Since the last major battle had been dealt with so quickly and decisively, there was a lot of wonder about what our next moves would be. Again, this army was not supposed to be an invading force, but the enemy invasion was on its back foot after just one engagement. Our morale was soaring, and our troops were fresh... but many of the troops, including our half-company, were conscripts who were not really here by choice.

That's why, in the end, General Murn decided to split us up. Six companies stayed behind to guard the border and the supply chain, while the other four moved on ahead to help the invading force. Olesport's troops were part of the rearguard, but they asked for volunteers to join the advanced unit. I didn't go, but Raine did. She didn't ask for, nor need, my permission, either in person or in prayer. It did bug me that she didn't ask, but why should it? She's a big girl.

It took about a day to organize everything, and then the advance companies left. The rearguard was split up further, with one full company falling back to secure the route additional supplies would take, one moving forward, and the others taking turns scouting north and south along the river to watch for any signs of covert action. Olesport, as always, was too small to really be a part of this, and so we sat and watched the supplies.

It did, finally, give me some extra time to myself.

The first thing I did was make sure to spend some flame on improving the abilities that Raine had made such good use of. Apparently that was mostly Tammy's idea, but it was a good one; unfortunately, cementing it as a part of my domain of eyes actually took a whole lot of flame, because it involved invading the minds or bodies of people who were not my followers, paying attention to where they were looking, and covering my tracks so they don't know I'm paying attention to their eyes. Even then, I guessed, someone who was sensitive to magic might feel something odd when the power was active

In doing this, I noted immediately that apparently gold flame, the gift of gods, was a necessary component of "godly domain" things. I don't know the exact details, but I got the intuition ahead of time that it would be required, and indeed the gold flame was spent when I did it. I suppose that made a bit of sense; I was basically adding a new magic rule that only applied when I wanted it to, and only a god worthy of other gods' respect should be able to do that, right? In that sense, I was probably fortunate that Xenma had come to pick a fight, and lost; that fight and Ciel'ostra being impressed with my handiwork were the only sources of gold flame I had, unless Alanna was nice enough to exchange other flames for gold, but she seemed reluctant to give me too much credit. I could imagine a young god not running into any gods that they could impress, and basically being out of luck as far as getting a good domain power for... years, decades, centuries maybe.

But here I was, shaking things up left and right. My first use of flame had been reckless, but it had made me stronger. My argument with Xenma and the earth god had been won, on the one hand, by being brazen as bronze bull testicles, on the other hand by the knowledge that was commonplace on Earth, and on the third hand by having plenty of experience with the idea that religious people could be absolutely full of shit--which, again, I'd learned on Earth.

Earlier in my life, I might not have stood up to gods and put them in their place. But having lived a full life, I knew by the end of that life that there was no plan. It wasn't about me; my religious aunts and uncles had lived lives not much more fulfilling than mine, and many died chumps no more worthy of respect than me. Them going to church every week, proselytizing, and singing their lord's praises didn't make them much happier on their deathbeds than I had been on mine, and the words I'd said to the minister in that hospital bed were not the first time I had spited the church. Maybe some religious people did better than my family, but at least as far as I could tell, as a mortal at the time, religion had not rewarded them.

It was like I had said to the minister: my aunts and uncles needed people while they were alive. And honestly, the aggressively religious bent to their lives had driven me away, and probably others. As I reflected on it, they would have been happier if the church had given them some guidance on how to be popular, sociable people. Instead, they were told to think first about what they could do for the church and for god, and to put themselves second. They had, and I think by the end they resented that choice.

Me, I put work ahead of myself, and suffered for that. I think the lesson is probably the same either way. Did that have to do with the corruption I felt sometimes? An urge to put myself ahead of all else, to spite the attitude they had on Terra of working yourself to death?

I didn't really like the way that whole line of reasoning was going, so I distracted myself by asking Alanna for more information about magic. I was technically running a bit low on flame to trade--establishing a godly domain ability really did cost a lot, and the one I asked for was not as simple as it seemed--but in retrospect, I had kind of overpaid last time. Alanna's avatar, at least, didn't seem to mind the small payment, and offered me another knowledge-packet about Earth magic. I felt that I needed to know it for the sake of my own Avatar, so that he could someday live in relative comfort in his little waterfall niche.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The knowledge packet was, again, many books' worth of knowledge, and I didn't get all of it in the first pass. One thing that was substantially clearer to me after reviewing the new knowledge was that there was a sharp difference between amber essence manipulation, which could not reshape stone pretty much at all, and more complicated Earth magic. According to one book, essences in general were only intended to be one part of a larger picture, and any complicated working of magic used several at once. Therefore, if I wanted to shape stone, I needed amber essence, but also sky essence, which was associated with the magic school of motion. Adding other essences would help more--Red essence of fire, as one would expect, would soften the thing and make it easier, and I had already seen that silver essence was useful for keeping a magical working coordinated. Sea essence and water magic could help you make abstract, logical changes to something, by applying a "rule" that other magics would need to follow--hence the book on water magic and its insistence that water magic was "basic enchantment".

