In the Goddess’ name, let the accused suffer imprisonment for ten years and forfeiture of no less than one hundred gold of personal goods, notwithstanding that withheld for the support of family. Rank, title, and rights are hereby stripped, and the accused shall clothe themselves in black judgement so all may know their shame.

Thus ends the heresy known as the Redeemers.

Let none stand against the one and true Goddess.

The temple plaza was silent in awe as Lynne’s mists teased the stones. The colors refracted in the dew offered glimpses of memory, and the kiss of those waters eased aching bones.

The angel of oceans caught herself lost in memory, shook her head, and regained control. I am here to leverage my station, not daydream about what cannot be reclaimed.

Donovan was not in the Whistler lands; he had not wandered into the dunes of the Plateau; he had not crossed lake, river or ocean to trigger the whisper of her aspect.

In short, he was proving to be a terrible nuisance. At this rate, Lynne would miss the Harvest festival!

“The Goddess blesses us,” whispered a priestess.

Lynne glanced in suspicion, but the woman praised the air instead of her directly.

Strange, isn’t it? There was a time when they always recognized me, and yet here I walk among them…

Shrugging, she retorted, “The Goddess daydreams too loud for anyone’s good. She should control herself.”

Lynne ran a hand through her hair, huffed, and shoved through the adoring crowd for the temple proper.

Beyond the shadowed halls, a child held session on a throne built for a giant. Flanked by the last great serpent, Esmie perched on the edge of the cushion and played with the beads of her bandeau. Older priestesses flanked her, their expressions scrubbed clean. All listened to the young merchant who spoke on the cerulean carpet.

“…and so if it should please the Azure-blessed, the import duty should be set to thirty percent for cut gemstones and twenty-two percent for uncut. Will this meet the Goddess’ satisfaction?”

As Lynne entered, the old serpent stirred. It bumped Esmie’s feet aside to stare directly at the Goddess, flicking its tongue.

Be at ease, Apophis. I am not here to declare myself.

The serpent considered this. Would he rise like the old days, a tidal wave of power?

Ah, but Apophis was ancient now, and he sank into his serpentine languor without any fuss.

She rather doubted he could even manage to eat a cragbear these days. Even her serpents didn’t last forever…

You guard my throne well, she sang to him. You show me more honor than I deserve.

Ignorant of Lynne, Esmie cleared her throat. She spoke softly and hesitantly, weighing every word. “Yes, good sir. The Goddess will be pleased.”

Lynne frowned. The poor girl looks stricken. Why is she still acting the Voice? Surely it could not take more than a week to deal with…

An ancient memory slowly bubbled to the surface: Azure-blessed, those appointed above all others. Had she not empowered her herald to command in her absence on pain of Tempest retribution?

The angel swore under her breath. Of all the rules for her priesthood to still follow! Lynne had established that law so she could take a nap!

“As the Azure-blessed commands in the name of the Goddess,” the oldest priestess sang, her tone cordial and her smile bloodthirsty.

Lynne felt her Tempest swell, and the sky rumbled. “Oh, for the love of–”

Thankfully, the clamor from the courtyard finally reached the throne. A swarm of people burst into sight, singing and shouting in competition to deliver their account of a blessed mist that fell suddenly upon the complex.

In response, the priestesses descended from their dais to separate and calm the crowd. None bothered to ask for Esmie, and the child remained on the throne.

The angel of oceans wove through the crowd to Esmie. “Child! Why in the world are they forcing you to answer petitions?! Of all the rules to be shirked, surely this is foremost!”

The girl blinked several times, attempting to place the woman before her. In tone and voice, she seemed so familiar…

“Hells, I truly begin to walk too quiet,” Lynne cursed herself. She reached forward and brushed the cerulean hair on Esmie’s brow. A gentle contact, careful to merely brush across the girl’s mind.

“Goddess!” the child gasped. Her eyes watered. “Thank the heavens, you’re back!”

“Yes, I need–”

Esmie lunged forward and hugged the angel of oceans with all her might.

“– access to the spymaster’s records,” Lynne finished. “Are you alright?”

“They’re just waiting for me to screw up,” the child sniffed into her belly.

Oh, what have I done to this poor child?

Lynne gently wrapped the girl in her arms. “They have made you high priestess?”

Esmie nodded.

“Fools blinded by the words of a mad woman…” she muttered. But what can I expect? Blind obedience on pain of Tempest… “What did they say when you relayed my message from Resting Dragon?”

“That the word of the Goddess was sacrosanct in all things.”

Lynne laughed dourly. “So they plan to pretend I never said such foolish things.”

After all, the Stormmother so rarely checked on the results of her edicts.

“I tried to make them answer me, but they just said the matter was under consideration!”

A child’s tears were an ocean, too; the seas of pure passion. The droplets fell to Lynne’s belly, and each one rang in the angel’s head like a crystal chime. In them, she heard fragmented dreams.

This burden is too large

I am too young

They wait for me to slip with hungry eyes

Alisandra had cried under the same despair.

“I have wronged you, Esmie,” Lynne crooned, stroking the child’s head. “I did not mean that you should bear the throne at such an age. You deserve more from a mentor.”

One of the priestesses glanced at the throne and whispered, “Who is that woman with the brat?”

The Tempest snapped to awareness.

Lynne hissed between her teeth, suppressing a plethora of ideas. We will not boil her blood nor force the water from her flesh. We are not what we were. Lie silently, Tempest, and die.

Love and rage, and only love must remain.

“Would you like to travel with me instead?” the angel of oceans offered.

Esmie glanced up, hopeful.

Her eyes were the exact same color as Alisandra’s.

“I need to visit the spymaster to pick up the trail of a thief. Then we can go together after him.”

“Yes!” the girl squeaked, bouncing. She forgot her tears, breaking into a wide grin. “I can pack fast! I never owned much anyways!”

“Hurry to it, then.”

Esmie raced away, once more running like a child should.

Lynne smiled to herself.

“Who are you?” demanded the former high priestess, her nose high. “You wear our colors, but I do not recognize you.”

That smile evaporated. “I am a servant of Wave’s Lament.”

I should have been a servant from the start. I meant to be. Oh, but pure intentions never amounted to anything.

“If you are one of the Goddess’ own, where is your serpent?”

Lynne crooked a finger, and the serpent beneath the throne obediently rose. Apophis uncoiled, uncoiled, and uncoiled his sinuous loops, and he regarded the audience like a light snack.

“Oh, hells,” whispered the woman, sinking to her knees.

“I have shown you mine,” the angel of oceans remarked. “I would ask where your own is, but he barely responds to your calls. You are too grand to worry about such little pets anymore, aren’t you?”

A bond built from unity, and self-important priestesses would not water such a thing.

A minor demonstration was in order, then.

“Apophis,” Lynne hummed, “I believe the gardens need a little watering.”

