We didn't make it back to the mountain. We called to check in with Benny, and he gave us the next temple. Yvette knew the order, but since we had other teams showing up, we ended up hitting them out of order. Yvette had given him all the alteration patterns to pass to the other teams, and he was sending out groups of twenty just to be safe, and Bethy made sure each group was armed with a stake and one of her thralls. It was kind of a relief not to have to climb the damned mountain again at least.

Lucky for us, the next temple wasn't actually too far away, and we made our way directly there. It was about a hundred miles, which was nothing in the greater scheme of things. When we arrived at the temple, we went about the same routine as the last time. Callie mapped the place with her shadows, and Bethy was ready to head in to take care of the cats. But to our surprise...there weren't any.

"There's no security at all?" I said skeptically as we stared at the squat building. "Because...why wouldn't there be? It just seems like a stupid sloppy move for someone who was...what? An A-ranker?" Yvette nodded. "Yeah I just don't see how this could be anything but a trap."

She shrugged. "I can see every inch of the place. No traps. No Night Pride. Just an open temple with none of the unnatural dark we've seen in the others."

"And you saw the undead?" I said in disbelief. "Just...sitting there?"

"Yes." She said with consternation. "I know it doesn't make any sense. But she was just sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees. She doesn't look shrivelled like the others we've seen. Whether that's because she was A-rank or some other reason I don't know, but she doesn't look hostile. Just sad."

Yvette nodded. "Satala." She said solemnly. "Suvaya's daughter. She was the youngest of the priests. Perhaps that made a difference? Regardless, as her mother's only child, she was powerful. I do not know why she would allow us to approach, we should proceed with caution."

We all nodded, it made sense to be careful, though we had to go in anyway. Yvette took up the front position, since she was the sturdiest, and we all made our way inside slowly. The inside of the temple felt barren and empty. The long stone halls echoed with the sounds of our passing, and we never let down our guard, but we finished our trip inside soon enough, and found ourselves standing at the door to the same kind of chamber.

In the center of the room was a girl. Small, delicate, with silver hair and bright blue eyes, downcast in sorrow. She was hugging herself, and tears dripped down her cheeks. Based on the dust on her arms and legs she hadn't moved in quite a while. She twitched when we came in, but didn't look up.

"Hello." I said, slowly. I wasn't sure what else to do. We couldn't just attack her. She wasn't offering anyone violence. She just looked sad and small and broken.

She kept staring at the floor, tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto her arms, leaving spots in the dust. "It wasn't supposed to be like this." She said quietly. "We didn't want to hurt anyone. We were kind to our people. Mother wouldn't have wanted this. Not the real her."

I cocked my head. "What do you mean? Suvaya is your mother, right?" She was the one who created this whole ritual."

She let out a short, bitter laugh. "Her children were suffering. Her most loyal. Most faithful. They saw her as a danger, and so they came for her. She couldn't resist them. Not in such numbers. And my brothers and sisters, her flock, they cried out for her as she died. They lost everything. She just wanted to help them, to raise them up, to make something good out of it all. We thought it would only be you. Their heirs. Their descendants."

Her eyes finally came up to stare at us, and they looked haunted. "But our people stayed. They raised families, and became part of this land. The ritual was flawed. The moonlight leaked, and our own began to partake of the poison. So many of them will die. My mother wouldn't want this. But there's nothing left of her. Just a ghost, obsessed with her grand work."

I looked around, at the lack of security. At the lack of cats. "You want us to kill you." I said in realization. "You know we're trying to stop it. You're going to let us do it."

"This is wrong." She snapped. "They don't deserve it. You don't even deserve it. Our time is over, and we should have accepted that. The hate has poisoned them. They're all so angry. It's her anger. It seeped into them. But she protected me. Even as a spirit. She always did love me best." She gave a sad smile.

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"Don't you hate us?" I said sadly. "For what our families did? They killed your mother. Ruined your lives, and for what? Fear? Power?" I felt sick. I'd never stopped to ask if the six killing off the vanished gods was the right thing to do. It was easy to paint myself as the hero, but I'd been ignoring something Zeke had been telling me for months. The universe wasn't nice, and it wasn't fair.

She shook her head. "I'm just tired. The world is so different now. My brothers and sisters are all mad or dead. My mother raised them all from infants, even though they weren't blood, I still loved them like they were. Ralik, who would carry me on his shoulders as a girl so I could pick apples. Dara, who taught me how to braid my hair." Her tears picked up again, and she let out a choked sob.

