God of Eyes

When next Miana sought me out, I was actually looking around a bare-bones layout of my Temple building. There were no windows and no roof, and only a few placeholder benches, but the walls were up--keeping with Alanna's suggestion, the final version had windows on all sides, with a raised dais in the center for preaching. The mages had to take a breather after that--they had been working very hard--and so I found myself standing alone in the center of the building, envisioning more benches around me, full of people. And in my mind, those people were probably tempted to look around or out the window instead of at me... which was a real possibility. I couldn't help sighing as I considered that.

It was foolish, perhaps. Maybe I really should have done something more staid and common. But Alanna was right about one thing; I didn't want people closing their eyes to the world and only focusing on my gifts. And... what limited experience I had with churches suggested that people who didn't want to be there would simply leave. Either the place meant something to them--either I meant something to them, or not.

Miana found me there, and honestly surprised me, as I was kind of lost in my thoughts. But when I recognized her presence, she was sitting on a bench, one positioned to show a view diagonally out over the cliff. With no windows, there was a nice breeze blowing through, and it caught her hair a bit.

"Going to give me a sermon?" Somehow, Miana's smile was sheepish, and I wondered what had transpired to bring her back down. She'd been on edge since... well, since this had all started, and much of that was entirely understandable. Not... not all of it, though. My shoulder throbbed with that thought.

As for a sermon...

I just shrugged. I didn't really have a plan. "Perspective," I said as a starter, but I just let the word hang there for a moment, watching her as she watched me.

"Perspective," I repeated. "Is more than just how much you can see. The choices that brought us to where we are today, the footsteps in the sand behind us, that is a part of our perspective, not merely the scene ahead. Perspective is the past and the future that only you know--not just what was and what will be, but what could have been and what could still be. Because more than anyone else," I pointed to Miana, as though singling her out of a crowd, "you and you alone know what you are capable of, you and you alone know your failures and your successes, your skills and your flaws. You know why you made the choices you did, why your failures weren't disasters and why you can't simply coast on your successes. You watched your whole life pass from the beginning to this day."

"Nobody else can see what you've seen, or make you unsee it. Not even the God of Eyes." I smiled, as though that were a joke, and put my arms behind me to stop my hands from fidgeting. "That is your perspective. That is your power. Because power is not the sword in your hand; power belongs to the person who has seen success and failure and knows how to bring about one or the other."

"Perspective is experience. It is learning, growing, changing, becoming. Perspective is how you answer life's problems. And sometimes--all too often, really--we simply don't have enough of it, ourselves. Sometimes you have to borrow perspective from someone else. Not only the gods--borrow it from elders, from friends, from passers-by, even sometimes from the most unlikely of people as they cross your path. Not merely what they've seen with their Eyes, but what they have seen, known, and experienced their whole life." I smirked and tilted my head. "Though yes, the gods are there to offer perspective, too. A different view of the world to help you through your hard times."

I let there be a brief pause there, then in a less preachy voice, asked, "Is that too much? Too little?"

"I feel like you ended up repeating yourself by the end of it." Miana made a face. "You also don't say what you can do for people aside from offering perspective."

My lips twisted. That's what I got for not having a plan. "How about you? How are you doing?"

Miana turned her head away, and I thought I saw her stress level jump through the roof. "I... talked with the others. They should be here in half a day, but... they kind of... agreed that I'm not ready."

I could only look at her with pity. I knew I wasn't ready, not for all of this, but I didn't have existing worshipers to look after--just a group that I might be able to save, or I might not. Miana was trying to stop her world from collapsing. My shoulder twitched to remind me not to forgive quite that easily, but... "We have to focus on what you can do."

Miana shook her head. "No," she said. "I think we have to focus on what I can't."

I raised my eyes and waited.

"They asked me to do the one thing that they can't--to stop the necromancers. They said they'll deal with the enemy army, which... maybe they can, maybe they can't. But me... us, I guess. We have to do just that one thing."

"Two novice gods trying to do what an elder god couldn't," I said, nodding.

"Three." Miana pursed her lips. "Alanna is coming here, too. She said as much, didn't she?"

"I don't think she'll be here in time to help." The words felt stupid as they came out of my mouth. Of course she didn't have to be here to help. If anything, being here might put her in danger. I shook my head. "I suppose if we're listing phantom assets, there are Erika and the Djinn, but I'm not sure either of them will be willing to step in."

"The djinn definitely will not," said Miana, with some conviction. "Erika has said she cannot, and I trust that she means that she will not, at the very least."

I hummed in return. "Still, I suppose we could ask their perspective."

"If we are only looking for advice, we could ask the council of elder gods as well," pointed out Miana. "Though they did not seem eager to speak to me."

"I suspect they won't be," I said simply. "But... we could try. Perhaps we start with Alanna, though. Do you want to talk to her together, or...?"

Miana gave me a look that was hard to decipher, and simply said, "Yes."

This time when Miana saw Lucile's shadow pop up, she forced herself to be a little less tongue-tied. In her early life, Miana had visited temples to the Goddess of Light, but the preachers who spoke about the Goddess always seemed to be discussing adult things--recovering from the terrible burdens of life, searching out new knowledge, and trying to become better people than you used to be. It had a strange impact on a child, sensing that adult life was going to be very heavy indeed, but it did nothing to bring her into the Church of Alanna.

When Lucile had shown up in Ryan's Godly Domain, it had been something of a shock. Miana had met Lucile, once; she seemed an insignificant side character in the Temple, a quiet if polite and well-meaning woman who always seemed distant. To know that she was the goddess was something of a shock; not any of the preachers, but someone keen to simply sit by and let things be. While certainly Alanna might have other bodies, as did both of the other gods she knew, there was something strange about not being at the center of her own religion.