A gentle task for my old warrior. Your aches are my own, Apophis

The serpent tensed, and the distant roar of moving water began. Tendrils rose from the Dragon, floating across the city, and delivered a careful, nourishing rain to all of the gardens and parks.

The Tempest hummed in Lynne’s mind, power and clarity waiting to lift her back into divinity, and she shivered with the promise.

Apophis would follow her into the madness, loyal until his end of days.

“Pray forgive us, dark Goddess!” the former high priestess squeaked, pale as death.

Pale as the drowned.

With effort, Lynne fought down the temptation. It would be so easy…but she must think of her consequences. They stretched far beyond the moment’s pleasure of dominion.

“You are forgiven,” she breathed, lowering her hand.

Oh, brave Apophis, my great soldier, my last terror…you are released.

Her serpent hissed once more at the priestesses in soft menace, carefully coiled his bulk, and sank his great head beside the throne.

Sleep, my dear. It is time to rest.

I am not that Goddess any longer.

Neither the crowds nor the priestesses noticed as Apophis slipped quietly into his final sleep.

But of course not. Some things only held meaning for an angel who remembered the day she first held a trio of eggs in her hand and dreamed of them becoming more…

If they had become as terrible as the tidal wave, that was merely the fault of their guiding star.

“We serve you in all things!” wailed the priestess.

“Really? Then why have you not invited the priests of rock, jungle and fire to share your table?”

The woman whimpered softly. “Whatever you command is righteous!”

After all, the pleasure of the Stormmother was the very definition of good. What morality could exist beyond the Goddess?

Lynne sighed. “I see some things haven’t changed.”

Clearly, her temple retained a certain capacity to interpret her missives. After all, rule was a game of risks. Risk the Stormmother noticing your lapse and a grisly execution…or attempt to uphold edicts that would lead to political downfall.

Her immortal memory easily dredged up a dozen similar incidents. Despite all the gruesome executions, the priestesses continued to play the odds.

I have kept my people in infancy. My presence encourages them to wail for my touch, and my absence leaves them to fumble in my shadow. If I cannot stay and I cannot leave, then I am trapped in the Stormmother forever.

Then she thought of Alisandra’s own infancy. Lynne had learned the hard way that a toddler would scream for attention to wake the dead if that babe thought the gambit would succeed. A mother could not leave the toddler alone to eat paint chips, but neither could she respond to every sniffle with anticipation.

Hard enough to be nurse maid for one stubborn noble girl, and now I wish to be mother to an entire nation!

A balance, then: not quite dominion and not quite a mortal life. An inelegant compromise, but Lynne conjured the plan on the fly.

Did the Archangel feel this uncertain as he guided young angels?

She twirled on her heel, mounted her throne, and spread her hands. Then she called the waters to the space between her palms, and she carved a tiny ocean in the air. A perfect sphere of water, almost transparent, formed in accordance with her Will; it sang as her heart sang, a link to endure wherever she traveled.

“It seems that additional supervision will be required.”

Lynne left the orb floating on her throne.

“Once a week, I will speak through this orb, and you will appraise me of the city’s needs,” she commanded. “If there is an emergency, call to me through this orb, and I will hear.”

As Lynne heard the souls of her people, drifting through her fingers in a current greater than herself.

The Maiden within heard the Song of that current, and it whispered the next words.

“I promise on my soul – I will carve a path through the heavens themselves to protect you.”

A silence deep and wide fell across the city then, born from the sudden cessation of a thousand little movements.

An oath; a fate. Deeper and wiser things heard her words, and those who served in eternal sacrifice sang their approval.

What an odd thing to feel the Chorus approve. She laughed to herself. A first in my long, wasted life.

“That said…the rate of tariffs for gemstones just given is usurious, and I am mildly displeased to see you arranging for my Herald’s failure. I charge you now with the day-to-day governance of the city; you should have grown practiced in my absence. When it comes to tariffs and decorations, figure the matter out amongst yourselves. You will all be held accountable. Together.”

The former high priestess processed this proclamation slowly. “Goddess…how?”

“Why not try a committee? They certainly seem in vogue in Lumia. Maybe that’d be fun, don’t you think?”

Before the former high priestess could form a coherent objection, Lynne brushed past her and away.

***

“Deepbloom,” Lynne mused, ten miles east of Wave’s Lament with dusk approaching. “Why Deepbloom of all places? Verdandi is jealous as a cat! The wards on her sanctum will flay his bones…”

The Stormmother of old never bothered with trivial details of statecraft, and she was quite astonished at the sheer volume of paperwork in the spymaster’s quarters. For one thing, her secret agents had followed a series of tips to numerous Redeemer chapels and all but scoured the cult from Wave’s Lament, all without a peep to their Goddess!

She found the trail to Donovan in meticulous reports where weeks of pathfinding had availed her nothing.

It was a trail of bodies. The reports detailed impossible injuries and men shattered in mind and body…

“You seek the key to heaven at others’ expense. If only you were the first, Donovan…”

A trickle of genuine worry threaded through her belly.

A thief with a stolen battery is one thing…but a mage fed the divine fire is another altogether. Gabriel’s diary would not provide you with such vile tricks.

This was an invention all of his own.

“Goddess, have you been to the jungle before?” Esmie asked. The Azure-blessed straddled a pack horse, barely able to wrap her knees around its ribs, and bounced with the awkward cadence of a new rider. Huge bundles in tight leather bindings rubbed against her back, and she would regret her decision to ride by dawn.

“My name is Lynne.”

Esmie wrinkled her nose. “It feels weird to call you by name. You’re an adult.”

“I am also your mentor.”

“Oh! Then I’ll call you Teacher.”

“Close enough, then.” We’ll see if that lasts the week.

Lynne paused on the thin road to the east and turned back. The lights of Wave’s Lament gleamed over the edge of the broken shell, an oasis of day under the dark sky.

“The healing waters are refilled, the crops are blessed, and the orb will allow me to maintain contact with the priesthood.” She ticked the tasks off her fingers like a farmer’s wife. “Everything will be fine.”

They proceeded ten more paces before Esmie found another question. “Teacher? Did you know the Verdant?”

“Yes, dear.”

“…and?”

Less of a woman and more of an emerald force. A whispering fey voice and a mind that traveled the leaves easier than the waters.

“We were too much alike in some ways,” Lynne said, “but she outgrew the need for a human skin.”

Verdandi’s was a power that marshalled the living, growing world against the flood.

“I regret how I treated her.” The angel of oceans patted the packs. “That is why we’re returning what I stole.”

“Like gold and stuff?”

“Something like that.”

Esmie remained silent for fifteen more seconds. “So you’re going to talk to her?”

Lynne exhaled patiently. Love. Kindness. A better example. It must begin with my Herald. If I can convince Esmie that the Tempest is dead, then I can convince the rest of the world.

Five more seconds of quiet. “Apologize for the wars and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still mad at you?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t even know if she still dwells in her temple.

