When I finally achieved three adequate shields ten years later, after twenty-five years on the island, I could only stare at the sky.

"Am I done?" I asked the sky. "Is that enough? What do I do?"

I was still locked at about twenty-five-years-old, physically and with not a single memory having faded relative to how things had been at that age. Over the decades, I had come to appreciate how important the fading of memories was to making the passage of time feel real. I no longer had that sensation. Aside from my steadily increasing mana pool and dubious attempts at self-therapy, I woke up every morning in exactly the same state.

I considered my options for a few minutes.

"No," I finally announced.

If Oscanion had used that same attack in, say, a city, I would have needed to protect far more than three people. The people who depended on me called me a goddess.

"Fine, Izena. I'll embrace it, but I despise half-measures, adequate, acceptable. I prefer excessive, spectacular, and extraordinary."

Like you.

"A real goddess would let nobody die," I said aloud, half bitter and half resolved.

Shielding was only one of the white magic disciplines. There's purification, too, which I used regularly. And of course, repair and healing, restoration. There were still levels of damage beyond my ability to restore. A person is only dead if there isn't a white mage strong enough to heal them. I wasn't yet strong enough, in all likelihood nobody ever had been. Not even close. That would change.

"I'll continue improving, for as long as it takes. But I'll take breaks, too. No more continuous torture. Deal?"

I was now convinced that my aging was completely halted. In fact, I probably couldn't stop that anymore. Just like lungs are always at least partially filled with air, it is impossible to empty one's indrawn mana fully. Even when not 'fully inflated' in a mana sense, by this point I still had enough passive mana suffusing me for the halted aging effect. That was a sign of immense power, surely, but nevertheless I was nowhere close to being able to heal a black smudge into a person with even a 'full breath.'

Huh. It had just occurred to me...To be fair, I'd tried very hard to avoid thinking about it, but this was probably the nature of Oscanion's overloaded final attack, wasn't it? He found a way to empty himself completely, but whatever method accomplished that caused him to lose control of his mana flow and self-destruct. How did he do it? How could you fully collapse your own lungs with your own diaphragm?

Meh, it was academic. His magic had a lot of unique oddities, and he was dead.

Back to the issue at hand...In addition to being resolved to continue my regimen, I still didn't want to go back.

"They would know," I whisper-groaned sadly. Someone with my strength would never escape notice by other mages, and it would be obvious at a glance who I must be. What would I even say?

"Hi, how have things been? Did the war go alright? Sorry for leaving without saying anything. Hope nobody died of preventable causes while I was petting birds and swimming in a reef for a few decades. I just wanted some time off after letting Oscanion kill my family," I mocked.

That sounded even worse spoken aloud than it did in my head.

Plus, I liked my peaceful island. Maybe I'd start indulging in gardening, redecorate the place a bit. I'd never had time to do much with the life-guiding arts of white magic during the war, but now I had all the time in the world. I could do something really spectacular if I planned ahead, across generations of trees.

Being frozen in time has its upsides, but I did wish those memories would fade even a little. Too vivid.

----

"As I've said, I, um, I appreciate the, the offer," I answered, frustrated at my own timidity. "But I'm sorry, I must decline. I prefer to...focus on my studies, an-and my healing work."

That last sentence was the truth, but not the whole truth.

"Come on, don't be shy, it's a waste of a pretty smile," the guy in front of me, Anduron Plo, insisted. "What if I got you something really nice. What would you like? And don't hold back, you know I can get anything. I might even make it myself."

As the heir of a wealthy and ancient lineage of blue mages, that might actually be mostly true. The problem was, it would be this tactless idiot giving it to me and expecting things in return. And, the Corzas weren't exactly hurting financially. And, none of us cared for the Plos' politics--they weren't helpers. In fact, political nonsense might be part of his motivation for pursuing a Corza daughter. If so, he had carefully chosen the less intimidating one, that was for sure. That thought peeved me a little.

"Oh, mmmm, maybe something that does as good a fire attack as my sister?" I suggested innocently.

Anduron's face fell, and I savored it. He was not used to this situation. He reached for my wrist while opening his mouth for a retort, but was interrupted when someone in the background lost her battle against her giggles.

"If you wanted to say 'No, never in a million years, not for all the money and artifacts in the world, in fact I will pay you anything to leave me alone, because I strongly dislike you, and I would rather do literally anything else,' you could have just said that." Izena was theatrically mopping up tears of amusement.

"You didn't need to follow," I said after turning towards her, my voice straining as her giggling threatened to become contagious. "My shields are strong enough. And I was trying to be nice."

"And miss the hilarity?! Please, watching your whole bashfully savage routine is my, like, third favorite pastime. They never see it coming. Quiet and timid saint to merciless plausible deniability ego murderer in two sentences!"

A few moments later, she pointed dismissively at Anduron. "And do you see the problem? Even after hearing us saying this, he's still just standing there! If I didn't follow you, I would need to come find you anyway, or you'd miss dinner."

Even after hearing that, he was still just standing there, brain apparently fried. This had clearly not been in the script.

Izena wasn't amused anymore. She finally looked in his direction.

"Little sister, I solved the puzzle. He is awaiting a demonstration of the spell, for reference. How good did you say your shields are now?"

I had been so close to managing to hold in the giggles, too.

----

After a century, I still looked and felt twenty-five, and I could have kept a dozen people safe from Oscanion, but more interestingly, an effect that I had not anticipated appeared.

"I really am glowing. Huh. Thought my halted aging was imperfect, and I was just going senile."

But now it was unmistakable. What made me most certain is that the birds clearly had noticed, and were inspecting me. I think they liked what it did with their iridescent tails. It was a fantastical light show when they clustered around me.

"That...ticklessss," I gasped.

As they often did.

I was now passively radiating the same glow that came from my materialized mana, through my skin. A much softer, fainter light than my raw mana, at least for now, but definitely there nonetheless. It brightened when I drew more deeply.

I would lose my stargazing hobby if this trend continued. At least I had my gardening, swimming, playing with the birds...I would be fine.