Pallas wasn't sure what hurt more - her head or the bizarre feeling of emptiness in her body. She felt like something important was missing. It was as though something she had taken for granted since her incarnation was suddenly gone, but she couldn't put her finger on what. After a few moments of mentally assessing herself, testing her limbs to ensure she was intact, she opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back in her bed at the inn, based on the familiar surroundings. The same old ceiling. The same old window. The same old quilt. The same old Amelinne in the chair at the table staring absent-mindedly out the window. Or not?

She opened her mouth to ask a question, but her throat was hoarse and dry and only a whisper of a sound escaped her lips. After several attempts, she managed to painfully squeak out a single word, "What?"

Amelinne's head darted toward Pallas in surprise and she was on her feet in less then a second, rushing to the bedside to fill a small cup from a pitcher on the bedside stand. "Don't move too much, Pallas! You've been in bed for a couple days, now."

Pallas accepted the drink with a frown, taking a few careful sips to wet her throat enough to speak more. "All I remember is Berna laying her hand on my head. The rest is... fuzzy," she managed despite the feeling of sand in her voice box. "My head hurts so much."

Sitting carefuly on the side of the bed, Amelinne rested a hand upon Pallas's leg. "During the Blessing of Lun, you screamed. You just kept screaming. You wouldn't stop. It was like your lungs wouldn't run out of air. When you were done, you just went limp and fell on the ground. We thought you were dead, but you were still breathing and your heart was beating. But it was so slow. It's like you were barely there." Amelinne's voice cracked with emotion as she spoke, her fear evident in her tone. "I was the first one to approach you after you fell. Everyone else was too scared."

After a moment of silence, Pallas nodded. "After?" she managed to croak out before taking a longer drink of the water in her cup.

"Berna ran away as though she were hurt or scared. She just turned and ran into the Church. She never stopped to check on you or anything," Amelinne said with some confusion. "I don't understand what happened." She looked at Pallas and seemed to be fighting back tears. "Pallas, what happened?"

"I don't really remember," Pallas said, testing her voice. She took another drink of water. "Berna tried to use magic on me. Not a blessing, something else. I resisted it." She was suddenly very interested in the way the water swished around in her cup. "I feel wrong."

Amelinne nodded and brought the small mirror Pallas had been gifted over to the bed so that Pallas could see herself. She looked rough. Her skin looked a bit anemic and sickly and her eyes were sunken and dark with red rimming them. Her cracked, pale, parched lips were looked more at home on a scarecrow than a human. Her hair hung limp and lifeless, as though the luster had been ripped away. Pallas frowned at herself.

"How long have I..." Pallas began, coughing at the end and unable to finish her sentence.

With a sigh, Amelinne set the mirror aside. "Since it happened. When you fell, it was as if your vitality had been drained away. It's why I thought you were dead." She ran her fingers down the side of Pallas's face. "Do you have any idea what happened?"

 

"I'm so sorry. You're going to be alone for a while."

 

Pallas put a hand to her head and winced. "I... I might?" She took a tentative breath. "Can you bring me a rock or chunk of wood or something?"

Amelinne gave Pallas a confused look. "I-I suppose so?" She stood and crossed the room to the door. "I'll be right back, just a moment," she said quietly as she slipped out and closed the door behind her.

Pallas scrambled for the mirror as soon as Amelinne was out the door. "Athena? Mother? Are you there?" There was no response. "Mother? Please, talk to me!" But all she saw was her own reflection looking back at her in a panic.

There was a gentle knocking at the door and Amelinne walked in with a fist-sized stone in her hand. Pallas did what she could to compose herself as Amelinne approached her and handed her the stone.

"If I'm wrong, this will be messy. If I'm right, you won't notice that anything's wrong," Pallas said quietly.

"What do you mean?" Amelinne asked dubiously.

Pallas sighed. "I'm... not like you. I'm not like most people. I wasn't born in this body."

