Loi was, fortunately enough, fighting against a weaker opponent when Miana felt the first shivers of her new bonds. Some of the others around her were not so lucky; the blessing stumbled and started to fail, and sometimes did worse by distracted her, but she still deflected the incoming blow down into the dirt and, lacking an offhand to follow up with, kicked the man backwards instead.

Others nearby stumbled into sword strikes they should have blocked. Some of the wounds were fatal.

The minutes that followed were agony. She felt as though heavy grease was flowing into her from her connection with the Goddess, although the God of Eyes maintained a weak but passable blessing, one that kept her with just enough of an edge to keep going. The warriors around her seized on the distraction, though, and it was all they could do, even with the Fallen Blades, to hold them back.

Then there was a moment when the connection was no longer toxic, no longer filthy, but was simply hollow. That unnerved Loi just as much, but she kept her faith; what she did not sense from Miana was pain, or panic. It didn't feel ominous like when Murn had been dying. It felt... simply desperate.

But there was a feeling, and Loi stepped back from the enemies, trying to judge what it meant. It was cold, and warm; lost, and searching, but intimate and touching... distant, and yet right there next to her. And then there was a swirling mass of confusion, but all of the emotions slowly soothed.

The enemy black wizards let out another wave of awful power, power that felt like death. It came out like a black wind from the ugly red and black sphere, a wind she felt long before it reached her, a wind that carried death itself like grains of sand and tried like a wraith to reach her across the long distance between.

Her grandmama, almost spent, resolved herself to face it, but the feeling inside of her shifted, and she felt an eye, muddled and confused, pass by her. The grasping hand of death slammed against some barrier she felt but did not see, and was gone.

The mess of confusion stubbornly didn't fix itself as moments turned to minutes, and Loi fought defensively, trying to rally the others. A moment ago, they'd felt drawn forwards, but it was a waste, a loss; the power guiding them had stumbled, and they were losing too many, too quickly.

Ulia charged forward into the gap. Loi had never seen her so erratic; she seemed in pain, and berserk, confused. She succeeded for a moment, throwing two warriors back with a single swing of her sword, and catapulting herself over the heads of three more, her blade cutting into one's neck as she went by. But even in the best of times, divine blessings only stretched so far, and she was quickly overwhelmed.

Loi hesitated to move forward for too long, and she watched Ulia take a sword to the chest. In that moment, she thought the world might have stopped; she watched as another came up behind her and nearly took Ulia's head off. The woman dropped, and did not rise.

Loi stepped back another step, wrestling with her feelings. Just another heartbreak, just another loss. Her eyes moved from one opponent to the next, but she was beginning to feel like her eyes hurt. Something was wrong, and she was so tired...

And then finally, blessedly, after entirely too long, nothing was wrong.

It was strange. She didn't... feel blessed. She simply felt healthier than she'd ever felt before; sharper, more cognizant of small details. She was aware of her fear, and aware of others' fear, but she also sensed in a way she had never sensed before, just how much of the fear she felt was actually her enemy's.

It poured off of them in waves. She had known the enemy was frightened, but now she didn't just feel it, she saw it. She knew.

She moved towards a man, knowing he was scared of her, and somehow, he knew. He knew she felt his fear. His motions had been threatening before, but now they were amateurish, cowardly, foolish. His sword swing was errant, impulsive. She barely hesitated half a step so that his swing would go wide, and sprang forward in the gap.

She could have done a lot of things; he was wide open. She chose to thrust through the side of his neck, grandmama's flambard cutting cleanly through his windpipe and artery without catching on his spine. She shoulder-checked him to the floor with her bad side, and strode confidently over his dying body, her eyes locking on another person.

Not scared--horrified. He was horrified. He saw a monster coming, saw his own death. She took just a moment to mock him by pretending to dash forward, and watched him fling his sword up. Every motion she took seemed natural, real. There was no confusion, no fear.

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And because of that, what should have been a losing battle seemed poised to become a victorious slaughter.

But what she felt next put a lie to that. Another pulse of death, but this did not radiate outwards from the caster--no, she felt something pulling, and many of the enemy soldiers collapsed, their blood flying from their bodies and collecting in the blood shell around the black wizards, the necromancers. A second time, and then a third, the traitorous wizards killed their own allies to empower themselves.

The storm overhead crackled with light, and she glanced up, sure for a moment she'd seen a triangle in the dark clouds. And then, with all the subtlety that she expected from Ryan, she noticed a giant eye in the clouds, a giant eye that seemed at first faint, and then got stronger.