Still, this time Miana had other questions, and one in particular she raised as soon as it seemed like Lucile and Ryan had finished exchanging pleasantries.

"How do I find out what my other... godly powers, are?"

Lucile's shadow turned to her and cocked her head with what seemed like surprise. "I wasn't aware that the Goddess of Blades had other domains. I suppose she might, but..."

"The book," said Miana. "There were many things about the book that were definitely made by the Goddess, and not someone else. I can sense it, too; there is more to this power than merely blades." Miana let her eyes fall. "But... I am not sure what."

Lucile hummed, and her shadow moved back and forth just a bit. "The power of soulflame is the power to grant wishes, Miana. Unlike magic, you can simply pool enough power in one place to do anything you wish. Gods make things easier on themselves by creating rules to channel power more efficiently, and doing whatever we can to set up magic on a longer term. But, in the grand scheme of things, a Goddess of Blades could use her power to change the color of rabbits if she so wished. It would be a waste of power, but it can be done."

Miana felt her face fall. "So you don't think that I have a second domain?"

"In my lifetime, I've never heard her called anything else. I suppose I recall a history text calling her the Goddess of Justice, back when she was first adopted as the patron goddess of Belma, but that might have been poetic. It certainly wouldn't explain the book."

"Can't you ask your godly power itself?" Ryan offered that suggestion as though it were a perfectly reasonable one, for all that the other two had to stop and stare at him a moment.

"You don't actually try to talk to your power, do you?" Lucile's shadow had a wry concern in her voice.

"No." The tone of Ryan's voice suggested he knew very well what she was asking and was trying to skirt the question on a technicality.

"Ryan..."

"Wishes, intuition, and the other facets of being a god," he said suddenly, not meeting either of their looks. "Those are all signs that the godly power is itself intelligent. Working for us, yes. Devoted and possibly single-minded in that devotion. A part of us, or a part of the Key that we hold--either way, something that was never meant to be complete without a person to be a part of. But that doesn't mean that it isn't intelligent on its own."

Miana felt a creeping feeling work its way across her skin. "It is... alive?"

"No," said Lucile, with a force behind the word meant to sound convincing. "I have worked as a goddess for centuries, and I can tell you that it is not alive. It is not a separate thing, at the very least."

"I don't mean that it's separate," said Ryan, insistently. "Rather, it's like another organ--another heart, another mind. Part of us, and there to be used." He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. "I believe it. I feel it. And that's part of why black flame is so bad, right? If it was merely power--even power taken from souls--how could it possibly be harmful? But there is something insane to it, and that insanity can work its way into our Key, and infect the intelligence that is there."

Miana could only stare with that creeping sensation spreading over body, when suddenly Lucile spoke up. "Ryan," she said suddenly. "Tell me what happened when you remade your Key." Miana's breath caught; that sounded like a reckless... impossible task. How could she suggest he had done such a thing?

Ryan let his breath out. "There was an image," he said. "An image that meant something to me and to my power, a visualization that I used to convey my intentions. The specifics aren't... useful to you. Things from my past, from the other world. But the visualization was used to communicate my intentions to my power. It's something that I myself couldn't do--basically performing surgery on my own mind, or spirit, or godly key, whatever it was."

"What did you do, though?" Lucile's voice was wary; curious, but not eager to hear the story.

"Added... channels." Ryan's face twisted like he was unsatisfied with what he was trying to say. "Dedicated ways for my power to tell me things that it knows, that I should know. If I should be able to see multiple things at once, that's still not something a normal mind can handle. If I, as a god, have senses that a mortal doesn't, I still don't have the facilities to use those senses. But I felt like those things should have been there. There should have been dedicated parts of my mind that exist to listen to godly senses, show them to me, and I should be able to organize them, make use of them, and turn them off when I need to."

Miana immediately thought of her new sense for the Words spoken within people. She'd found it difficult to focus on those words and still focus on life as it was going on around her. A dedicated part of her to understand what people's thoughts and feelings were? That would certainly be the mark of a goddess, and in particular, that would be a tool for making her a specific kind of goddess. She nodded, considering that. Perhaps that was a part of Ryan's apparent unflappability?

"But that makes no sense," said Lucile. "Your senses are already a part of you. Did you just take a shortcut to get used to them faster?"

"Maybe." Ryan shrugged. "But the human mind was never designed to have multiple channels or extra senses in the first place. I know, because I lived one life without magical senses at all, and coming to this world... it wasn't much different. The magical senses I did have felt crowded together with everything else. It felt like they didn't belong, so I fixed it."

"So you fixed it." The deadpan in Lucile's voice was heavy.

"Do you think you could do it again?" Miana's voice carried a hint of shame, because she thought she might have to admit that she was trying to read Ryan's mind, but he simply seemed to be straightforward and honest throughout the whole conversation. "Changing how the Key works, I mean."

"I... I mean, I would need to know exactly what you wanted," said Ryan. "My mental image worked for me, but it wouldn't work for you. It's a part of how my mind is, now, in a way. And I'm not sure whether it was the Key or my mind that I modified, honestly."

Miana wasn't sure what to ask, or what to ask for, but she couldn't help feeling like something there, something on the tip of her tongue, was waiting to be asked. "I need to think about it," she said, retreating back and sitting on the bench.

"Okay, well... Alanna, we do need to ask if you have any advice about the Necromancer..."

Miana tuned out the conversation, trying to figure out what exactly she was missing.