"That doesn't make much sense," Amelinne replied with an awkward laugh. "You can't just... be in a body you weren't born into! That's silly talk!" she continued with a nervous waver in her voice.

There was something in her tone that made Pallas question how much Amelinne had actually noticed. Certainly, there were bits and pieces of her own behavior that didn't add up. Pallas had to admit, she was a terrible liar. Instead of asking about it, she focused on the stone in her hand. It was smaller than the one Eber had given her to test her strength, but seemed more solid. Probably because it was an actual rock and not a chunk of petrified wood. She gave it a test squeeze, not expecting anything out of the ordinary. The somewhat jagged, grainy surface of the stone dug into her skin, but failed to yield. She concentrated and squeezed the rock again, this time focusing on trying to powder it as she had done before. Instead, her hand just hurt horribly.

"Amelinne?" Pallas said, anxiety rising in her voice. "Can you fetch Eber for me, please?"

The taller girl frowned, uncertain how their employer factored into this. "Okay, but he's minding the till so he won't be able to spare much time." She stood again and rushed out, this time leaving the door open as she left.

Pallas continued to squeeze the rock for all she was worth, the pain from doing so changing to a sort of numbness as a tiny trickle of blood rand down her hand. It was her blood. The first time she had seen it since she was reborn.

It felt like only the span of a couple breaths had gone by before Eber appeared in the doorway, his face solemn and his bearing measured as he approached. Pallas could see in his eyes that he knew something was off about her. "Amelinne is keepin' an eye on things downstairs for me. So we can talk plainly, lass," he stated in a quiet tone as he closed the door behind him. "Ye want to know where yer power's gone, eh?"

The elderly man made his way slowly to the chair by the window and sat down, motioning for Pallas to join him at the table. She nodded and slid out of the bed, noting somewhat distantly that someone had changed her from Mallory's custom outfit into the nightgown she had worn at the Tirtha home. It felt like there was resistance the entire way, as though she were pushing through an ocean of pudding to get to the chair opposite Eber. When she finally sat down, she was breathing heavily.

"Let me see that rock, Pallas. Yer hurtin' yerself, and ye'll do none of us a lick of good in that state," Eber commanded firmly but gently.

She did as she was told, dropping the stone into Eber's grizzled and gnarled hands. She could see spots of blood here and there on some of the sharper points where she had squeezed so tightly that it had pierced her palm at several points. A glance at her hand confirmed there was some bruises already forming around the holes she had made by trying to crush the stone.

"Ye're different, ye know? Not like the folk in the Church. They come by their power by study and training and... darker means. But ye? Ye're born to it. It's in yer blood. Ye're not like regular folk," Eber said has he studied the rock carefully. "But ye don't know how to cultivate it. Ye don't know how to grow it." He set the stone firmly down on the table and looked Pallas in the eyes. "Ye used up all yer magic and almost all yer life when ye pulled that stunt at the festival."

Pallas leaned against the wall, suddenly feeling much more exhausted than the simple bit of movement she had done could truly account for. "I still don't know what happened. Not really. I know that Second Priestess Berna tried to... do... something to me? Something that would have messed with my head. Changed me, somehow."

"Aye. 'Swhat she always does when she meets a promising new candidate for the Church," Eber replied heavily. "On the day of the full moon, when her strength is at its peak, she can alter a person's mind, change their memories. She can make 'em who she wants 'em to be." He took a deep breath and looked out the window. "She took my sweet Carin for the Church. Now Carin's one of the Sisters of Listern, a stranger to me. Devoted to worship and prayer but empty of what made her my love."

Pallas frowned. "How can she do that? How does she have the power to do that? Why doesn't anyone stop her?" For all her fatigue, hearing about such a gross abuse of power made Pallas truly angry and that anger gave her body energy she didn't know she still possessed.