And then it blinked--shut, for a moment, and then open.

When it opened, there were three people hanging in midair, three people holding hands. Their eyes were white lights, and at intervals, lightning crackled around them; one, she knew by sight, was Miana, and one she felt sure was Ryan, if not quite his face. The third... she didn't know, except in her heart, which told her it was Alanna.

The storm swirled, and one shaft of light came out of the sky, haloing only the blood sphere. Loi could not see them, but she could. There were two scared men in there, with bloodstained tools, and bloodstained hands, and black veins crawling through their insides, veins that were eating their bodies to fuel dark magic.

Three voices spoke.

"We will not abide," the gods said together. "Treachery," said Miana, "Cruelty," said Ryan; "Malice," said Alanna. And then, together: "Necromancers shall not survive in this place."

"Throw yourselves on our mercy if you wish," said Ryan, sounding so sincere and naive that it was painful, "but your deaths are preordained," snapped Miana. "You have earned destruction," was all Alanna felt the need to add, before one last time, they spoke again as one: "and we shall deliver it."

"Curse you!" the cry was shrill. "A pox on your name! May Creton damn you all forever!"

The three hung there, holding hands, but the feel of the atmosphere changed. The bolt of light that had been coming down peacefully from the clouds suddenly carried an intense weight--but instead of crushing the necromancers, it lifted the blood bubble up into the sky.

Loi's sword ripped out of her hands, and she felt her Grandmama laughing with a giddy excitement as she slipped from her granddaughter's hands. The other Blades of the fallen, too, hurled themselves into the sky, forming a ring, then another, around the shield.

And then... and then the whole world trembled. It felt... it felt like more than just the battlefield, or perhaps even the plateau. Perhaps the whole country heard it; perhaps the whole continent.

Miana's voice spoke softly.

"The heavens have seen your heresy, and we, guardians of the mortal world, have damned you for your sins." Power appeared in the sky, power of many kinds, all twisted together: godly magic, natural magic, natural forces almost untouched by magic, and more, and it all gathered into many Sparks floating above the three. Ryan looked up, raising a hand, and the clouds flickered, adding their not insignificant power to the growing mass.

To Loi and the other mortals watching, though, there was more to it than that. Beneath the blood bubble, in its shadow, was a circle of light, and she thought she saw writing, meaning, will bound to that circle. When she looked up again, there was a mirror of it in the clouds, and Ryan gestured, and the power that had been gathering swirled excitedly, held waiting for the moment when it would be called.

Miana didn't keep him waiting. "Come forth, divine lightning."

And it did.

From the circle came thirty six swords of light, and behind each sword was a bolt of lightning, and each bolt of lightning struck the shield at the same moment, ripping holes through it, through the necromancers within, through the chunk of land that had been brought up to hold them, and in an instant, each sword had buried itself in the ground beneath.

And then the three gods descended, and each took a sword of the Fallen in hand, and with reverence, whispered a name.

And each turned, and with that sword, delivered a blow that would ring in the hearts of man for ages. The sword vanished, and each picked another sword, whispered another name.

When the name "Doloi" was spoken, Loi felt pure love in her heart, though she understood but poorly; she felt her grandmama's kiss on her forehead, and then she was gone. She didn't... didn't grieve. She didn't need to grieve. She had long ago fallen, and had been waiting for this. And she could wish for no more, and no less.

Loi sunk to her knees and wept. She didn't grieve, but she couldn't stop crying, and she didn't understand why.

When the Fallen were well and truly spent, and the gods vanished as though into dream, Loi found that the clouds had gone, the sun was shining, and there was no touch of... unnatural death on the battlefield. There were dead... and there were still enemies. But most of those enemies surrendered easily, having been betrayed by their allies and spared by the gods themselves. Numbly, live moved on.

Loi found Ulia's body, and once more could not stop herself from crying. She didn't know Ulia that well, and certainly didn't love her at all, but something about this moment made her feel like it was all such a waste. Not only Ulia, not only their own people, but the battle and the war. So much could have been different.

She picked up Ulia's body and moved it to stay with the rest of their fallen soldiers. They would be many hours separating the dead of the two sides. The time after a battle, that was always the same: wounds, bodies, hands and clothes stained in blood.

The battle itself had been one of a kind, like a story out of tale and myth or even pure fantasy, but this part was too familiar, too real. In a way, she wished that the two would change places, and that gods would feel real and the death vanish like a dream. But as she set Ulia down and gently closed her eyes, in spite of the strange feelings running through her, Loi knew. It was always like this.

Would always be.