The next morning, after concealing the book, I was gifted an... underwhelming repast for breakfast, one that fit with the aggressively spartan decor of my room: unflavored porridge that reminded me, not unpleasantly, of thick oatmeal. The woman who delivered it was a black-haired human woman, short and thin, and very intense. She wore a pair of swords that I immediately sensed were magically linked, but she seemed like she had duties to attend to, so I didn't try to interrupt her morning.

By midmorning, I was sent for by Pal'lud again, and this time I was brought to a high patio of the temple overlooking the city, where Pal'lud was sitting on a bench overlooking things. To my surprise, the black-haired woman was there, leaning against the wall, looking... mildly impatient.

"Good morning, Ryan of Eyes," said Pal'lud, without turning. She was, and I suspected would always be, only half paying attention. "Sit. This is Miana, one of the candidates to replace Murn as the next Vicar of Blades."

I bowed to Miana, and sat next to Pal'lud, choosing to sit closer to her than to Miana, in an attempt to appear friendly with the hag. I had little doubt that many in the temple would wonder why I was here, and it seemed best to... temper their expectations. "Is Murn's retirement a well known issue here, then? I had thought it was more of a secret."

"The candidates must know what they are competing for," replied Pal'lud immediately, "...if perhaps not all the details." She gave a low chuckle, which again sounded far rougher coming out than she probably intended. I could feel, though, the same spirit from her as I'd felt in Murn and in Ciel'ostra, and it colored her laugh for me as much as the hag body that she was speaking to me from.

I joined her in a chuckling, and I could tell instantly that Miana sensed she was on the wrong side of an inside joke. I kind of enjoyed it, honestly, as someone who had usually been on the outside of others' jokes.

"You'll have to tell me the details sometime." I paused. "Pal'lud... Raine has me worried."

The hag turned her face towards me, deigning to raise an eyebrow. "She's only started doing that now? That girl is trouble."

I huffed at the woman next to me and shook my head. "I get an odd sense... that she's in over her head. But..." I hesitated, glancing at Miana. "We are... distant. More distant than I thought we'd be."

Pal'lud eyed me, as though trying to figure out exactly what I was saying. I really wanted to be explicit, but with the other woman around...

"The advanced forces are all feeling on edge, the last day or so," said Pal'lud suddenly, and I realized her voice was suddenly very hard, and she turned back away from me. "They sense that they have gone from being predators to prey. I am not aware of what exactly the issue is, but Raine of Eyes should be among the survivors when Murn of Blades meets back up with the advance army. She is a clever one, and as you well know, the blessings of a god are potent."

I nodded, recalling that the guards knew that Pal'lud had strange knowledge. Could I pass my own abilities off like that? I didn't exactly like the idea... and as I struggled to come up with a way to phrase it, I realized that I only sounded like a jilted lover or a stalker. "I worry," I said simply.

"She is not helpless, nor harmless," said Pal'lud. "Just as you and Murn are not. Have some trust in her. The God of Eyes does, and the Goddess of Blades has seen fit to have her among her army. She must grow into her role... as must you." There was a moment of silence as a cool gust of wind crossed the patio. "Tell me, Ryan of Eyes. What do you believe I should look for in a successor?"

For a moment, my lips quirked, simply because I knew, again, that Miana didn't understand what was happening in front of her... but after the moment passed, I stared out across the city, the city that was probably Ciel'ostra's in everything but name. How had her predecessors influenced this city, this nation? What marks were there from each Lady of Blades upon the landscape? What marks would the next Lady leave?

The obvious answer that I had on the tip of my tongue was 'Love', but I let myself pause before saying it. I meant the word as a truism, that a warrior who did not love would become a monster, or something to that effect, but first, Ciel'ostra was already looking for someone who loved the nation, and second... that wasn't really good advice, was it? The next Lady of Blades would end up leading troops into battle and watching people die, just as the current Lady did. Those first scars would hurt all the more if they were bonds of deep love, deep commitment. One way or another, those scars would hurt a great deal, and they would last for decades, centuries. Even if the Lady were to die with her troops and create another fake Vicar, she would suffer survivor guilt for the people she couldn't save.