Eber laughed sadly. "She's Second Priestess! There be only a couple of folks higher than her in the Church of Listern! She has the same power as an Admiral in the Paladins of Tyonon." As he turned to face Pallas again, his somber look had been replaced by a mask of neutrality. Gone was any trace of emotion. "She's not just strong politically. She's strong magically. She's been given unnatural long life and power beyond what she was meant. I can see it, Pallas. Plain as you can. I can see it in her skin."

The tone of Eber's voice had changed, and his characteristic accent was fading. He was sitting straighter and his features seemes more vital, somehow.

"Lass, I left the village to become a Paladin some forty years ago. I was a fool, barely out of my teens, and my father ran the Inn. I showed promise. I could use some spells and I was good with a sword. Berna was Second Priestess even then, though a fair sight younger at the time. I wanted to get away from Rivergarde. To put my shattered heart out of mind. Berna had just taken Carin from me and I felt like I didn't have anything to keep me here. So I headed to Erimere, joined the Paladins. Worst mistake I ever made.

"Y'see, the Church has a system to reward loyalty and diligence. Those of higher rank in the Church can take the magic from one person and inject it into another. I don't know where they learned such a horrid thing, but that was how they created their hierarchy. Failures and dissidents were punished by having their power stolen from them. Successes and sycophants were rewarded by being gifted power that was not theirs. It created monsters. Monsters of political and magical power that couldn't be opposed. And for ten years, I was part of that system. Made it to Captain after my enlistment, schooling, and training. I didn't understand back then how my 'promotions' came at the cost of other folks.

"Was ordered to take my company to a border village where 'heretics' were worshipping 'false gods.' I had 120 men under my command. Armed men trained in magic and warfare. When we arrived, it was a village smaller than Rivergarde. Probably only thirty or forty able-bodied men, none of them able to wield anything more dangerous than a pitchfork or a sickle. They had a few magicians, but the only magic they knew was for curing ills and raising crops.

"We had our orders. It was a slaughter. Every man, woman, and child was murdered and put to the torch. Not a one was spared. After all, we couldn't risk these heretics spreading their false religion. But as my company combed the village to look for valuables to bring back to Erimere as the 'spoils of war,' I wandered into their temple. There were no gods. No idols. No signs of any sort of worship. It was just a place where healing was performed and where folks came to marry. It was a community house to foster the well-being of the village. I found their records. Stories of living in exile, running from the missionaries of the Twin Gods. Stories that went back farther than our Church's teachings. Detailed records of marriages and births and deaths going back for centuries.

"And then I realized what we had done. Why we had done it. This wasn't to prevent a threat to the sanctity of the Church, this was to exterminate the rats that got away. Lass, I commanded the murder of helpless village folk just like the ones here in my hometown for no other reason than that they didn't want to convert to our ways. It made me sick. It shook me. I petitioned an audience with my commanding officer. It... didn't go well."

Eber deflated into himself, seeming somehow older than before. The intelligent fire in his eyes had dimmed and his face bore the expression of someone who had seen hell first-hand. "They stripped me of my rank. They stripped me of my power. I was decommissioned and sent home dishonorably. Berna knew. She knew all about everything I had seen, everything I had done. She's been here these last 30-some years, watching me like a hawk. Waiting to see if I would slip-up and show signs of heresy."

"I thought you two were friends?" Pallas asked hesitantly. "I didn't know anything like this had happened."

"Oh, I had to play nice. She knew I was unhappy, but I'd never show it. Somehow, m'life's goal became doing well to spite 'er. When she came in with ye, I could tell ye weren't normal. She was blind to it, her eyes clouded by 'er own power. But I could see. Even if they took all my magic, I could still *see*." Eber smiled his first genuine smile since he'd stepped into Pallas's room.

"Ye, m'lass, are somethin' more 'n the rest of us. Ye have the mark of divinity on ye. It's dull, now. Can barely see it, but it's still there. When ye snapped the trap on Berna, it must've used up all ye had at the time," Eber continued, his accent seeming to come back in even thicker than before. He licked his lips and leaned in close. "Word is, ye undid some of Berna's vanity magic on top o' stoppin' her spellwork on ye. She's scared of ye."

