As we cruised toward the ship, I looked for evidence of any mage aboard. I saw none, and nothing appeared to be enchanted, either. I asked Dekel if they indeed had neither on their ship.

"We have neither," he confirmed. "Mages have become rarer and rarer. Partly, the bloodlines never recovered from the tyrant's war, but also it is more and more difficult to identify latent mages and provide them training when there are fewer and fewer who can do the identifying. It is a vicious cycle. So, there are no longer any known mages of useful ability. Blue mages survived longest. The last significant one died a hundred years before I was born. He was responsible for maintaining the enchantments at Solenn. With no one left to charge them now, the Guard will eventually fail without a miracle."

He heaved a deep breath of relief and smiled, while staring at the nearing ship.

"But I suppose we've found One."

Though he didn't say "our faith has been rewarded" aloud, his feelings were so clear that he may as well have.

That aside, um, what? Maintaining the enchantments at Solenn? Guard? I didn't like the sound of this. My grip on the bench tightened as I frowned. Anxiety made my skin tingle.

Oscanion had started at Solenn, on the World's End peninsula in the far south, changing from a black mage academic working in the marine research laboratory near the sea to a mass-murderer.

Confirming my fears, Dekel added in a low voice, "I have not shared this with the crew, as they've been terrified enough for one voyage, but I fear that the odd sea monsters we saw may have evaded the Guard at Solenn. Rokesha's fate..." He trailed off. He had been joyful, ecstatic, not a minute before. No longer.

I both feared the answer and didn't wish to be insensitive, but couldn't contain my burning question, "I do not know of this Guard at Solenn. What is its purpose?"

"Of course," the chaplain replied, sitting up straight. "Right. I apologize."

I waved off his apology and motioned for him to continue. He thought for a few moments before speaking.

"Please forgive any holes and inaccuracies in this one's retelling. Many of the details are lost from my memory, if I ever knew them. My study of the history of that period focussed on You and Your Sister, not the period...after."

"I understand. It's alright, I would like to hear whatever you can tell me."

Dekel nodded and began his retelling.

"After Your family defeated Oscanion, the coalition set about restoring order throughout the continent. I don't recall how long this took exactly, or the precise sequence of events. Essentially, it was a large campaign of bandit suppression, combined with an effort to ensure that those who had served Oscanion did not escape retribution."

"Did those who suffered mind domination recover?" I asked. The way that removing the taint only left a husk had bothered me for some time. As the world's most powerful healer, I'd studied it exhaustively without success.

"No, they continued fighting, but I do not know more than that."

I froze, horrified. I had expected 'no, they became vegetative immediately.' But they continued fighting?! Such a simple sentence, with such horrifying implications. I cursed myself for leaving. This was a disaster.

My shields would have faded immediately after I died. Why wouldn't Oscanion's mind domination? Taken at face value and believing that the rules of magic are consistent, this suggested one of two things must be true. I wasn't sure which was worse.

The first possibility was that Oscanion's magic was not actually his magic. He was a front, and the true author of the mind domination spells survived. But who? And if so, how was Oscanion's presence so clearly related to the effectiveness of the mindless troops? Why did spells cast by Oscanion himself have the same sense of rot and decay as mind domination taint?

Alternatively, Oscanion had by some dark art survived. The strongest counterargument to this was that I personally witnessed his utter destruction. He absolutely, assuredly had died. I had seen his body vaporized, felt his mana pool destabilize and explode into nothingness when he overspent on his last spell. If anything he was even more dead than Azenum and Izena, who had merely had their bodies destroyed. Had there been any chance that he had survived in any fashion, any trace of him remaining, I would have chased it to the ends of the world. Literally, back to World's End, if necessary. I would have beaten his memory to death with my sword of healing, healed it so all the orphans of the world could take their turns, then--

Belatedly, I realized that my light was utterly blinding, my mana pool stretched well beyond the point of pain, my teeth cracking and resealing and recracking, eyes oscillating between whiteout and the black of blindness as my mana damaged and healed me in equal measure. Was there any light left over for the rest of the world? I was light itself. If I were any kind but a white mage, this overdraw would have killed me.

It had been many centuries since I had felt consuming wrath.