Whatever.

The point was, amber essence was supposed to be something raw, something primal, an energy that maintained something's physical structure. You could remove that energy and make something weaker, but at least according to the book, the actual shaping of it involves using other essences.

I want to say that this topic kept me occupied, but honestly there were mundane things happening every day that constantly interrupted any time I spent reflecting on things. With the generals gone, there were more grabby hands trying to steal food from the supplies, and I ended up in frequent disagreements with one of the other quartermasters, an old bat named Mietra (I mean that she was literally a halfbreed, and not just that she was unattractive, which also yes) who seemed to expect that she was in charge by virtue of seniority. If she was more competent, I would not have minded handing over that particular torch, but...

My first interaction with her after the army split was a demand that I deliver her a list of the cargo, ordered by price, not by quantity or relevance. Suffice it to say, that immediately rang alarm bells in my mind; it was the kind of thing that a person asked when they were intending to make off with the most expensive thing we had. Given of course that we were peers and she was not actually in charge of me, I politely asked why she needed to know.

She showed her teeth and told me in no uncertain terms, "I need to make sure you don't make off with anything. We can't leave the whole army's supplies in the hands of a useless dullard like you. You'll do it, or I'll make a soup out of your hide."

Bard was busy, and I wasn't exactly friends with any of the other commanders, so to shut her up, I provided her with an accurate listing of what we had--with no order to it at all. She came back the next day with the same demand, and I wrote up the supplies that had been used, the one incident that day of a guard stealing food, and just because I was annoyed at the multiple suggestions that I was a "dullard", added estimates on how long the supplies would last, and which had come from which company originally.

She made the same demand the next day. At that point, I started making triplicates of each report and submitting one to Bard. He, unlike the crazy bat-woman, clearly appreciated the notes, though he warned me I would end up wasting paper.

By the time a week had come and gone, I was getting to the point where I would gladly appear paper out of the ether with godly magic if it meant shutting that damn woman up.

Not a day went by when she didn't come up with some insult or another to my personage, all irrelevant and illogical. The urge was constantly growing in me to do some kind of violence to her, but some part of me just wanted to stay above the conflict, to be a kindly gentleman throughout the whole experience, and generally, comport myself with the dignity and grace that a god should have.

It got worse as time went on. Even though I nipped each attempt at thievery in the bud, she started reporting those things to her commander, an avian halfbreed whose face somewhat resembled an owl's. He seemed to have little better to do than bother me and Bard about these incidents, even when the perpetrator was from another company and got caught in the act.

It made me mad enough that I just wanted nothing to do with the woman.

The worst part was that my insight as a god was straightforward; she was hateful and resentful because she wasn't in charge, and she looked down on me for being human. She was also crazy, and rarely more than a stone's throw away from doing something that would harm herself, me, or the company, but she did constantly keep herself in check. What else was there to say, really? She wasn't some enemy spy, and she was aggressively not interested in being friends. Someone else might have found a way to make friends, but I simply didn't know what I could do that would make Mietra happy.

After about ten days, that chain of logic got lodged in my head. Yes, I hated her, and she made me miserable, but I wondered if there was something that could be done that would make her stop being crazy. Me as a human being, I couldn't just wish away her madness; but as a god? It was hard to know. I suspected that if I tried, especially if I tried to do something by force, I'd just end up doing more harm than good, whether to her or to others. I wasn't entirely unhappy with the thought of smiting the spiteful bat, but doing it for selfish reasons was just kind of petty, and doing it on accident while trying to help would just be shameful.

The real problem was that I couldn't see a way forward for her. I mean, I had no real way of seeing the future in the first place, but no matter how I looked at her with my godly insight, I didn't see an overlooked place where she belonged or a friend who wanted her help or presence. Not surprisingly, it seemed that she had burned some bridges in her past and now had very few options.

So my time was split between actual work, dealing with her, and godly matters. While fortunately she was never a large part of my day, she was a problem every day. So yes, I did have time to think about magic, work on my godly powers, and even mess around with magic and materials as my Avatar, but I was also always thinking about my next damnable interaction with Mietra.

For better and for worse, there simply wasn't much else to do.