After getting past that... all I could think of was that image of myself at the cliff.

"Weight," I said after several minutes of silence. "She has to bear an incredible weight."

There was a silence, and I could feel, suddenly, an aura of immense weight settling over Pal'lud. Not a physical weight... but it might as well have been. From the moment it settled into the air, I could feel a depression hanging off of my every limb, dripping off of every hem of my clothes, a depression that felt like a thousand loved faces plastered on corpses. A depression that was not an emotional disease... but rather, an emotional scar, a wound. Even once the wound has healed, it is never quite the same anymore.

For me... my first instinct was to fight the wave of mental force off with godly power, but after a moment, I relaxed. Depression was not new to me, though it had never felt so... genuinely legitimate as it did now. I had felt powerless, felt grief, felt like I was watching the collapse of society, like I was watching the slow decay of friendships. I had watched schoolmates and crushes be buried, but also watched them get married, have children... and still, too often, it seemed like they didn't find happiness.

Trust, I realized, as I felt Ciel'ostra's burden hanging in the air. I had trusted that the future was going to be better, but that trust only meant I was not trying to make it better with my own hands. Because of that... I had been a part of the problem. People had needed me, but I wasn't there. I straightened up on the bench, feeling generally unaffected by the weight that poured over and around me. Some of my peers had probably wanted me there, and I'd never known, because we were never close. Trust had been the wrong choice. Innocence, naivete, things I thought synonymous with "goodness"; they had all been wrong. And the weight of that truth was...

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A noise surprised me, and I turned to find that Miana had fallen to her knees, and I realized she was affected by the weight as much as I was. To her credit, she had not collapsed, but also... she was trying to fight it. I could see it her eyes, which were struggling to look in any direction except down at the floor.

So I stood up, some part of me amused, and knelt down in front of the woman. I knew she could see me, but it took extreme effort on her part to do anything.

"It is truth," I whispered to her. "Don't try to keep the feeling outside of yourself. The feeling is the truth. You must accept the truth, and then refuse to be bowed by it. You cannot fight the truth; you cannot deny it." I watched her eyes, as she struggled to understand, but after another minute, she lost the last bits of strength she had and collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

As soon as she did, Pal'lud eased up on the aura. "Interesting," was all she said for a long moment.

Since she didn't seem keen to say or do more, I picked Miana up and rested her against the wall, a bit more comfortably than she would have been laying on her face. After that, I sat back down next to Pal'lud and checked myself over. There were... faint traces of that weight clinging to me, infused in my clothes. I wasn't sure if there was an easy way to shake it off, except perhaps to use divine flame, but for now I simply let it stay.

Making sure that nobody else was within earshot, I said quietly, "In the... in my Divine Realm," I struggled with the term her Book used; it would probably always be 'Little Gods' Room' to me, "there is a shadow over her. Raine and Tammy are both faded, and I feel like something is chasing them."

Pal'lud clearly heard me, and she seemed to be thinking, though she was doubtless also busy elsewhere. "There are some threats that will cause an Angel to conceal their presence," said Pal'lud quietly. "Rakshasa are among those. Unlike mortals, they can see souls; they can use their magic to sever or kill spirits as easily as a mortal magician can light a fire."

"You still think they are working with our enemy," I said out loud, mostly for confirmation.

"There are other options... but only one is worse. The Rakshasa are dangerous, yes, but they do not pass on their knowledge to each other. They live in a constant state of childish ignorance and foolishness, with no society and nothing to bind them together. The trouble comes when they pass their knowledge to surface dwellers."

"You mean Necromancers." Again, not really a question.

Pal'lud nodded. "The danger is that we know nothing of what a Necromancer can do. They are hidden people, Ryan of Eyes. They go to great lengths so that they gods will never know how much power they have stolen, nor what arcane knowledge they have created from that power. Just as each god changes the world simply by existing, so can a Necromancer rewrite laws." She paused, and I could sense some hesitation. "But they can only do so much. Power, as you well know, is not so easily gathered."