----

Izena and I arrived at yet another refugee camp that we had volunteered to escort. Oscanion had learned to avoid committing too much to the areas where we were active, but we couldn't be everywhere. The front was large, the defense still fragmented, cities falling one by one.

Izena went to discuss the military situation with the local commanding officers. She would fill me in later. As always, I headed instead to the "Unattended Children Area," where I would make everyone the cleanest they had ever been in their entire lives. The power of clean to make them believe that maybe it really was going to be ok was astonishing to anyone who hadn't been caked in Mama's blood and rotting guts.

Thank you, Izena, for the hug.

There were thirty-one in this particular tent. I was restoring the sixteenth's torn and bloody blouse when the call to arms went out. Under normal circumstances, I should rejoin Izena, but I was the only one here, and leaving my terrified charges under these conditions, them having just begun to open up to me, seemed likely to be traumatizing abandonment. Plus, there were only two volunteers standing guard outside. Izena knew what I was doing, where I was, and would be able to guess why I wasn't rejoining her. On cue, I heard her answer another prayer.

A child behind me whimpered, "Mama...nnnn."

I spun to comfort him--the thunderbolt had been loud--only to be struck speechless. The volunteer guards were standing over him.

"'Mama,' he says," sneered one, and both cackled. "Mama's dead, you little shit! She ain't comin'."

What.

"You...you dare!" I sputtered.

"Heh, she is a pretty one, eh? Don't much see hair like that."

The...audacity. Depravity. How could--To volunteer to guard the children's tent and wait for an attack, just to--, I--, you--

"Awwwww, look! Big sis is upset! Tell ya what, if--"

His taunting cut off abruptly when 32 shields sprang into existence. This many stretched my mana thin, but they had no enchanted weapons. The shields would hold long enough. They needed to.

"Get behind me, children," I cooed, in the sweetest voice I could produce, while materializing mana in my right hand. "Close your eyes and cover your ears. I will tap you when it's safe."

The "guards" began to realize that they had miscalculated when two things happened almost simultaneously. First, a crossbow bolt stopped dead at my shield and sheepishly dropped to the ground. Then, my liquid mana, dripping down-and-right out of my clenched fist like white-hot iron not quite obeying gravity, froze into a blade of light slightly shorter than my arm.

I learned that day that my healy light swords are in fact lethal if I land enough hits.

They were not even close to as good with a sword as Izena.

----

Let it go...Deep breaths...

I relaxed back to a pale, passive glow, and glanced frantically at Dekel, who had averted his eyes. He was alarmed, but unharmed.

No. The tyrant had not disappeared, not escaped, not lingered. He had unmistakably been obliterated, not even his mana escaping its self-induced annihilation, no trace of his existence left behind, only soot and the smell of rot. I alone knew how utterly dead he was. He had died with the Goddess of Vengeance.

I stared at the black smudge on the ground that had been Izena, her smudge somehow even blacker than the other two, as black as her hair, as black as her mana. I loved her hair, and her light-eating, all-disintegrating mana-sword. My sister, dead because--

Oof. Urrrrr. Agggghhhhhh. Oh, this was a bad one.

I'll never really be over this, not completely. 943 years...

You need to let it go. You know it's not even possible to heal a skeleton into a corpse, never mind a smudge into a full person. You've made sure it will never happen again. No one in your presence can die anymore.

I repeated my mantra to myself, before turning back to my conversation.

Dekel had sensed that I was thinking, and paused. Then he'd been nearly blinded. Now he was very concerned. Crap. During that hallucination episode, I imagine that I looked something like a person frozen in wide-eyed terror at the sight of a venomous animal, before getting painfully stung. My glow may have trembled. Not very goddess-like, and immediately following the sudden brilliance caused by overcharging, too.

"That was unexpected, and troubling." I explained. The truth, but not the whole truth. "Please continue."

He still looked concerned.

"It...inspired a memory of my sister."

This satisfied him, and changed concern to sympathy. "Although none as much as You, we all mourn Her."

I really did not like that possibility 1, the real villain was still out there, seemed a near certainty. There was a perpetrator who needed punishing, and I had no Goddess of Justice to keep safe while she did the deed.