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Closing my eyes again, I pitch my inner voice as loud as I can, up toward the sky where I imagine the godlen might be watching.
Kosmel! You once told me you’d be there for me if I knew what I wanted. I’ll only ask for one more thing. Send your power through me again, you and whatever other godlen care whether the realm falls into chaos. Use your divine will to show these people what really matters to the gods—and that it’s not what the murdering scourge sorcerers say.
No voice answers, but a trickle of uncertainty winds through my thoughts that I don’t think is my own. My conviction is holding perfectly steady.
I clench my jaw alongside my answer. I know what it might mean for me. I don’t care as long as we can calm the madness out there. Please. You set me on this journey. I need you now, just once more. Believe me. Believe in me.
It’s been a long time since I heard the overwhelming voice that floods all my senses a moment later. I hear you, my wayward rogue. This isn’t the fate I wanted for you. But maybe I can offer you something better.
Before I can ask what that’s supposed to mean, a torrent of power blares through the center of my body.
It’s not like when I drew magic from the sacrificial accomplices. The boost they offered was a tiny creek compared to this roaring river.
And it shatters straight through me rather than welling up inside.
The divine magic explodes out of me, but not in a hail of fire like the stories of the Great Retribution. Even with my eyes closed, I see the brilliant glow that streams out across and above the platform, rising higher than the towers and the obstacle course, blazing brighter than the unclouded sky.
I hear it. I taste it. I feel it vibrating through my bones.
Symbols form across the expanding glow—the sigils of each of the godlen, flaring into being one after the other until I count all nine. Distantly, I’m aware of the clamor of the crowd dwindling, the gasps of shock and awe.
We need more than this. More.
Show them!
You are so much more than this, Kosmel replies, in a tone that makes me want to sob, and then the glow shifts.
The divine light spreads even farther, rises higher, forming an image of a castle. Figures flit in and out of the doorways and along the road outside it.
They come together and embrace. They share pieces torn off a loaf of bread and gulps from a bottle of wine. They laugh and dance, nobles in fancy trimmings holding hands with urchins in scruffy clothes.
Peace. Happiness. Compassion. Cooperation.
A wave of emotion sweeps over me and out across the crowd. A collective sigh ripples from all around the platform.
Another figure appears, with a gleaming hole lit right in the middle of her. As if there’s a crack in her soul.
As if it’s been riven through.
The other people don’t recoil. They gather around and embrace her too.
The light shines out of her and whirls away the palace into a farmland scene. Children clamber up trees to pick apples while adults offer food and water to the animals. Everything is bright and joyful.
The farmyard glimmers into a ballroom where lovers entangle themselves in intimate clasps. Then a squad of soldiers marching together, bumping fists and cheering each other on. A library where students huddle together to murmur insights from the books they’re reading.
This is what life could be. This is what we should aim for.
Love and friendship and learning. Kindness and consideration.
The gods have spoken.
The energy leaves me all at once. My legs give; my knees smack the floor. Incoherent words sputter from my mouth.
And then I’m not there at all.
I’m floating in a mass of glowing light that shows no sign of the outside world. But it’s warm, so warm, in the coziest possible way, like snuggling in bed under your favorite blanket.
Nine streaks of starker light materialize in a circle around me. Somehow I know where they all are even though some must be behind me.
