Saia woke up to a dozen voices screaming over one another. She saw Daira very close and instinctively drew back. She found herself floating in the air, or at least so she thought considering she could see the ceiling and the floor and it was becoming difficult to tell which was which. She focused on the rest of the room, which only required her to shift her attention and not her eyes. She tried not to think of the fact she didn’t have eyes.

The doors of the temple were open, a panting monk holding one of the big vertical handles to steady himself. His hands were trembling, his face was covered in sweat, and Saia knew from personal experience that he was in a lot of pain from the two bloody holes on his ankle.

She wanted to see past him and her vision immediately expanded. There were more people in the corridors, more or less in his same situation. She observed all of them, making sure that no one had died yet.

She focused on the room at the center of that turmoil, then expanded her domain more to include the whole village. Her attention was briefly captured by a corridor starting from one of the most external rooms and going out and down for such a long way that her vision couldn’t reach the end of it. She had an idea about where it led, but decided to ignore it for the moment. Her domain stopped at the lake, giving her a perfect summary of what had happened while she was asleep.

First, she’d become a goddess, and that had been enough to stop the tremor. She could feel a subtle stream of her viss trickling down toward the base of the mountain. It was barely enough to keep some rocks from rolling down the flank, but it had stopped the earthquake. She’d been asleep, which meant that the monks didn’t have any reason to awaken her.

The snakes she’d left tied up over the lake had awakened the second she’d lost consciousness. They'd freed themselves in their frenzy to reach the water, then found out it was unsalted. Their instincts had guided them toward the only way out, the tunnel, as if they were simply leaving one of the pools in the cave. Except this one had led them into the internal pool of the monks’ village, as usual full of monks.

The final step of her plan was entirely made of hope: hope that at least one of the priors in the temple would refuse to sacrifice all of those people for the security of the village, hope that the others wouldn't have prevented them from waking her up. Judging from the position of the people around the room and what the abbot was shouting, that prior had been Daira.

“Please,” she was saying. “Save them.”

“And then what?” the abbot yelled, neck and face tense with rage. “We'll be at her mercy forever! You have just destroyed their lives, it doesn't matter whether they’ll live or not.”

The other priors looked at the scene, all of them torn between listening to the abbot or the woman everyone considered his successor. Or maybe they were scheming, their plans suddenly in disarray as they thought of how to take Daira's place as the abbot's favorite.

Saia stopped paying attention to them. She focused on healing every bite she had caused, starting from the people that looked the weakest. Their bodies were already healing with the support of the viss they naturally produced, she only needed to speed up the process by pouring her own energy into them.

The snakes had gotten far into the corridors, biting everyone they met. She put them to sleep. Despite healing at least fifty people, her energy didn't feel like it had diminished: she had enough to keep doing that for two hundred years.

“Done,” she said in Daira's ears.

She sighed, slumping a bit with relief, then turned to face the abbot.

“I couldn't let that many people die.”

“They are monks. They pledged to sacrifice themselves for the good of everyone else.”

“The children didn’t pledge anything.” She turned to face Saia. “I think I understand the kind of fear your goddess put on your people. I'm sorry for not removing her from her position.”

Saia wasn't entirely sure she could actually understand, but she was too tired to have that conversation.

“You could at least take her shard,” the abbot said, still furious but with the throat too hoarse to yell.

“I… My hand wasn’t steady. I didn’t trust myself not to break her, and then we’d also have the earthquake to think about.”

“And I’d have taken the shard back before healing anyone,” Saia concluded. “Also, shut up. I need to think.”

He looked like he wanted to resume shouting, but he didn't. Saia focused on the village: it was as if she'd cut the top of the mountain to see the whole place from above. She didn’t find the shards anywhere, but after seeing the long corridor she’d been expecting that. It made sense to keep them out of the gods’ range, in case one of them managed to take control of the village despite everything. She’d have to go there in person, but floating was a huge waste of energy.

She looked at the workshops and storage rooms until she found one that was big enough to contain the statues. She’d expected to find at least one for each deity, kept as spare copies in case something happened to the originals and the gods for some reason couldn’t repair them quickly. They were only three, but they didn’t resemble any of the others: they were grey, a color that wasn’t associated with any of the gods, and made of some sort of porous stone instead of basalt or the other materials the gods were composed of. Their faces were flat slates without features.

“Bring me one statue,” she told the priors.

