually or magically, priests and priestesses and vicars and Angels and some others--also saw her as only one thing and expected her to be nothing else.

It started with an Callha, an uppity priest from the northlands, a place she remembered passing through when she was young, when a particularly successful invading force from Tinbur needed to be forced back. He had seem proud, even arrogant at the time, but from beneath, Miana had simply accepted it, for a number of reasons; not least, she didn't need to interact with him except formally and as part of a group. Now that she sat above him, that arrogance chafed at their relationship. There were several abilities the Goddess tended to grant, and he was good at using those abilities, but he seemed to believe that that ability was inborn and natural, that he was born talented and superior.

Superior to her. He seemed to think that the role of the Goddess was to give him power so he could display his dominance over others. And when granted power, he was dominant; he could materialize swords of energy so dense and powerful that he could vaporize rock and effortless tear apart armor, and the battle aura he emitted could crush enemies if their will was not firm enough. In battle, he held power no less than a Vicar, but drawing his power from prayer and his own magic energy.

He accepted readily that the Goddess had died and that Miana was her replacement. Rather than doubting his Lady, he was only interested in forcing Miana to improve as quickly as possible so that he could regain his former power. That, in and of itself, was not a problem, but he seemed to find her every failing to be an offense against him personally. Repeatedly, they clashed over whether or not Miana could, at that exact moment, be a better Goddess.

When put on a defensive footing, Miana found herself eager to battle against her people. Although she often cursed herself for it later, she was wrathful, denying people who challenged her. Callha was one who endured her wrath and spited her in return; many others seemed to drift away from Miana as a Goddess instead, and Miana found herself becoming more and more afraid that she was destroying the church and the legacy she had been left.

And yet she would not, could not simply roll over and let herself be seen as just a replacement for another, better Goddess. She needed to grow strong and she would. She would not stand by and let people snatch control of her church from her when she was at her weakest. In all those who challenged her, she sensed the spirit of a predator, and she bared her teeth and backed herself into a corner to keep them at bay.

And Ryan was there, and that was a great help. Whatever else happened, he seemed to know--to believe, to desire, and to have faith--that Miana would come through all the troubles and still be Miana, where everyone else wanted her to become a sword. She would be a sword--and a shield, and a general, and a Goddess, and a woman, a person. The would not steal her whole future and the would not steal control of her church and make her something lesser.

She found a surprising empathy from Alanna in this. Alanna, she could still tell, was the kind of woman who simply lacked the heart to fight people, especially when the other party had something to hold over her. There was great wisdom, patience, and power bottled up in the other woman, but some days that power seemed to be sealed behind a stone wall a foot thick.

Somehow the support of these two friends seemed to be dooming the Church of Blades to, if not fail, certainly falter and crumble around the edges. Without them, she would have tried to prop it up by sacrificing herself, her personality, her past and her future to become the goddess they asked for. She made up her mind only after hearing Ryan--after hearing Marth speak.

There were many paths. She didn't need to judge herself harshly for not following another's. She was not Lu'nella, and would never be.

Another factor not making thing easier was a clandestine note delivered by Chibal, who seemed a bit freaked out by it herself. Although the context was unclear, apparently there was some secret relationship between Lu'nella and the Weavers--the clan that, ultimately, had the purse strings of the entire nation, and remained in the shadows guiding it--and they were eager that it would continue, with an implicit threat if she didn't agree.

And again, she had every reason to expect that she would have some relationship with them. But with her being a Goddess, she certainly intended to make sure she had some say in what that relationship was. If they thought otherwise, well, even with her existing church on rough legs, she wasn't alone.

In all, the situation was rough. Very, very rough. Even before she got to matters of war, a war that (like all wars) might still be lost, she had enough problems with her allies. But somehow, despite multiple problems each rising like a vengeful spirit to haunt her and claw power from her, she was much, much more confident than she had been.

The situation had seemed impossible. It wasn't just power that made the difference; if she'd inherited all of Lu'nella's strength, she would still have not believed, would not have had faith that the world could change. Alanna, she knew, was the same. If there was one thing that Ryan had, it was perspective. He had shown them all.

It was a secret known only to the three of them--assuming, as she did, that the two of them understood what happened in those mad, mad moments--but that entire display was him. She and Alanna supported him, and Alanna in particular was key to holding it all together, but Ryan had surged ahead with a surreal confidence that neither of the other two could begin to touch or tap into. It felt to him like he was living a legend, like he was proving what he knew in his heart. He didn't seem to believe that he, himself, was strong. Magic was strong. Magic could do anything. He had a vivid thought, a dream, and with their combined souls, suddenly the pieces were there. Everything he needed to make his dreams come true was spread out before him, and he simply picked the pieces up, assembled them into an engine of destruction, and turned it on.

Miana felt the world ring like a bell when the bolts of power he had arranged didn't simply pierce the necromancer's shield--the shattered fragments of the black magic shield scattered for miles, and they'd be hunting them down for years, she knew. And he had been the one to insist that each of the Fallen be used, one last time, as much for the living as for the dead. If they had not each been on the verge of death anyway, it might have seemed a cruelty, but every single one seemed eager to be told that they had won, and that they could finally rest.

And they could, once the black flame was erased. There had been so much of it, especially once the necromancers started killing their own; it was terrible. And yet, when each of the gods laid hands on the ash within each sword, that ash seemed made to devour the darkness. Faith and love had destroyed the death and twisted energy. Fitting, yes, but... still, it hurt her heart, even now, to think about sacrificing people, using them like that.

All the more reason why she would not continue the tradition, if she had the choice. Useful, powerful, but... barbaric, in a way. It was like so many of her problems now--an artifact of another age, another Goddess. Lu'nella had succeeded wildly, but her time was over.

Her church might be dying (and she held open the possibility that churches and temples could remain dedicated to her alone, for now), but Miana was confident that the Church of the Three was going to be much more flexible, and it would provide for the nation in ways the Church of Blades never could--in ways that her church and Alanna's, separately or together, could not. There were many kinds of strength, and many paths to strength, and a single god simply couldn't be asked to be all of those things in one person. Three, perhaps, was still too few.

Miana was still scared. She still had severe problems with confidence, and got upset too easily. She wasn't strong enough, didn't know enough, and was beset by enemies.

But she was growing stronger, and she had two very powerful allies. She would do anything for them, and she had faith that they would do the same for her. They had promised to help, yes, and she trusted them, but she also believed that they would go above and beyond their promises and do what was right.

That, she realized as she looked out over the sea of trees and waited for Alanna, was the very definition of faith.