Pallas laughed drily. "She doesn't have anything to be scared of, right now. Look at me. I'm a shadow of what I was the day I walked in here!"

Eber tossed the rock back to Pallas. "Divinity's different than the magic the rest of us 'ave," he said with a lop-sided grin. "Folks that's divine? They get stronger like the rest of us, with trainin' and learnin'. But they also get stronger with faith an' prayer." He stood up and walked toward the door. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" Pallas asked.

Eber chuckled. "To fetch an ingredient for an experiment." And with that, he was out the door.

Moments later, he returned with Amelinne in tow and they both walked into the small room. It was feeling a little crowded, but Pallas didn't mind the company with how she felt.

"Amelinne, m'dear! What would ye say if I told ye that Pallas here was strong enough to crush stones?" Eber began grandly, as though ringleading a circus.

Amelinne regarded Pallas's tiny body thoughtfully and replied, "I'd say you were full of it."

It seemed as though that was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Pallas, lass, ye know ye've done it before. I fully believe ye can do it again. Give that rock a squeeze and see what happens," Eber said with a toothy smile.

Pallas rolled the rock around in her hand. She had done it before. It wasn't a fluke. She knew she was capable of being much stronger than other people. She just felt so drained. But that was that and this was this. Smiling uncertainly, she clamped her fingers down on the stone and gave it a gentle squeeze. At first, nothing happened. She felt the dig of the edges into her soft hand and worried a bit about what would happen to the skin. But thinking back on Eber's story and what Berna had attempted and what Athena had done to protect her, she grit her teeth and thought about pulverizing the rock.

CRACK

The stone had broken into several smaller chunks, falling from her hand onto the table. It was nowhere near the disintigration she had caused with the petrified wood, but it was dramatic nonetheless. Eber laughed and clapped while Amelinne gasped in surprise.

"Knew ye could do it, lass!" Eber exclaimed as he began laughing. "And I think even Amelinne suspected ye could!"

"But how? What was the difference?" Pallas asked as she examined the chunks of stone lying on the table. "Why couldn't I do it before?"

Eber grinned slyly. "Divinity. Divinity is stronger with faith. The more people as believe in ye, the stronger ye'll be. Ye used up yer divine energy to fight off Berna!"

"What do you mean by 'fight off?' Was Berna trying to do something bad to Pallas?" Amelinne asked incredulously.

"Ah'll let Pallas fill ye in on the details. But suffice it ta say, Old Man Eber's not the only one who believes in the girl, eh, Amelinne?" Eber hobbled his way toward the door. "There's a few of us in this town who've seen ye and trust ye, Pallas. But who do ye trust in? Think on that, lass." He made his way out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

Amelinne wandered over to the table near Pallas and picked up a couple of the rock fragments, examining them in wonder. "I've seen you do things that defy my understanding. Like at the Tailor when I tried to pull you and it was as if you were rooted in place. Sometimes you move too quickly for me to make sense of it. But this... is truly amazing."

She set the fragments back down on the table and lifted Pallas's chin up to face her. "Some of your color has come back. You look a bit more yourself. Not a lot, but enough to notice." Amelinne's smile reflected her last statement - not a lot, but enough to notice. "So what did Berna try to do to you, little sister?"

Pallas drained her water and explained what she and Eber had discussed, how the Church could mold or erase people as they saw fit. How Berna had tried to do the same to her and she had rejected it. When she had finished, she stopped to assess Amelinne's reaction.

"That... arrogant wretch!" the other girl snapped, slamming her fist on the table, causing the broken stone to bounce around like dice. "I knew she always acted so sanctimonious and snooty, but this is just ridiculous!"

"You... believe me?" Pallas asked hesitantly. "I mean, I barely believe me and I'm living it."