They didn’t move, too shocked to do anything else besides staring at her. Saia felt her viss rotate faster with frustration.

“You either give the order yourselves, or I will. People will panic.”

Daira was the first to react and go to the door. Saia moved her focus to follow her while she asked some monks she found along the way to bring the statue to the temple.

“Can we leave, at least?” Laius asked.

“No.”

Saia focused on her powers as she waited, testing what she could or couldn’t do. Widening or restricting her view was the easiest thing, once she got the hang of it. She could feel the viss of everyone inside her domain, and if she focused on it she could read their emotions as if she was right next to them, holding their hands. She realized Vizena had known about the fear of Suimer’s inhabitants all along. She had known, and probably even enjoyed it.

The statue's head finally appeared through the door. The priors moved until they were side by side, hiding Saia's sphere from the monks that were carrying the statue. They positioned it to the right of the entrance.

“You can all leave, now,” Saia said to the priors.

They obeyed immediately. She could see their relief in the way the viss moved inside their bodies.

She focused on the statue, observing it up close without moving, despite being on the other side of the room. She remembered what Aili had told her: all the information about her body was stored in the sphere’s viss, along with everything she needed to be a goddess. She deactivated her vision and imagined her body, trying to recall it exactly as it was. She found out that she instinctively knew each volume and quantity, the position of every bone and hair.

She felt the statue’s presence in her domain, even if she temporarily couldn’t see it. She remembered how Zeles had changed Vizena’s shape into his own and tried to do the same, willing the statue to adapt to her mental image. When she looked again, the statue had become vaguely similar to her. She tried a few more times, projecting specific parts of her body into the stone until the details were just right.

She was surprised at how easy modifying the statue was. She tried to do the same with the floor of the temple, just out of curiosity, but as much as she willed it to fill itself with holes it didn’t change one bit. She concluded that the material of the statues was somewhat easier for the gods to manipulate, but couldn’t tell why.

The statue was still a lot taller than her, so she removed pieces and adjusted the shape until she was of the right height. She focused on the hair next: it was sculpted on the head like it was for the other statues. It didn’t seem real at all, so she detached strands of it, shaping the curls and softening the material until she was satisfied with how it looked and felt.

She willed the statue to change color, from the gray of the stone to her brown complexion. Now she looked exactly like herself, except for her eyes. The black irises looked realistic, but not alive. She tried to add a luminous point to simulate light, but it didn’t move when the candles shifted. She remembered Aili’s words about viss being ‘excess life’ and infused it inside the statue. The eyes came alive, moving as if they were real, at least if no one looked too close.

She kept adjusting her creation until she could look at the statue and believe, even for just a second, that she was staring into a mirror. When she moved its arms, the feeling intensified to the point it almost scared her. She made it cross the room, pick up the sphere and put it inside a cavity she’d just created in its chest. She sealed it shut.

She restricted her vision until she felt like a human again, even if the only sensation that coursed through her body was the buzzing of her viss, flowing from her sphere to the statue at every movement. Her tunic had been transformed with her body, but she had spare clothes in her bag. They fit perfectly.

She picked up the snakes that she’d left near the well and put them into the bag. She hung it over her shoulder; she marginally felt its presence, but not its weight.

She walked up to the doors and opened them without effort. There were sentinels and priors outside, all of them keeping a safe distance. Their confused faces were the confirmation that the statue looked human enough.

Part of her focus went to Maris and the shard from Zeles's sphere that was still in their pocket. She pulverized it. They didn't even seem to notice, eyes fixed on the back of her head. She ignored them and proceeded toward the hidden corridor.

She entered one of the many storage rooms scattered across the village. A shelf on the back hid an old door painted in gray to match the wall of stone around it. The corridor on the other side had just the minimum amount of illumination, in form of torches set ten arms apart in the dark. She could still perceive everything around her: the corridor was clean, the torches had been changed recently. There was probably someone waiting on the other side.

She kept going until the end of the corridor, alone. Now that she was a goddess, the monks weren’t keen on following her around.

She found a closed door and checked the room on the other side: there were four sentinels, weapons ready at hand. One of them was holding a message that had evidently been delivered through a hole in the wall that connected the room to the kitchens. She pushed the door, breaking the lock almost as an afterthought.

“Out,” she told them.

