> Two months is too little

> They let him go, they had no sudden healing

> To think that providence would

> Take a child from his mother while she prays is appalling

> -“Held,” Natalie Grant

Huli came to the elemental plane of positive energy for answers, but also for the ability to save her friends, her world. She had become one of the most powerful mortal heroes of her generation. Now, she needed to be more. She needed to ascend mortality.

Ages ago, a man named Eternus had sought his power here at the light well. By taking on the pure soul energy of the well, he became a god, the most powerful of the pantheon. It had started a golden age of cooperation between gods and men.

Those days were long over. With Eternus gone, vanished or sleeping, the lesser deities had begun squabbling like children, and taking their problems out on the mortals below. Huli had come seeking a way to reunite the worlds of gods and men. What she found was the path that Eternus had walked.

With the words of the mysterious four-armed tutor still whispering in her mind, Huli settled down to meditate. She entered into her immersive mindscape, sinking into her own memories, the core of her being. She watched her life unfold before her, a road of memories. Winding, moving, bleeding in some places.

The memory of her mother’s dead body. Her first encounter with Theravauld, the man she would fall in love with. There was the time the baby named Hope had been lost in the fire, and another when the sacred blade was corrupted. Bloodied wounds in the roadmap of her life.

For a time, Huli studied the road of her life, paying special attention to the points where her soul bled in pain, grief or fear. Like blades against the skin, they were sharp reminders of loss and injury. But as she continued to follow the path of her memories, Huli noticed other places where her journey seemed to stumble. Instead of blood, she noticed them as shadows, far more subtle, like comparing deep bruises to the slice of a blade. The first trip to Nordos via ship. The days spent in Astaria. Discovering the protection mindscape. Easily dismissed to a casual observer, they are no less powerful in shaping Huli into who she had become. These were times of fear, worry, anxiety and, in the case of finding the protection mindscape empty, its original occupant destroyed, momentary despair. Times when the shadows inched closer, whispering for Huli to give up, give in. They were the bruises that sapped her strength, and made her question whether it was worth continuing on.

One by one, Huli accepted each of these moments in her life - the bleeds and the bruises. With each one, her soul seemed to glow brighter, purer, as if to say, “This is who I am.”

Eventually, the visions faded, and Huli found herself at the border between the road behind and the road she had yet to walk. There, looming high overhead, was a giant statue. Carved of pure white marble, it showed a matron bleeding from the eyes, holding a lifeless infant.

Puzzled, Huli studied the statue. What could it mean? Was she the woman or the infant? Neither? Both? At first, the woman’s face looked to Huli to be that of her own mother, but after a closer inspection, Huli pulled back, startled. It wasn’t her mother’s face - it was hers. Older, heavier, it was the face of a Huli who had seen much and sacrificed more.

With a gasp, Huli bent over, clutching her stomach. She could feel it, then, what she had missed before. The tiny flicker of life that was growing inside her womb.

Suddenly, with a horrifying sinking feeling, Huli understood. She looked up and met the statue’s gaze, tears running down her own cheeks to match that of the statue’s. Huli was with child, and now she faced a horrible choice. If she continued on her current path, if she stepped into the light, then she might survive, but her child would surely die. "Sweet child," she whispered over a choking sob, and felt her heart break in her chest for the baby she had never had the chance to meet.

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For a long time, Huli lay there, crumpled on the ground, at the foot of the statue. She had been willing to give up anything to protect her people - all mortals - but she hadn't expected this. Couldn't have planned for this. Could she sacrifice an innocent life, her own child, for the power to protect the world? She could almost hear her heart shattering, but even as the pieces cut her up inside, she could not deny the answering question that rang in her mind.

Is one innocent child - her own child - to be valued more than a million other souls? Can I lie to myself and others, say that I am willing to sacrifice anything for the greater good, if I am not willing to give up this? If I am not willing to make this sacrifice?

Squeezing her eyes shut, Huli pressed her hand against her abdomen. "I love you," she whispered. "Even as you join the flame, always know that you are loved."

As she spoke, something inside her soul crystallized. There was the fundamental truth that lay at her very core. It had always been there, a gift from her mother, nurtured and cherished. It was her overwhelming capacity for love, the driving force that had brought her this far, given her the perseverance to continue despite all hardship, because otherwise, all would be lost.

Huli’s soul became as diamond, anchored in her truth. She was strong. She was ready.

Still, Huli took several more deep breaths before letting the mindscape fade away and opening her eyes. Then she pushed to her feet, and stepped into the column of light.

In an instant, Huli was no longer. Her entire being erupted into holy flame and every atom was ripped apart. Where she had been was now simply… light. Her soul ascended towards the center of the pillar, her core almost fully merging with the positive energy. Then, the soul that had been Huli descended into eternity, into the very nova from which all life originated. Through the fall, her soul clung desperately onto the one thing that could hold her together, even as the rest of her identity was torn to glittering shreds.

Love.

In time, the soul found herself jettisoned away from the core of light at incredible speeds, falling back through the hole beneath the column. She shot out of a nearby star, departing from the great ball of fire into the darkness of space. As she flew, Huli regained some of her mind, her personality, her sentience, though her physical form was still just a ball of light, now many times brighter than her soul had been previously. In fact, as she fell through the dark void between stars, her light revealed the dark, shifting masses of the old gods, causing them to stir from their slumber. They reached out with their giant claws and warping tendrils, but pulled back in pain from the searing light of Huli’s soul, and she was quickly past their reach.

When Huli eventually crashed onto a nearby planet, sparks from her eternal essence spilled out around her in a crater the size of a small city. Each spark that fell sprouted into a new form of life and began to grow. All around, a grassy and flowering field emerged from the barren soil of the uninhabited planet. In the center, a giant flower shot up as if reaching toward the stars. The petals of the bud unfolded and in the center lay Huli, reborn.

The old gods raged.

They swim through the empty space to consume this new world of life, desperate to extinguish Huli’s pure essence. They clawed for her, attempting to destroy her before her power could rise and light up the world. But, they were too late. Rising from the petals of the Everblossom, Huli reached her hand toward the nearby star. At her bidding, the star began to crack.

The old gods paused in their advance

Huli was giving birth.

The star erupted, spewing forth holy fire which quickly began to burn the nearest old gods, causing them to recoil in pain. In the next instant, the star exploded, destroying several planets from a nearby solar system.

Anand, The Solar Dragon was born.

His great wings moved through the void burning away the shadows of the old gods until they were reduced to ash. Then, the power of his birth finally depleted, he transformed into an infant and slowly lowered into his mother’s arms, even as the ashes of the old gods rained down upon the newly flourishing planet, feeding the life that would continue to grow there.

And thus, Huli’s infant child became the second being to ever slay an old god.

Holding her son lovingly to her breast, Huli extended her hand over the world she had created and opened it up to the divine, turning it into a star in which she created her new domain.

The world watched in awe as Huli, the Everblossom, goddess of life, love and family, rose to take her place in the heavens.