"No." I said stonily. "This isn't right. I'm not going to kill an innocent person." I turned to Yvette. "Can't you help her? She's willing to come peacefully. Can't you use her life force to fuel the temple and switch the runes without killing her? That might even work better, right?"

The golem looked pensive. "Maybe." She mused aloud. "It would be quite painful, and if we tarried even a moment too long she would die. But it's possible."

I looked at the others. "I want to try at least." I said pleadingly. "She didn't do anything wrong. If she lets us continue altering the ritual...it sounds like after the changes she'll be weakened. She won't be a threat." I looked at her. "Satala, do you want to try? As an F-ranker there's no way the gods would bother with you. You never got strong enough to bother with, they probably don't even remember."

Not that I knew shit about the six, but this whole thing gave me the impression that they didn't really care much about the small stuff. They killed Suvaya and just...left her soul floating around. This whole thing was their fault. They wouldn't come after a former A-ranker who'd lost all her Impact. Zeke could keep an eye on her just in case.

Callie took my hand, nodding in determination. "Please." She asked the silver haired girl. "Let us try? We want to help you. You don't deserve to die alone in a stone room."

She could be lying to us. Could be manipulating us to get us to spare her. Maybe she would snap and attack at any second. I saw Abel ease into position for that, Gabriel taking up a stance on the other side, just in case. But I didn't change my mind. This wasn't right.

The universe might not be fair, it might be brutal and ruthless. The gods might attack other deities because they were potential threats. But Callie and I were heroes. Or we were supposed to be. Just because something was easy didn't make it ok. Treating everyone with suspicion and trying to kill them before they killed me might be smart, but it also sounded sad.

Callie squeezed my hand, shooting me a smile of solidarity. She felt the same way. Gabriel looked approving. Bethy looked a little in awe. Abel looked like he wanted to smack us both, and Mel's mask kept me from seeing her expression.

Satala stared at us. "You ask me to put my life in your hands, though I have already done so. Even then...what do I have to live for? My mother is gone, and you seek to destroy what remains. My brothers and sisters are to be put down like animals, and I cannot even plead on their behalf. My very essence was drained away to fuel the ritual, and I will not recover. I assume I am to be severed from my connections to my old strength?" She aimed that at Yvette.

The golem nodded. "The modifications to the chamber will sever the links. I may have to alter them slightly, but they will do so. You will be greatly weakened by the process, and you will not recover. You may regain your former strength through the same means you acquired it in the first place, through cultivation, but the pieces of your legend thrown away will never return."

Oddly, that seemed to be almost a relief to her. But she still looked undecided. It was Bethy who found a response to give. "Your people are still here." She said. "Not the originals, but their descendants. Some people still worship your mother. Didn't you say you wanted to take care of them?"

Satala might not regain her A-rank abilities, but she WAS still rocking forty Impact and a peak F-rank power level. She could make a difference here, hell, she was the same level as the king was in Ladrigan. Plus her soul was probably WAY stronger. She stared down at the ground for a minute, then nodded. "Very well. We shall attempt the process. Should I die...I suppose that is my fate."

She didn't exactly sound HAPPY about the whole thing, but I'd take what I could get. The thought of murdering a helpless crying person in the middle of a dirty temple made me sick. That was the kind of thing the Cultists would do. Some kind of ritual sacrifice. I prepped myself to apply my healing burst if needed. I really wished we had Jessie here with us.

Despite the terrible situation, and the risk, I found myself smiling under my mask. I'd done a lot of things I didn't really like since I became an Ascendant. This wasn't going to make up for all of it. I wasn't sure how much of it I needed to make up for really, but at the very least, this would be a chance to prove to myself that I could do the right thing sometimes. That just because I accepted what the world demanded from me that I didn't need to bend.

I think that was the trick to being an Ascendant, really. To see the places where conventional wisdom failed and ignore them. I'd spent so much time learning to be more like all the others, learning to accept what I was supposed to do and be a better candidate. Maybe sometimes it had to be ok to say no. To decide to do things different. Maybe it was important to put down my enemies, or to be ruthless when I needed to be.

But even if that would grow my legend, that wasn't the only kind of person I wanted to be. I didn't want to be my dad, terrifying and effective. I wanted to write my own story. And if kindness was something that other people mocked me for, then that could just be one more story everyone told. Either way, it felt pretty damned good to try.