I realized suddenly that Miana was awake, but playing at still being asleep. I tried not to show her that I saw through the act. "Surely you know of the incident with the ship--"

"Yes, the intervention of Alanna and Xenma was not lost on me," said Pal'lud shortly, and I quieted. "There was much to-do about the idea that the necromancer had allies and contacts in our nation, but I believe this is not the case."

I scrunched up my face at that statement. "The portmaster before me--the one Alanna killed--had tainted items in his possession. And... among his things, a note that referenced 'black'."

Pal'lud turned to look at me, and I sensed underneath the creepy old lady exterior she was taking that news very seriously. "So he had seen ships like that before," she concluded.

"I think he had some kind of deal with smugglers, and they had dealings with necromancers. Beyond that, though, I know little enough."

She sighed. "I suppose I should be thankful it's not my job to handle that mess," she said, and I detected a note of wry irony in her voice. "It will be a mighty mess."

"What, not eager to rush off to battle, Pal'lud?" I put a healthy dose of irony into my own voice, more for Miana's benefit than anyone else's. "Certainly a hale and hearty young lady such as yourself would answer the call of the kingdom if General Murn and the Goddess of Blades called for you."

Pal'lud gave a hearty laugh, but it subsided. "No," she said quite seriously, and again I could tell the words were not for me. "I will not last much longer, I think. Once this matter of Murn's retirement is ironed out... that will be my last act for the Temple."

I nodded, finding it a little hard to put as much gravity into the declaration as it deserved. Ciel'ostra, in all of her forms, was an interesting acquaintance, but we would not likely become all that close in the time she had remaining--not unless she decided to put it off for a while longer. I would do my best to live up to the trust she was showing in me, and do my best to help the next Goddess of Blades... assuming she wanted my help. But she was still a bit of a stranger to me. That... probably also meant she wasn't really going to be counting on me too much, right? Or possibly, if she was serious about me helping her successor, she would put some kind of binding in place to keep me from doing anything bad. Since she had substantially more power than I did, it was not unrealistic.

This wasn't an opportunity to ask such questions, though. So, I smiled at Pal'lud and put a hand on her shoulder sympathetically. I was a little surprised that she didn't recoil or respond, and neither did the not-asleep Miana. "Everything ends someday," I said quietly. "Who would really want to live forever, anyway?"

Pal'lud snorted, but I could tell there was a distance there that hadn't quite been there before. "When we're young, we all think we will," she said after a moment. "We think we'll be the one. That our friends will be the ones to last forever, that the rise to fame will end with us remaining among the stars, forever to be one of those who counted. And rarely do the young stop and say thanks to the ancestors before them, as though the ancestors were never young, never like them. Time becomes an uncrossable gulf, and they can never come to understand the past."

"I think many do, when they become older," I said, rubbing her shoulder and staring out at the city. "Too late, perhaps, but they understand their ancestors once they have felt the same burdens, borne the same weight."

"Mm." Pal'lud looked up at a bird, suddenly holding its spot in midair as a breeze picked up. "The old feel more connection to the past than to the future, I think. We understand ancestors better than children."

I gave a single, short laugh. "Perhaps," I said. "Though I'm not really old enough to judge. Why, I've only died once!" I put my hand to my face and winced theatrically. "Well, it was almost twice."

At that, Pal'lud and I turned to look at Miana, who had not been able to quite hold still at that comment. She did her best to hide her embarrassment and stood up. "Ah... I apologize, Lady Pal'lud. It appears I failed your test."

"Hum hm hm." Pal'lud's reply was half laugh, half thoughtful hum. She and I both concealed our smiles as best we could. "You'll get another chance, as will each of the others. Why don't you show Ryan around the Temple for a while? He won't have too many chances to get out of his room once he goes back in."

"Of course, Lady Pal'lud." Miana bowed, and I stood up, patting the hag's shoulder affectionately.

"I will see you tomorrow, I suppose," I said, and retracted my hand with a bit of a bow. "Until then, Pal'lud."

"Until tomorrow," she replied, and turned back to the view of the city below.