“And you’re going to let the mudhutters worship with you?”

“Don’t call them mudhutters, Esmie.”

“But they live in mud huts, don’t they?”

The horse whickered loudly in annoyance, and Lynne privately agreed.

“We will need to ride through the night, child,” the angel chided. “Save your strength.”

“How long does it take to reach Deepbloom? ”

“Depending on the weather…” and whether Lynne needed to smother a child in her sleep… “and the roads, somewhere between one and two weeks.

“And this Donovan has a big head start?”

“He’s already there, I believe.” The angel of oceans sighed. “I underestimated him. Any reasonable, budding mage would seek the easiest caches of power, lost under the soil over the ages. I thought to catch him skulking about the Whistler lands and be home in time to escort Alisandra to the Harvest dance.”

“Who’s Alisandra?”

“My—” Lynne caught herself on a particularly dangerous lie. A lie for herself. “A dear friend’s daughter. I raised her in Ruhum.”

“Lucky,” Esmie whispered softly.

The Maiden sang in response to that simple jealousy, and Lynne squeezed the child’s hand with gentle fondness.

“Is she your Voice in Ruhum?”

“No, she is…very independent these days.”

“Super lucky,” the priestess muttered, darker.

Now the Tempest rumbled in a mixture of self-recrimination and annoyance. The thoughts You can go back to the dancing hall if you don’t like it! and What have I done to this poor girl? collided in her head with dizzying force.

Lynne clapped her hands, startling the horse. “Regardless! Eyes forward, Esmie. Donovan holds three gemstones of woven light now. If he comes to understand their function, he will punch well above a mortal’s usual weight.”

At least, while the power lasted. No thrill endured forever.

The child squirmed. “But you’re our Goddess! Of course you’ll win. You have to!”

“No, child. I have to endure.”

Come hells or high water, I remain.

“I will teach you on the way, child.” As Alice once taught a foolish, haughty goddess. “All that you must know to be my anointed dancer.”

Esmie sagged. “Lessons?! I thought we were going on vacation!”

“If you wish to return, it is only a dozen miles back to the temple,” the angel of oceans replied tartly.

The young priestess held a groan for ten full seconds.

“Think of the stories, dear Esmie,” she chided. Love and patience. Maiden ascendant.

“The other wards in the dancing hall said the mudhutters guzzle spider venoms to incite prophetic dreams.”

“They do not,” Lynne corrected absently. “You’re thinking of toad extract. The aftertaste is horrendous.”

“We’re not going to do that, are we?”

“Not unless you want to. Fair warning; the extract tends to make you soil yourself.”

“Who would drink that?!”

Lynne laughed. A valid question. “Humans are strange creatures, aren’t they?”

***

Sixty-two hours, seven minutes, and thirteen seconds later, Esmie pronounced, “Teacher, I want to go home!”

“Imagine how the horse feels,” Lynne snapped. She walked beside the child and mount, her mists coiling protectively around both. Personal air conditioning, enough to allow her companions to continue traveling in the oppressive heat of the Verdant day.

“She smells!”

“So do you,” the angel of oceans countered testily.

Love and patience, Lynne reminded herself. Love and patience.

Her Herald resisted the lessons like a mule beneath the bit, and the horse fussed at the thick mud that constituted a jungle road in this season. The canopy left the world in eternal dusk, and a legion of vicious biting insects sought their blood. Vines and ferns blocked the route at every turn, and little streams chewed at the path.

Not surprisingly, progress was slow. The Goddess could provide the horse with the strength to walk through the night and bless Esmie with sound sleep even on horseback, but their pace rarely exceeded gentle ambulation.

“My butt hurts so bad!”

“You are free to walk.”

“I’m wearing sandals!”

And whose fault is that? the Tempest thought.

“Can you heal my blisters again?”

“I healed them at breakfast.”

“Well, they hurt again!”

They only ever cry for more, whispered the Tempest. Ungrateful and rotten…

“You must endure at least until lunch.”

Esmie made a whine that could shatter glass. “You’re being mean. You can heal them, so it’s mean if you don’t!”

Sighing, Lynne laid a hand on the girl’s thigh and pulled the swollen water from the welt along her inner thigh.

“Thank you, Teacher!”

Now she was all smiles.

At least until the saddle wore a new blister.

Love and patience, Lynne. Looooooooove aaaaand paaatiiiieeeeence…

Alisandra was not this hard to wean. Then again, Lynne had not raised Alisandra on her own. Gabriel helped when she was a babe; Sebastian took over tutelage when the little girl grew self-aware, willful, and almost belligerently inquisitive.

Recollecting, Lynne wondered how many of those distractions were meant for the angel of oceans, not her ward.

“Do you know where we are?” the child asked. Safe in her bubble of mists, she did not even sweat.

“No. The jungle shifts every year. No familiar landmarks endure here.”

She remembered a jungle in ashes. The day the Verdant’s first creations rose in a flock of rainbow colors to wield the sky itself against her.

“But you’ve been to Deepbloom a lot?”

“Not recently.”

Not since the early days before the Stormmother swallowed Lynne.

“I hope it looks better than the highway!”

The angel of oceans patted the child on the knee. “When we return to Wave’s Lament, you will have a wonderful adventure to share.”

“Adventure? So far all I’ve conquered are mosquitoes!”

“You can omit that part.”

They hiked another two hours through the muddy underbrush before the caravan road improved. Someone had cleared back the underbrush, and simple plank bridges crossed the many small streams and muddy pits. Simple wooden signs advertised for food and shelter, and the duo soon emerged into a manmade clearing.

A village of simple mud huts straddled a small river, fresh fish strung to dry above fire pits. One building of proper wood perched at the edge of the water on stilts, screens parted to admit the air. A small moat of tar beyond the huts held the ants at bay, and runes smeared with elemental blood warded against the evils of oceans and mountains.

The blood was old, its sacrifice forgotten; Lynne crossed the threshold without even the prickle of wary power she would have felt in the Cathedral of Fire.

“See? Mudhutters!” Esmie muttered, wrinkling her nose. As though the freshly appointed Azure-blessed could not rest her heels among them.

“Be kind,” Lynne chastised.

“Why do they live out here?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“We’re so far from the cities and any god, though…”

“I believe that is part of the appeal.”

Two villager men approached them, holding their hands aloft in greeting. Both wore lightweight cotton shirts and broad straw hats, and neither cared weapons. They needed no spears when fairies flitted in the air above their hair.

Lynne stopped the horse with a gentle tug. “Good morning, sirs. And to you,” she added, addressing the fairies.

The left fairy spun in a sparkle of light, and the right one regarded her with deep suspicion.

“What brings servants of the Stormmother to our caravansary?” the elder challenged.

“Lunch, hopefully,” the angel of oceans replied. Though ‘caravansary’ seems somewhat generous.

“We serve no Gods here. Proselytize elsewhere.” His fairy flared, bristling with angry colors.