"The only thing I'm curious about is how you... got reborn? How did you die? Who brought you here?" Amelinne's barrage of questions was a bit overwhelming for Pallas and the latter wasn't sure how much she wanted to reveal. "I mean, it's a whole other world, right? How different is it there?"

Pallas waved her off for now. "That's a much longer discussion for another time. I think, for now, I need to take care of myself a bit. Some food, maybe a bath? I feel gross," she said, picking at her nightgown. "I think I was sweating a lot."

Amelinne frowned, looking at her younger friend in distress. "Well, food shouldn't be a problem. I can just run down to the kitchen to grab you something. The issue is the bath. Right now, people are a little ... confused by you. I mean, it's not every day that a girl screams during a blessing and a Priestess runs and hides for days on end. Let's take care of dinner first and we'll discuss the bath afterward, okay?"

With a dull nod, Pallas flopped over the table. "Thank you so much, Ami. I don't know how I can ever repay you for all the kindness you've shown me." Her eyes began to well up with tears as she thought back over the past couple weeks. People truly had been very kind to her, she thought to herself. Amelinne lay a hand reassuringly on on Pallas's shoulder as she stepped from the table out the door.

On her own again, Pallas began to cry in earnest. It was not a self-pitying sob or the weeping of depression. It was just a genuine cry to relieve all the pressure and stress of... everything. It felt good to let it all out. All the anxiety, all the fear, all the confusion.

She was just done bawling when Amelinne returned with an overflowing platter of food. It had slices of meat, diced vegetables, berries and chopped fruit and a large hunk of bread slathered with butter. In her other hand was a tankard filled with chilled milk. Pallas's stomach rumbled in response and she wiped her face in embarrassment. "Sorry, things have been a bit overwhelming," Pallas admitted as Amelinne lay the platter down on the table in front of her, shoving the rock fragments aside with the tankard.

"I can't pretend I understand what you're going through, Pallas. You have been a maelstrom of chaos since you first arrived here. Everything about you defies expectations. I think that's what makes you so interesting to me." Amelinne took the seat across from Pallas and smiled. "You've been nothing but helpful and genuine with everyone you've met but it seems like you're so out of place that you're just sorta breaking things everywhere you go!"

Pallas sniffled loudly, her nose overstuffed after her crying session, and made an attempt at laughing. "I guess that's what happens when you just sort of appear in a new world with memories of another life." She used her hands to snipe some of the fruit from the plate and pop it in her mouth with an impish grin. "Maybe I'm supposed to break a few things while I'm here?"

Amelinne reached across the table to wipe some of the uck from Pallas's eyes with her thumb. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Believe in me?" Pallas asked as she grabbed the bread from the plate. "If Eber is right, the more people that believe in me, the stronger I can be." She took a large bite of the bread and chewed thoughtfully for a couple moments before drinking some milk to wash it down. "I'm going to need to get a lot stronger if I want to be the change I want to see."

"And what kind of change is that?" Amelinne asked curiously as she leaned forward and propped her chin up with her arms on the table.

Pallas smiled as she picked up a piece of meat with a fork and brought it up to her mouth. "I'm going to give Berna something to really fear."

---

After she had eaten and reassured Amelinne that she would be fine for the evening, Pallas arranged the belongings in her room to feel more like home instead of a hotel room. As she gently brushed her hair, she studied her reflection in the mirror, unaccustomed to being alone with this face. As she continued to care for herself, she began to pray.

"Goddess Athena, patron of Athens, ruler of wisdom and war," she intoned, the familiarity of the prayer making it easy to repeat. "Please watch over me as I act out my will and do what I can to help the people of this world you've brought me to. Please gather your strength as I pray to you and offer unto you a measure of my own." Her voice began to tremble with emotion. "Please grant me the wisdom and the insight to endure this feeling of separation from my family and friends on Earth."

"And please... talk to me again soon, Mother."