Nania POV

Lessons, practice, and the extra work assigned to me were exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Each evening, I found myself sitting in my favorite spot, as close to the temple roof as I could get. Each day the suns would set. The Sun Falcon and Sun Fiend would spill each other’s blood across the sky, staining it brilliant shades of red and orange, illuminating the brightly-painted murals of the city below as though they were aflame. I would sit and wait until the flames dimmed and the stars appeared, then sneak back inside and fall asleep. One night, however, I found my spot was not empty.

“Hey, Ellie?” I asked.

“Mm?”

“What do you think the Sun Fiend is like?”

They sputtered. “Uh—why do you ask?”

“It’s just…the work Head Priestess Forya has been having me do. It’s gotten me thinking a lot. The old legends say that the Sun Fiend birthed all the monsters in the world, and that she destroyed the entire city all on her own, once… The first king of our current dynasty had to lead the efforts to rebuild it.” I twisted a lock of red hair in my hand, watching how it shone in the setting suns. “It takes two gods just to keep her on the run, away from the city. Is a single sacrifice…really going to do anything?”

I looked up at him. Their mouth had fallen slightly open. In their eyes was a look of concern…or perhaps fear?

I hurriedly told him I was fine. “Just being overly sensitive as usual. Is a sacrifice really worth it, if it does nothing?”

Ellie shut their mouth, and fell silent. They turned back away from me, gazing out at the lengthening shadows across the city. In the market, farmers and merchants would be packing up their stalls and beginning the walk to the communal mess halls.

“No one’s seen the Sun Fiend in Gresha City for generations,” they finally said. “It does…something.”

“I guess you’re right. I…guess it’s worth it.” I sighed, and looked away from them.

“But…I think it’s disrespectful to do it carelessly,” they said.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything does something…just not always what you want it to. So you need to be careful with sacrifices. For a start, a sacrifice needs to have value. If I sacrificed all my festival cakes and gave them to you, but you hated sweets, that’d be a meaningless sacrifice. You’d be annoyed, and I’d be hungry.”

“That’s hardly a sacrifice, Ellie. You hate sweets, too.”

He kept speaking, as though he hadn’t heard me. “And a sacrifice needs to choose to sacrifice themself. Otherwise, it’s just cruel. I can give you festival cakes, and you can receive them, but they ain’t giving themselves.”

“Most people don’t talk like festival cakes have feelings, Ellie,” I said.

“And… Sacrifices are leaving the Land of Mortals. They should only choose it if they can do more good by leaving than by staying.” They looked back to me, the fading sunlight casting dark shadows across their face. “How do you tell when your sacrifice can do the most good? Do the gods tell you? Will you just know it’s time…?”

They stared at me, wide-eyed, then grinned. “I mean. If you’ve just stuffed yourself belly-bursting full of meat-skewers, then that’s a poorly-timed sacrifice of cakes if ever I heard one.”

The sudden shift from silly talks about festival cakes caught me off guard. “You know everyone thinks you’re crazy, right?”

“They can think what they want. It doesn’t change anything,” he said.

Many generations ago, Crown Naruune saw how humans struggled to defend themselves from the hordes of the Sun Fiend, and so bestowed upon them her greatest gift. A promise she would always grant them her aid if they asked in the proper manner, the method of magic known as channeling. Channeling is the easiest form of magic for a human to use, but that’s partly because it’s incorrect to say ‘a human’ is using it. Rather, the human’s body is turned into a conduit for divine magic.

While large-scale spells can be performed through channeling, it takes time for a god to hear and respond to a spell, and sending too much magic through a single human’s body could prove fatal to the human. More than any other trait, the ability to instantly and freely use magic was what separates gods and monsters from mortals.

What I did in the Deep Woods was impossible. I didn’t know if that Angran boy, Talon, could tell, but I had messed up carving those runes. Most channeling spells from Gresha’s temple took the form of long legends and epic poetry, which must be chanted or inscribed. Doing so could take hours.

The spell should have failed. But instead, somehow my spell to rot the sapling and turn it into fertilizer worked. In a matter of seconds, no less. A feat not even the High Priestess of Crown Naruune’s Temple should be capable of…how could I, a lazy, foolish, and emotional Priestess-Candidate, who’s yet to even properly pass my exams and be ordained, manage it?

And more importantly…could I repeat it? It was incredible that I had pulled it off, but if I couldn’t repeat it, it became as useless to me as a fever dream. At first, I wondered if the knife I’d taken from Talon was a magical weapon, like Elian’s armor. Perhaps instead of channeling Crown Naruune, I had pulled from the knife’s well of magic. That would, indeed, be faster, but the kinds of magic it could be used for would be severely limited. And what were the odds he had a hunting knife that spread decay?

Since I had bent it out of shape while using the knife, Talon had refused to take it back. I was free to examine it and determine that no, it was normal bronze, lacking a drop of magical energy. My next guess was that the Deep Woods, the sacred grove created by Hallow Zaya to protect her mother’s home, was the factor that allowed me to create a miracle.

Perhaps, in a land created by a goddess, I was capable of drawing on an abundance of divine magic, which I subconsciously used to power my spell…? It didn’t completely make sense to me. It was true that many believed the Deep Woods made it easier for Crown Naruune and Hallow Zaya to hear our prayers. That was why the Head Priestess and Senior Priestesses performed most important ceremonies and rituals within the Deep Woods, rather than in Gresha City. But if channeling was so quick and easy there, surely what I had done would be a well-documented phenomenon?

What had I even done? Had I synchronized completely with a god, allowing for near-instantaneous channeling? Had I drawn magic from within my own personal reservoir, rather than a divine source? But that was also meant to be impossible, even if I was not completely sure why.

I needed to perform more magic in the Deep Woods to figure this out.

I needed to go to the Deep Woods again.

Perhaps if I managed to redo what I had done…I’d be strong and brave enough to join Elian on the battlefield. Perhaps I’d even be able to end the war for him, and keep him from danger.

No, not perhaps. I needed to accomplish these things. Because I knew I would go insane in a world with Elian dead.