“That’s a shame; I brought money. Does your prohibition extend to silver notes? Or do you still use coins?”

Scowling, the elder cleared his throat and relented. “So long as you respect our ways, you may enter.”

His fairy retreated to the safety of his hat to glare at the angel.

“Notes are fine,” said the younger.

Lynne dug for her purse. Then she paused a moment with notes in hand. When was the last time the great Stormmother remembered her purse on a trip? When was the last time she paid for anything at all?

Least of all her debts.

She withdrew two silver notes. “One for myself and one for my horse.”

The younger man cast a meaningful glance at Esmie.

“She’s hardly going to eat you out of hearth and home,” the angel replied, hoisting Esmie down. Do not expect me to haggle, boy.

“Teacher, my legs fell asleep!” the little priestess whined, shifting foot to foot.

“If you would learn to mount and dismount the horse yourself, you could have dealt with that yourself.”

The younger man snorted, pocketed the money, and accepted the horse’s reins. “The lodge is at your disposal. Bathing and sleeping are extra.” He tugged the horse towards a small meadow of fresh stalks, blithely unaware of the treasures in its luggage.

“Behave yourselves,” the elder warned, turning back to his hut.

Esmie leaned up on tiptoe to whisper. “He looks like a beggar. Do they starve here?”

“Starve? Would a fairy stay without an ample supply of nectar?” A touch of Tempest rose. “You would know this if you attended to your copy of The Care of Creation.”

The chosen priestess reddened sullenly.

Lynne exhaled carefully. She wants to dance, not read, and the text is rather dry. I can help her with the readings when we return.

She led her petulant Herald into the village, humming the chorus to one of Aure’s dawn songs. Most of the villagers ignored them, inured to travelers and busy with their own affairs.

One of the fairies shot away, trailing rainbows, on an urgent mission.

Lynne paused, watching the elemental beast of air soar away, and wondered why the little creature was in such a hurry.

“Have these mudhutters ever even heard of a light bulb?” the child wondered.

“Really, now! Child, have you noticed anything about their pots?”

Reluctantly, Esmie tiptoed to a nearby hut and peered inside. A woman seared her lunch inside, flipping a mixture of fruits and meat strips in a skillet.

“Hey…that’s Ulyssian! My mom bought a set as soon as I was made…” She coughed discretely. “Nevermind. I can’t believe they have Ulyssian metal all the way out here!”

The woman met Lynne’s gaze, and both rolled their eyes in tandem.

Novian pots would impress me. But Ulyssian? There isn’t a village on this continent untouched by the Ulyssian salesmen.

“Unless the pots learned to fly, they arrived on the back of a mule in the usual manner.”

“Must be really expensive…How does a village this far away make money?”

“Besides overcharging for lunch?” Lynne steered Esmie back onto the path. “Same as anyone else – trade.”

“The road is nothing but mud!”

“We are out of season. The rains that nourish Ruhum in Spring begin here in Solace. Why maintain a path that will soon wash away?”

Esmie wrinkled her nose. “If you ran things, the road would be ready year-round.”

Lynne winced. “Enough.”

If the Verdant has abdicated her throne, I could fill it with a flick of my fingers…provided the elemental beasts did not rise against me.

Individual beasts were hardly a problem, but an entire jungle’s worth could prove troublesome.

They arrived at the lodge, deserted but for the grandmothers of the tribe. The women sat in a circle, dicing lunch into little piles. They tossed pig bones off the edge of the lodge, and two dogs appeared from beneath to snag the prizes.

A small, rotund creature appeared from the shadows, snagged a bone, and vanished into the air with prize in grubby little hands.

“An imp!” Esmie gasped. “I’ve never seen a wild one!”

Hardly wild, child. Lynne shrugged. “This is their home. All of the beasts save serpents were born in this land – which you would already know if you read…”

Esmie stomped a foot. “I’ll read it when we get back!”

“I can help you with the difficult parts,” Lynne offered. “I can tell you the parts that are not in the tome. Don’t you want to know how I found the serpents?”

In response, Esmie fled up the rope ladder to the lodge and plopped on a reed mat among the elders. The women immediately peppered her with questions, compliments, and food. Priestess of a rival Goddess or not, she was a cute young girl, and all grandmothers shared that spoiling instinct.

Though perhaps ungrateful to her hosts, Lynne tarried a moment, extending her senses through the humid air. The roar of shifting life dampened her senses to a handful of yards and made her skin buzz with imagined insects. There were probably a dozen imps clutching their eggs under the building, but she could not sense any.

I wonder how many of those toothy little creatures are born here and sold to Lumia to slake the noble thirst for heresy?

Shrugging, the angel clambered to the lodge and sat for her meal.

Over food, the elders quizzed Lynne for gossip, and the angel obliged with the latest news on the Stormmother, the Plateau, and the distant Inventors.

“The radio said the Stormmother will accept any worship now,” the crone mentioned. “You’ve come to bear alms to the Verdant?”

“If her people wish it,” Lynne answered, “but I actually follow the trail of a man.”

“Oh? Marriage, is it?”

Several grandmothers cackled.

“Nothing so pleasant.” She sipped her tea and considered. “He passed this way recently. A man of his thirties, dark haired, carrying a heavy satchel.”

The crone stirred her pot. “Many men come through our village.”

“Indeed. He carried his sin with him; none linger for judgement here,” Lynne clarified.

“Everything the Gods do is our concern,” the crone corrected. “Both Deepbloom and Wave’s Lament hunger to grasp an empire.”

“The ink on a map is not the reality.”

“Reality is what men will believe.”

Really now? mocked the angel of oceans. Someone should inform the Foundations. They can hang up their vigil and walk the world once more.

A furtive imp crawled behind Lynne. It licked its taunt lips and set its beady black eyes on the half-eaten sandwich at her knee. With a careful glance at the women, it faded into the air and crawled forward.

When it appeared once more, hunkered over its prize, the crone smacked it neatly with her ladle. It yelped, leaping once more into astral shadows.

“Good eye,” Lynne complimented.

The crone wiped her ladle and stirred once more. “Will you be staying the night?”

“And waste this wonderful day?” she drawled.

“Suit yourself. We’re the only lodging for a full day’s ride, and the louts at the border to Deepbloom charge five times our rates.”

“Business does not wait, I’m afraid.”

The grandmothers prepared Esmie a dinner wrapped in fern leaves free of charge, and one of the village men brought around the horse. With a few courteous farewells, they stepped back into the shadows of the jungle.

Within a mile, the road devolved once more into a muddy path.

“Are you sure they repair this every Spring?” Esmie asked soon after.

Lynne opened her mouth to tease but paused.

No birdsong. No insects humming. Stillness in the thickets.

“Esmie, come here,” she ordered.

The angel licked her thumb and drew the child close. Using spit, she drew a rune upon the child’s forehead. The weight of her own sin burned against her nail like a furnace, but she ignored the pain.