When they hesitated, she opened the cavity in her chest just enough for the golden light to shine through. One of them started running. The others quickly followed, pushing themselves against the wall to squeeze past Saia without touching her.

She closed the door behind her and observed the room, taking advantage of her all-around vision. There were nine slim columns set in a circle at the center of the room, each with a large base and a slightly concave plate on top. The name of each deity was carved vertically on the corresponding column. The shards themselves were small and insignificant, each one placed on a square piece of black cloth to make them more visible. If Saia hadn't known how important they were, she’d have thought that a particularly petty thief had stolen some jewels and replaced them with pieces of the window they'd broken to enter.

Her hand hovered on Aili's shard, the one marked with the name 'Koidan'. If she destroyed it now, the monks would have known that Aili was implied in her plan to kill Vizena, once they pieced out what had actually happened.

She focused on Vizena's shard, following a sudden thought. It still had a bit of viss on its surface, despite the goddess being dead. She didn't dwell on it, putting Vizena's shard on Aili's plate and taking Aili's shard. She opened another cavity in her body, near the right shoulder, and slid the shard there. She'd give it back to Aili as soon as she was in Lausune again, so that she could reattach it to her body or destroy it herself.

She looked around, examining each one of the shards that were left. Setting more deities free could destroy the whole system the monks had in place, but it could also allow gods like Vizena to abuse their people unpunished. She needed to think further than that. She needed Aili's help.

At the same time, the gods still under the monks' control were seven, more than enough to outpower her, Aili and Zeles. She broke their shards in half and took a piece from each, storing them in a new cavity at stomach level. Except for Vizena's half-shard, which she pulverized with a bitter pleasure.

She looked around the room one last time, found nothing of interest and left. The sentinels and priors were still in the corridor outside the storage rooms. The only ones missing were the abbot and Daira, but Saia immediately found them, one brooding in his room and the other reassuring the people who had been bitten by the snakes. Saia expanded her view, taking in every single person in the village, even the ones living outside the mountain and the lonely sentinels here and there on its flanks who kept to their duties despite everything.

“I could have destroyed you,” she said, making the air vibrate inside each room and in the proximity of the people outside, so that everyone could hear her words. “All I asked was for you to remove Merea and choose someone else to play Vizena's role. You never listened. Remember this moment: I could make you crumble in an instant, destroy everything you ever made, wipe you out completely, but I won't. I'll return, and then we'll talk some more.”

She left them to their collective confusion and walked out of the village. She searched the lake for Rabam, but there wasn't a single trace of him. She thought he’d entered the village in the confusion, but didn’t find him there either. She made a mental note of looking for him after saving Zeles and having her long-due talk with Aili.

She descended the mountain, going as fast as she could without having her clothes torn to shreds by rogue branches. She could see the forest all around her, feel the viss slowly flowing inside the trees. The boar was moving somewhere at the edge of her domain, muzzle to the earth while it looked for food.

She arrived at Lausune when the sun had just started its descent. She was still in the forest and quite far from the temple when her domain touched Aili’s. It felt as if she was reading her body’s energies, except they were scattered in the air and terrain. They started to buzz and grow with agitation as Aili's focus shifted, so Saia stopped before they could get entangled further.

“Who are you?” Aili said with Koidan's voice, making the air tremble in the area where their domains touched.

“Really?” Saia said, doing the same. “I’m that different? I thought my viss was the same.”

She could feel Aili's relief and happiness even before she spoke. They were soon followed by surprise.

“You... you became a goddess? And Zeles? I've felt the earth tremble, I was so worried it was him.”

Saia told her everything that had happened since the moment she'd left the village, feeling a bit guilty for the worried feeling Aili’s viss emanated.

“It could have gone wrong in so many ways.”

“I know.”

“Why did you even do all of this?”

“I can give my viss to Zeles, now.”

There was an instant of silence as Aili’s energies shifted once again.

“You can do that?”

“He told me that gods can give their energy to each other.”

“I… I didn’t know that. You should have told me, I'd have given my viss to Zeles and you could have stayed human.”

“I’m still human. And I knew you'd have given him your energies immediately if told you about that, but I don't ask other people to make sacrifices I wouldn't do myself. I'm not a monk.”

“But I had time to prepare for this. You…”

Saia cut her off.

“There’s another reason why I became a goddess.”

She hesitated, feeling like they were too far from each other to talk about something that important.

“Can I get closer?”

