Lin smiles and then helps me up off of the floor, she keeps hold of my hand as we head into the bedroom. It turns out that just laying together in front of the fire while reading is even better than I imagined. Enough that Lin actually has to convince me to go to bed, not that she has to try too hard.

Early in the morning, while Lin is still sound asleep, I sneak out of bed and go to the main room. Then I take out the best of the metals that I found on our way here. I take small portions of each of them and then use mana to fuse them together.

The resulting alloy is a naturally glowing silver color with purple flecks in it. I shape the metal into a ring and use the purple flecks to spell out words in the divine language. I immediately feel both Seronia and Krenocia paying attention to what I am doing.

However, I am not worried, I am not doing anything too outrageous, the ring only has a single power. If Lin dies the ring will automatically resurrect her and heal her to full. It will only work once, it can't hold enough divine power for more than that.

Of course, if it is used I can recharge it easily enough, it will just take all of my divine power. It also took all of my power to create it, but the goddesses refill it without me even asking. From that I am guessing that they approve, or at least aren't mad at me.

With that done I move on to working on the castle itself, modifying the enchantments. Thanks to Lin's ideas I have a few more magical defenses to add, but I also need to make changes. I want to add divine protections as well, but I need to make sure and keep them separate.

The last thing I want is the magical and divine enchantments interacting with each other. I am not foolish enough to think that I can make the castle impervious. At most, I would like it to be strong enough that any god attacking it would be delayed.

The best idea I have come up with is to set the divine defenses to trigger if the magical ones are breached. That should keep the chances of the energies affecting each other to the minimum. Once I am done the goddesses refill my divine energy again, but this time I feel a little tired.

It was a lot of work, but I already feel safer, which was the whole point. By the time I am done the sun has already risen, so I head inside to wake up Lin. Once she is awake we have breakfast in bed and after we are done eating I take out the ring.

"Lin, will you marry me?"

Lin says "Yes! Of course I will. I didn't expect you to ask right away, I thought it would take you a while to work up to it."

"I figured you had already waited long enough for me to deal with my various issues."

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Lin says "I can't argue that. What are these purple symbols?"

"That's the divine language."

Lin says "What?! You didn't do anything weird to the ring did you?"

"No. It just has a single ability, nothing crazy."

Lin says "Ash, what's the ability?"

"The ring can resurrect you once."

Lin says "What?! Really? I thought only the high priests of the major gods could resurrect someone?"

"I don't know anything about that. I got the ability to resurrect from the class the goddesses gave me."

Lin says "The goddesses really do love you, don't they?"

"They do, or at least they did. I'm not so sure anymore, I've kind of been upsetting them a lot."

Lin says "Are you doing that on purpose? Are you trying to push them away so that you refusing to become a god doesn't hurt them as much?"

"Um, maybe. I haven't really thought about it."

Lin says "It definitely sounds like something you would do. It is very similar to what you tried to do with me and Myria."

"True. You are probably right, you normally are. I don't ever want to become a god, but if I manage to become a dragon I would consider a relationship with them."

Lin says "Why are you so opposed to becoming a god?"

"Too many rules and you know how I am with following the rules. Having to sit by and watch something happen without being able to interfere would drive me nuts."

Lin says "Yes, I can definitely see you having a problem following a fixed set of rules. But is that really enough to make you give up on that amount of power?"

"That is not the kind of power I want. A dragon can be just as powerful as a god, but the power a dragon has is not dependent on anything else. A god's power is determined by how many followers they have."

Lin says "I guess that's true, but becoming a dragon isn't really an option for anyone but you."

"What about you, do you have an interest in becoming the goddess of magic?"

Lin says "It isn't really possible, but yes, I think I would be interested. If nothing else, it is about time that there was a goddess of magic instead of just gods."

"You might be surprised."

Lin says "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I mean it is not outside the realm of possibility for you to become a goddess. If Seronia and Krenocia want to rebuild their pantheon, then they are going to need to raise up new gods. That might have been impossible for them before, but things are changing."

Lin says "You mean you are changing them."

"I may be responsible for some of it, but not everything."

Lin says "Have you discussed this with Seronia and Krenocia?"

"Not yet, but they are listening and have been since I asked you to marry me. Speaking of, you do realize that it will be a while before the actual wedding, right?"

Lin says "Yes, I know. First you will need to become king of the beastmen. While you are working on that, I plan to work on becoming archmage of the tower."

"Good plan, but I am going to miss you."

Lin says "I will miss you too, but it is only fair that Myria gets some time alone with you as well. Just remember that you are not allowed to add anyone else without Myria and myself approving them."

"I don't plan to add anyone else! In fact, I would prefer it if it was just you and me, but that's already been decided."

Lin says "It has and I wish it was just us as well. However, I like Myria and she deserves to at least have a chance. I know she loves you and I am pretty sure that you like her, if not love her."

"I do like her, a lot more than I used to. For a while she was far too aggressive and pushy. Since she has calmed down and started respecting boundaries, I like her a lot more. I don't know yet if my feelings go beyond that, or if they even can."