Let her be safe, she prayed. My pain is immaterial.

Focused on the jungle, Lynne failed to notice as the burning of sin in her fingers abruptly ceased.

Esmie squirmed. “Is something wrong?” she whispered.

“No,” Lynne reassured. “Keep a good hold of the reins.”

Stepping away from the horse, she conjured her black spear and listened.

The great guardian of the Verdant did not keep her waiting long. The shadow walker prowled through the underbrush, a slice of darkness against shadows. It resembled a black panther, grown to the size of a car, though patterns of emerald light flashed like veins in its fur as it approached.

“I remember you, Mother Panther. I come in peace to your lands.”

The shadow walker roared, shaking the trees, and a great flock of birds fled the scene.

“It seems you remember me too.”

Its emerald veins flared, and the great cat vanished from mortal sight. Safe in the astral realm, it bounded forward, claws outstretched.

Against normal mortals, the shadow walker shredded the link of spirit that held soul to body like a cat’s cradle. Against an angel, for whom body and soul were one and the same, it savaged Lynne from the astral.

The angel of oceans toppled to the mud, the flesh of her belly mangled and bleeding.

A moment later, the shadow walker reappeared in the mortal realm, jaws wet with her blood, and licked its lips.

Lynne drove her spear into the muck and heaved herself back onto her feet. Oh, by the heavens, the burning in her gut cleared her mind of all thought but the high singing rage of her Tempest…

Drag it down. Drown this fetid swamp. Finish what we began so long ago!

She once sacrificed entire regiments to distract the shadow walkers. Mortal men had no recourse against a beast that could destroy their minds from a realm they could neither perceive nor attack. They served their purpose merely by playing bait.

All so that she might march a few steps further into the greenery of her sister against the onslaught of the newly forged elemental beasts.

With every failure, the Verdant adjusted the designs.

Angel killers, built to grow in unity with men and stand against the ageless.

Suppressing the rage, Lynne smiled weakly. “In hindsight, I can understand why she would build such creatures.”

Without the rage, we are weak!

The shadow walker vanished and attacked once more.

Lynne inhaled. Focused. Perceived the water of its blood rippling in the astral.

I can prowl Yesod too, little kitty.

She pivoted on her heel, met its claws with her spear, and flung it away into the brush.

Kill it! shouted the Tempest.

For what? Protecting Deepbloom from a mad woman? countered Lynne.

Without rage’s power, it will shred us! We will sink into Reverie, lost as foam on the waves!

Possibly, the angel of oceans acknowledged.

And what of her Maiden project then?

A great host of fairies waited in the high trees, gleaming softly; they witnessed the great guardian war with the ancient foe.

The panther surged forth, roaring, and bore her into the mud. They thrashed in the muck, her spear the only protection against its teeth. It snapped its jaws anyways, straining for the blood beating in her throat.

The problem with maintaining a body, she noted to herself, is that it renders one vulnerable to the damage of said body.

Against the Verdant, the Stormmother had ordered the jungle razed to ash. Damage of a different sort for an angel who resided in a different metaphor.

“I deserve this,” she mumbled to the walker.

It snarled, dribbling spit onto her cheek.

“But my children do not!”

Pain and need reduced the world to Will. Her blood mingled with the mud, and she followed that thread. She melted into mist and surged along the path her blood had carved, appearing beside Esmie and the horse on hands and knees.

The panther rounded on them, roaring.

“Neither do yours.”

Lynne sliced the straps on the horse’s luggage, and the bulk slid to the mud between her and the shadow walker.

With spear tip, she threw back the covers.

There were smaller treasures – idols and condensed Light and trinkets of sentimental value – but the true prize was the glowing orb in the center. A bubble of azure water surrounded a core of emerald, pulsing with a heartbeat. At its center, a shadow lay curled and dormant, unborn and waiting.

A monument to Lynne’s cruelty: the womb water of the only female shadow walker to ever walk the world.

The shadow walker yowled in confusion, eyes fastened on the bubble.

“Take it,” she whispered. The angel nudged the bubble forward, floating above the mud towards her enemy.

Silence in the Verdant, and the guardian regarded Lynne with suspicion.

“This is the best I can do,” she offered with a thin smile. “What little recompense I can offer: I can return what I stole, though I cannot change that I stole it.”

Darting forward, the shadow walker bit into the azure bubble. The barrier popped, and the power inside rushed forward joyfully to rejoin the throb of emerald currents.

A chorus of elemental beasts watched the shadow panther. An entire flock of phoenix shone in the gloom, and serpents hissed from the roots.

How many would it take to bind me once more?

There were enough, here in the jungle of their birth.

The shadow panther shivered.

“Well?” Lynne challenged. Will it be war, then?

The Tempest rather hoped it would be.

It hissed at her, low and hateful. Then it spun and fled into the underbrush.

That is as close to forgiveness as I will probably get.

The chorus waited a moment longer, and then they began to depart by scale, paw and wing. The fairies faded into the light; the phoenix flock burst skyward in a trail of fire; the serpents slipped into the underbrush.

“I don’t understand,” Esmie muttered. “Why aren’t they fighting?”

“They allow me to live,” Lynne explained. Perhaps she no longer resembled the Stormmother whom once burned their home to the ground…though that was most likely wishful thinking.

Sin did not wash away so easily.

Her fingers felt along the curves of her belly and found the flesh fully healed. Strange. She had not called the Light to rebuild herself. Where had her outer shell found succor?

Esmie frowned, thought, and exclaimed, “You are the Goddess! They aren’t allowed to hurt you!”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re nice!”

Wasn’t I a tyrant just this morning, fickle Herald?

Lynne sighed. “I stole that shadow walker’s ability to conceive, child. I denied her a legacy and left a hole even the Verdant could not fill.”

The little priestess squirmed.

“Though that does beg a question.” Lynne tugged at the horse’s reins. “One shadow walker remains in the jungle, loyal to her duty…but where is her mate? Where is Father Panther?”

***

Gabriel drifted on the jungle steam, soaked with the dew of the jungle. Beneath him, the Verdant sprawled to the horizon, steaming like the breath of a single living thing.

Curious songbirds fluttered from the canopy to fly along him, curious, and he answered their simple questions with a smile. He was, after all, fluent in every variety of birdsong.

They told him of the safe places to nest and the dark shadows where predators lurked.

When five rushed to him and sang in dire need, he dove into the trees and drove a serpent away from a nest.

The mother bird sang praises as effusively as any human.

Can a creature without a soul know joy? He wondered, taking to the sky once more. Or do they simply reflect it for us – the moon for our hearts, shining as we give?

A bird’s mind was a simple thing, easily manipulated by tugging the right molecules. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and more…

Then again, would a human endure the onslaught of raw emotion any better?

If Mirielle’s experiments were any guide, then few humans indeed could stand in the face of rapturous pleasure.

His mind wandered far afield, second guessing millennia.