“Sure. I don't know how that would work, though.”

Saia made a hesitant step forward. Aili's emotions mingled with her own, a feeling that would have been very uncomfortable had Aili been a stranger.

They both shrank their domains as Saia advanced, to the point they only barely touched. The feeling subsided, now more akin to holding someone's hand and glancing at their viss every once in a while than being submerged in the turmoil at the center of their being.

Saia kept going until she saw the temple, moving the leaves of the trees aside with winds in the hope of hiding herself from the sentinels. She stopped once she reached the last line of trees before the temple and realized she couldn't go inside, for the same reason she'd left Vizena's shard on Koidan's pedestal: the monks should never know that Aili was on her side.

She’d turned to look her way through the temple’s windows, even if they both knew there was no need for that.

“What do you have in mind?” Aili asked.

“I don't think the monks' system is fair.”

“Me neither,” she answered immediately.

“If you, me and Zeles join forces, we can destroy it and change everything.”

She felt Aili's hesitation sparkle all around her.

“I agree that it’s not a fair system, but I don't think we should necessarily dismantle everything. A good idea would be making people aware of who is actually taking all of the decisions for them. Give them the chance to signal any problems they might have with the gods directly, with no need to involve the sentinels. Allowing everyone to participate in the debates.”

“Why not take it a step further?”

“What do you mean?”

While she thought about how to formulate her answer, Saia was marginally aware of how weird that conversation was: two people standing and staring at each other, without moving any part of their faces or bodies. They didn't need facial expressions after all, when the other person's emotions were floating all around them.

“We could take all of that power inside the mountain and distribute it amongst every inhabitant of the villages. We won't need deities anymore, at least for a while.”

“I’m… not sure humans can actually retain such big amounts in their bodies. Plus, the viss will end at some point, we can't pass it on to our descendants, nor transform everyone into gods.”

“I know, that's why the next step would be to create a society like the one the monks have, but without priors and abbots.”

“The mountain would crumble if there’s not enough viss to keep it together.”

“Then we’ll have to leave.”

Aili shook her head a bit, the first movement in the entire conversation.

“I’m not convinced. Giving energy to everyone won't guarantee that people will use it wisely. Some of them will waste it and others will keep it until they’ll be the last ones left, and in the end we'll have the same unbalance of power we have now, except without monks that can keep gods in check. I don't think the society that would emerge from that would be fairer than this one.”

Saia wanted to object to that, but she could see it was the truth. Loriem had proven that, biding his time until Zeles wasn't paying attention to him anymore before murdering Milvia.

She shook herself out of her doubts.

“We’ll think about it later. We also need Zeles's opinion on this. He's the one who has dealt with this stuff longer.”

“I agree. Where is he, by the way? Still at Suimer?”

“He should be here. I told Dan and Morìc to bring him back about an hour after the trembling, unless something really bad happened.”

“I’ve just checked again, but they're not here. Zeles neither.”

Saia felt her own agitation flow from her body to the air around her. Maybe the monks had found out about them. Maybe they had crossed the forest again despite her warnings.

“I need to go check on them.”

Aili nodded, her own worry mixing with Saia's. She was about to step away, still hidden by the trees, when she remembered about the shards. She opened the cavity in her shoulder and took Aili’s out to show her what it was.

“Almost forgot: it's yours.”

Aili's viss condensed around the glass.

“I’ve destroyed Zeles’s,” Saia added. “And took away a piece from all of the others. They might be useful in the future.”

“Smart. We won't have to fear the other gods anymore.”

Despite her worry, Saia beamed in hearing the most intelligent person she knew call her smart.

“Do you want it back?”

“No, keep it. It might be useful if we want to communicate with each other when we're too far.”

“We can do that?”

“Yes, it's something I've figured out recently. I'll teach you once you come back.”

Saia put the shard away in the cavity and sealed it shut.

“See you later then.”

“Be careful.”

Saia moved her statue's lips in a smirk, then retreated inside the forest. She walked east until she was out of Aili's territory, then carefully stepped along the border of Dore's village. She couldn't feel the god's energy nor see monks around, so she entered his territory and walked faster toward the sea. She focused her attention outward, watching the scenery outside of her domain as if she was standing just at its borders and looking out.

She stopped as soon as the trees cleared, giving her a view of the sea. There was a black line in the distance, connecting water and sky. She thought of the vision she had in the forest and started running.