Occasionally, he thought he felt a familiar tug, whispering in the gap between thoughts.

Bone white fields and butterfly kisses…

Soaring higher, he surveyed the scars of this planet’s life. From the ground, the wounds were easy to miss: a strange pattern in the forest canopy, a river diverted for no apparent reason, the overgrown crater of a great impact.

At the edge of the curved horizon, the Plateau spread brown and cold. To the north, the grey Bones sulked in their perpetual haze – all that remained of a once proud mountain spine.

How we echo, he thought. Our vanity a great drum, our hubris the mallet by which we strike.

As though eternal life and aspects of power granted them the right to dictate what was good.

He banked and tucked his wings, savoring for a moment the endless freefall between sky and ground. At the last moment, he caught himself with a twirl and launched high again.

Two fairies flitted into view and mirrored his stunt.

“Hello, little ones,” he hummed, slowing his flight to accommodate them. “Have you heard Lynne or Donovan anywhere?”

They whistled a story most astonishing.

“Is that so?!” The Archangel laughed in delight. “Lynne took heed of her sin and atoned…”

His wings hummed with joy. Oh, the Stormmother held out far longer than the other demons, a case for the ages, but even that tide began to turn…

“You must be so proud, Alice…”

After all, she had believed in Lynne when everyone else – even Gabriel – decided that the angel of oceans was a lost cause.

Such a relief…that there will be someone for Alisandra when…

He shook his head, refocusing his attention below.

“Lynne begins to hear her aspect sing.”

Too many angels thought of their aspect as a magic charm; an incantation; the control panel to power. They believed that their aspect allowed them to control reality.

As though the dance of the soul would so neatly divide the creator and the created.

The young Verdandi found her thoughts slowing to the speed of budding flowers, and she thought herself dying. Aure lost himself for a week in the imperfections of a cut gemstone, and he thought himself undisciplined. Mirielle felt the pains of broken hopes and dashed lives crowd her own dreams, and she retreated to a fortress of pleasure.

Lynne had felt the mercurial currents bleed into her mind, and she had thought herself mad.

What would his daughter feel as her soul grew?

“We who grasp our souls in hand exit the grace of God,” he mused. “A mortal’s world is strictly delineated, a bubble from which they peer. For us, though…”

For us, a harder path.

He trailed along, following a goddess and her charge, silent and unseen.

“This is my gift to you, Lynne the former Goddess,” he prayed. “Let this choice be yours and yours alone.”

For the eternal souls who would endure past the stars themselves, what else but choice could they truly claim to own?

***

The jungle metropolis, Deepbloom, rested at the very center of the Verdant at the conflux of two turgid rivers. One drifted east away from the nexus of civilization, eventually emptying into swamps claimed by no god. The other emerged from the north, skirting the edges of the bleached Bones. Neither offered easy access to the sea or the Dragon, and so Deepbloom remained apart from the world of industry that grew on the coasts.

Despite the frequent rains and poor soil, the city never sank. It rested on a pedestal of smooth, solid granite. This had been a gift from a time when the gods granted each other boons instead of acrimony, though no mortals remembered this.

The rich and blessed still lived on the pillar in homes of beautiful stone, carved with the history of their jungle. The peasants, meanwhile, slept in the jungle on wooden stilts that rotted every year.

To the people of Ruhum and Wave’s Lament, Deepbloom was the edge of civilization, a backwards capital of mud. After all, it had no Inventors, no steelyards, no river barges…

Yet the jungle city hosted as many souls as Wave’s Lament, and their collective water teemed in Lynne’s mind.

She arrived in the dead of night, leading the horse. Esmie snored from its back, finally comfortable in her saddle, and no gates nor guards blocked their path over the wooden bridges.

An army of elemental beasts lingered in the trees, the rivers, the air…but they ignored her trespass.

She hesitated at the end of the bridge, her bare foot hovering over the edge of the granite plinth.

I have never come so far in war, she thought.

Yet here she stood.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she stepped onto the pillar.

Nothing happened.

Was this all I ever needed? she wondered. To surrender my Tempest and walk as mortal men might?

Oh, the Archangel would be so smug if he ever heard that thought!

Apathetic to her worries, a night sweeper approached, dragging his cart of reeking debris.

“Hail,” Lynne called.

“Hail,” he rumbled in return. Old, craggy and slow, he shoved the cart deliberately across the way ahead.

“Is the temple still in the ziggurat?” she asked.

“Never left,” he said, eyeing her apparel. “Not sure they’ll want you, though.”

“The Verdant has allowed me this far; it is unlikely a few more steps will spell my doom.”

He shrugged, brushing his chest to ward off ill omen.

“She still sleeps?” Lynne asked.

“Who?”

“Your goddess, fool sweeper.”

“I don’t know. Ask a real priest.”

Perhaps that was answer enough.

“The outskirts gossip on the man who murdered the priests,” she continued. “Do the authorities have any leads on his location?”

The dung sweeper paused in his duty. “It is ill luck to speak of the nameless after moonset, foreign priestess.”

“Do they or not?”

Scowling, the man leaned away. “I’ll not have that on my head. Ask the temple yourself.” Straining, he shoved his cart onward, muttering about interlopers from the coast.

Ingrate, whispered her Tempest.

The angel of oceans tugged her horse along. They wound along the road between the quiet houses, and she marveled at the frescos painted with alternative history.

In several, a demon of two faces and black waves charged forth against the towering trees. The blessed companions – otherwise known as the elemental beasts – rose to meet and repel the ocean, guided by their human comrades.

“Man and beast joined in elemental harmony…”

Elemental beasts for elemental gods. Water against water and fire against fire – how the Tempest had laughed! Surely creatures of her own aspect could never be used against her.

Yet mortal men and women turned her own serpents against her, and the armies of the jungle threw rivers against the mistress of waters.

The Tempest was stronger, of course, but they were brave and fierce.

Just as the men of the Peaks.

“How I searched for the secret,” she admitted to a fresco of Verdandi, glorious in her boughs, “convinced that I would unlock the means to steal your work.”

The thinking of a Goddess who believed she owned the waters.

Sighing, Lynne tugged her horse and her snoring Herald along.

Verdandi’s temple lurked in the mist ahead, a silhouette by torchlight. Those torches stopped halfway up the ziggurat’s steps; above, lost in shadow, an enormous wimba tree swayed despite the still air. By day, that tree cast its boughs over half of Deepbloom, a microcosm of the jungle home to thousands upon thousands of elemental beasts.

In Spring, the faithful here sang down the phoenix and the fairy to become companions with the youth. The words were different than the Dragon’s Dance, but the Song beneath echoed the same:

Let us walk together.

A sleepy, long-haired boy in a grass skirt leaned against a flint spear at the bridge before the temple. Temple-sworn, he forsook both technology and fashion in devotion to his deity.

“Who goes by night?” he called, straightening at the sight of her. A fairy peeked from the safety of his hair, small and young, and trilled the same question.

“The Stormmother,” Lynne responded. “Watch my horse, would you? Try not to wake Esmie.”

She passed the reins to the dumbstruck boy and stepped upon the ziggurat. Forward, then, to greet my sister. Or wage the final war against her. Whichever comes first.

Ivy and vines covered every inch of the temple, grown into the stone like veins. The greenery throbbed like veins as well, and the angel of oceans fought the notion that she climbed into a giant, beating heart.

After all, if this temple was anything, it was a womb of leaf and bough.

Lynne set her jaw, marched upwards, and began to sing. The song was an old folk tale, its words bitter with the memory of her own folly.

When the world was young

The ocean twirled in skirts of spray

A maiden for the dawn’s first rains

Dancer fair and fey

When the world was young

The mountain beat its world heart drum

Threw down the terrors of first nights

Hero proud and tall

When the world was young

The leaves beheld the sun

Bounty for ev’ry outstretched hand

Tender slow and wise

She mounted the ziggurat and approached the towering wimba tree. Its roots dove through the temple, into the soil, and raced to the horizon in every direction. The veins of emerald whispered the dance of living things, and something faint on the edge of hearing met those veins, melding metal and gold.

A mind could drown in those currents, carried into the soil by the toiling ants and patient spiders.

Lynne squeezed her eyes against the pain to come and placed her hands against the bark.

The tree pulsed beneath her fingers, alive with more than just sap.

If the jungle could still remember.

If her sister even remained within.

Three hearts met amongst the mist

Beneath the white-capped peaks

Sworn against the monstrous dark

Til the dawn rings free

She held her breath.

Slowly, the rustling of the leaves and chirping of the insects coalesced. Each noise fell into place, and the jungle sang back by a million little instruments.

A covenant, sworn -

A bond, forged -

By earth and sea and sky

By earth and sea and sky

Slow as seeds, a mind stirred beneath the bark. The leaves far above began to pulse and flicker like emerald stars, and Deepbloom’s granite plinth thrummed to a powerful and deep beat like a heart among the roots.

“Verdandi,” Lynne breathed.

Lynne? A world of questions in that gentle voice.

“One and the same.”

You walk…softly, the jungle whispered. My wards do not hear you.

“Your shadow walker found me just fine.”

A shiver ran from one end of the canopy to the other, and God only knew what the angel of growing things could hear in the dark.

“I returned that which I could stole. What I could find of it, at least.”

…why?

Lynne laughed. “Guilt, I suppose. I brought that as well if you want some.”

How long have I drifted in Reverie?

The weight of the jungle pressed against Lynne like an undertow. She balanced on the edge of a cliff above a sea where a year would pass in a hazy dream, and the only rhythm that mattered measured its heartbeat in the rise and fall of trees.

“A long time, Verdandi. A long time.”

My children grow.

“The men or the beasts?” the angel of oceans asked, smiling wryly.

A very long moment passed in silence with nothing but the feel of bark beneath her fingers.

You still dance. Upon both words and hearts.

“Thank you.”

But you shine scarce more than a mortal heart. You lack conviction.

The angel of oceans swallowed an angry retort.

The raging storm was e’er your truth, sister. Deny it and fade until you are heard no more.

“Then you already know of my quest.”

Scattered Reverie amongst the sap. Even gods might dream amidst the aspects. A butterfly showed me the way.

Lynne frowned in puzzlement. “The butterfly? A totem animal?”

The jungle rustled softly amongst itself.

“Verdandi, I seek a man. One of your priests, apparently. He stole the Archangel’s diary, and now he steals knowledge from the garden of other souls. I need to know where he is.”

The Archangel? Ah. The one who flirts at the edge of the Chorus. I dream of him too, but he will not face your foe. You must remember how to be cruel, sister.

“I have been cruel enough for lifetimes! Verdandi, you pour too much of yourself into beasts, and you cannot hear the world of men through your Reverie. My people still weep before the idols of my fury, and the other nations await the day I declare war!”

A shadow passes over the sun, and the cycle withers. Instinct screams that I too must fight; nature red in tooth and claw; but my heart beats so slow, and my thoughts blink between the seasons.

The angel of oceans shivered. If the aspect was a doorway between an angel and the world, then Reverie was that gate thrown wide open. It could be blissful slumber, or it could be a fugue that stretched to the end of time, lost between the walking world and the cold duty of Foundations.

There is no end to this dream. I begin to hear jungles I have never named and bloom across lands where no man yet walks. My thoughts come at the speed of sap. Soon I will shed thought altogether.

Her soul freed from mortal mind.

I will merely be.

One of the Chorus, dead and undying. Perhaps even a Foundation.

“Then let me help you, sister! I still remain the Maiden, and I will shape you a beautiful body to once more walk this world!”

The jungle laughed. What gift your Maiden? Mother’s milk yields only babes.

Lynne scowled, and the sky rumbled in return.

Ah. So the fury is not quite quelled. Eldest, you who taught us power, must now remember the taste.

“I tried to conquer you! To bind you! Verdandi, I was wrong!”

But beautiful. Now you carry only children in your wake.

“I will teach them a life beyond our shadow,” she hissed.

Verdandi coiled, a brilliant, emerald star, and pounced. Her jungle poured through Lynne’s palms and through her veins, an attack sharp and callous as a knife.

The Tempest would have repelled that attack in reflexive and confident fury.

Lynne the Maiden flinched, and the Verdant dragged her down.

Malkuth was built to bleed. Would you deny the fledgling its fall? Your ripples sink into dead stillness.

The angel of oceans turned involuntarily to look down the stairs. To see Esmie sitting and yawning on the back of her horse. To see time march forward and the child grow in body – body but not mind.

Twenty years old, Esmerelda reclined on a divan, snacked on chocolates, and begged for favors. “Why should I suffer the flow? It’s unfair!”

Lynne’s own voice, sickly saccharine, responded, “It isn’t so bad if you bear it.”

“Yes, but why?!”

“Your body needs the hormones that come with–”

“You’re the Goddess! You can fix it so that I’m fine without. Pleeeeease?!”

A soft, maidenly sigh. “Oh, alright…”

Indulgence by another name. A dominion of the coddled. Once more the ocean the center of every orbit.

“You would have them suffer the storm, then? I will not!” Lynne shouted, her voice blending into the brewing storm. “They need my love!”

They clashed in the gaps between the howling wind and screaming seas. Poetry and war, word and blow…

Mortals might think these things separate, but angels knew better.

Why is this about you?

A weak and scattered shadow of an angel fretting over statues and pageants.

Did you sacrifice heaven so that they might bring you flowers for eternity?

Only a fool calls that dependence love.

Would you surrender so easily, eldest?

Lightning cracked jungle trees, and the rain fell in a sudden torrent to blacken the night. Deepbloom plunged into darkness, every torch smothered, and the ghosts of forgotten wars stalked the streets, born from the memory of eternal warriors.

Yet the elemental beasts remained sheltered in the great wimba tree.

Why did Verdandi reserve her army?

Storm and sea

Eldest sister whom makes me grow

Where your fury topples my trees

Stronger ones rise!

Verdandi squeezed.

Lynne felt the world grow dim.

On her tongue, loam.

In her bones, ants.

An angel’s binding, never to fail.

The end to eternity.

I suppose, she thought dimly, this is what I deserve.

Then Verdandi released her grip, and Lynne toppled to the muck at the base of the great tree. The jungle rumbled in her mind, merciless as the growl of a hungry lion.

We cannot afford to coddle you any longer, Lynne. Be the eldest sister I once respected.

The man you call Donovan killed me, though I scarce noticed. He has departed my jungle for the Bones. For where this all began. He too learns to dream, and you will not find him easy prey.

Lynne stared at her shaking hands. Remembered that she had hands.

Stop making excuses for yourself, eldest.

Another thought seeped through the leaves – a whisper of Song Verdandi did not quite mean to share.

You are the only hope we have against the looming Shadow.

Then the angel of growing things faded into her Reverie once more.

Lynne quivered a long time, staring at the vines between her fingertips and counting the good fortune of a merciful little sister.

An angel’s binding.

Even the Tempest never dared so much.

To strangle Verdandi or Hylas inside of me forever like a child never to be born…

Who could muster such evil in their hearts? To hold their hands around another’s neck and squeeze for the rest of time?

Even the Archangel, bearer of more artifacts than she could name, would falter before that weight.

“You thought me beautiful, Verdandi?” Lynne laughed to herself. “This coming from the woman who once admitted she enjoyed watching a snake strangle its prey?”

She rose, extracting muck from her clothes with a few flicks of her fingers.

“The Tempest in me hisses for retribution.” She considered a moment. “If I was a cruel woman, I would sic Sebastian on you.”

The elemental beasts in the boughs continued to sleep, untroubled.

“But I suppose you have already chosen your path…”

With a final wave to the beasts, Lynne descended.

Naturally, the mortals were in quite a panic, and a dozen young men with flint spears surrounded Esmie.

The little girl glanced at Lynne, descending wreathed in mists, and blurted out, “What did you do?!”

“Talked with my little sister.”

“What did you say?!” Petulant and annoyed, but no panic for her life. After all, the Goddess would never let her priestess come to trifling discomforts like death.

Heavens above, she truly is becoming a brat. Have I chosen a poor Herald?

Ah, but Alice lurked in her memory, ever ready to correct her excuses. When a child is a brat, look to the parent. No different than what became of Apophis.

Lynne winced. Even her memory reads me like a book.

“She did most the talking,” the angel offered. Raising a hand, Lynne warned, “Boys, you will feel an unpleasant tingle.”

She pinched the flow of water in their bodies.

They collapsed with cries of alarm, their legs numb and unresponsive.

“The spell is not permanent,” she instructed over their curses. She motioned Esmie along. “Your legs will itch terribly as the nerves awaken.”

Esmie glanced at the paralyzed guards with childish interest. “Neat. Could you do that to the former high priestess too?”

“Esmie…”

The child huffed, jutting her lower lip into a pout. “I was only joking…”

Yes, because I didn’t agree. Heavens above, how did I manage all this with Alisandra?

Mostly by foisting the child off on Gabriel or Sebastian when Lynne needed ten minutes to hear herself think…

I must not pass the Tempest to Esmie. I must not pass it again…

She remembered a certain young lady, six years old, shattering her toys against the wall with a scream like an angry goat…

Lynne flinched. All children have tantrums, old woman. It is hardly the Tempest for a little girl to stomp on a stuffed animal. Or throw a doll. Or punch a noble boy in the teeth…

“Your mists are showing,” Esmie reminded. “You told me to tell you!”

“Esmie, dear, I would guess that the small hurricane that just appeared atop the city already alerted the citizens to my presence. Keep going, please.”

A troupe of soldiers, properly armed with modern rifles, rushed down the narrow city road. They spotted the angel of oceans and swerved, shouting.

Another little pinch, and they toppled to the ground.

“I am really not in the mood for a fight right now,” she muttered, nudging the horse over them, and ignored the terrified citizens peering at her from their dark windows.

Esmie sat up straighter, chin high as any noble scion. “So where are we going now?”

“We?”

“Yes, where are we going now?”

Lynne steered the horse away from the approaching horde of torches. “I head for the Bones. Donovan follows stolen wisdom to the ruined remains of the first temple, and I would wager he will find artifacts to slake his hunger there. We never were very tidy about cleaning up after ourselves.”

“Then I can help!”

Unstated but obvious: instead of going home to the duty she hated.

Oh, how we run from our fates…

Behind them, the shouts grew ever louder as the city roused. Someone summoned the cannons.

Lynne crossed her arms. “Even with my blessings, that is a journey of some weeks. Weeks without proper shelter or warm meals.”

The wheels churned in Esmie’s head.

Would you rather the discomfort of travel or the discomfort of rule, child?

“Esmie, child, I go to fight for life and death.”

“I know,” Esmie objected, though she almost certainly did not. “I just feel like…I should stay by your side.”

“Who tells you that? Has the high priestess ordered such spying?”

“No. I feel it in my heart!”

Even the Maiden could spot such obvious bait, but perhaps this was an opportunity of a different sort. Lynne did not wield Sebastian’s encyclopedic knowledge, Gabriel’s wisdom, or Verdandi’s foresight. If Esmie required instruction, then Lynne would have to create the content on the fly.

Time, perhaps, to prepare Esmie for what may come.

“Please, Teacher?” the child begged.

“Very well,” Lynne sighed. Time enough to break the brat in you, I hope. “But you must listen well!”

“Anything at all! I can do it!”

“Material duller than the Care of Creation,” she warned.

“Don’t care!”

They finally left the stone plinth behind. “Very well. Let us begin. Aleph.”

“Right now?! Its night!”

“I said: aleph.”

“Aleph?”

“Yes. Aleph.” Lynne called a puff of mist to her finger tips and drew the rune in the air without breaking stride. “Now you draw it.”

“I barely saw it!”

“If my Herald would prefer to return to the temple, I am sure the paperwork has accrued to quite the mountain by now.”

Esmie groaned.

Lynne drew the rune again.

Reluctantly, the young priestess mimed her strokes with a finger.

“Incorrect. Focus and form are both instrumental. You currently have neither. How do you plan to draw down your soul? Without the power of heaven, you will face the guardian of your garden naked and blind. Try again.”

Was this too mean of her? Or not mean enough? She knew how to quell a child with Tempest thunder, but this cajoling sternness was pure guesswork.

She led her charge north, reciting the first of many ancient lessons.

Let her learn fast, the angel of oceans prayed.

For this chase may be my doom.