Izenakee jolted awake, in the Rokesha Sanctuary.

Esto. One Guard dead. Three city guards dead. All in revivable condition. Assassination attempt, repelled. Kennalaria's parents injured but alive. Getting healing.

The Goddesses hadn't bothered spending the time to track these 'dissidents' down. They weren't causing enough damage to be worth the opportunity cost--better to spend a week helping people who mattered than a week tracking down anathema who caused a fleeting inconvenience once or twice a decade. But now they had chosen to make themselves priority one.

She rose to wake Her Sisters. Menelyn would need to see to the dead.

For the first time in millennia, Empathy turned away from the people who had been waiting to talk to Her, and Paranoia turned Her full attention to a sweep of Esto. The last time She turned Her full attention to anything, a species was exterminated.

These people seemed not to understand or accept just how powerful the Goddesses were. They understood that They were powerful mages, but in the sense that if mortal mages were hills, then the Goddesses were mountains that could be climbed over with a more careful and concerted effort. They needed it to be possible to defeat the Goddesses, so it must be. They didn't understand that if mortal mages were hills, then the Goddesses were stars, just stars that had better things to do than incinerate them. This lack of understanding was a prerequisite for doing what they were doing.

Might they be sloppy today, knowing the Goddesses weren't in Esto, and feeling an illusion of strength after having managed to kill a Guard, even temporarily? They were careful, they definitely knew to avoid the sight of people and normally avoided the sight of anything, but it was so very difficult to avoid the temptation to observe your own 'accomplishment,' and they didn't fully understand what they were up against.

It was just after dawn in Esto. She swapped from bird to bird to rodent to lizard to rodent to bird, looking for anyone visible in Her helpers' vision that wasn't visible to red magic, starting from Twilight's parents' home.

"We need to head to Esto. Twilight's parents were attacked. They're fine. I'm searching for perpetrators."

Izena went to wake Twilight.

The Red Goddess sat down in the same pose depicted in Her statues and went into a trance.

A little later, twenty-year-old Twilight walked in and, without a word, put a hand on Her shoulder and accelerated Her thoughts.

Two long seconds later, Izenakee smiled. The eastern nectar lizard was very famous for its exquisite active camouflage, and tendency to sneak into the buildings of Esto to hide from predators.

One targeted puff of red magic later, and Her targets' blockers were blown out. Dread pulled their memories from their minds.

<See you soon.>

She rose. Judging by their reactions, they did have some understanding of how wholly doomed they were.

"Found some, and I learned enough. We will crush them. First, to Esto, for healing."

Twilight nodded, and jumped everyone to the plaza.

"I will connect you to your parents on the way. They are fine."

----

The Trusted Guard of Esto was gathered in the Temple of the Renewal for a very rare ceremony, and all other Guards were viewing the ceremony via the Red Goddess' transmission of the local Captain's perspective.

Salvation had begun shielding all members of the Guard while awake millennia ago. Knowing that She had awakened safely was a daily source of pride for every Guard worldwide every time their shields reappeared. The conditions for a Guard to fall in the Goddesses' service were rare.

Brother Yengrit had, and now the Salvation Goddess would bless him with the opportunity to do so again, having already seen to the city guards.

Salvation had always resurrected Guards whenever She could, of course, starting with the fallen members of the Solenn Guard during Her Return. After Her performance at the Temple of the Beginning, She had started singing Her resurrections of Guards aloud, privately, a unique honor.

Yengrit lay on a platform of Her Light as She sang and slowly ran Her hands from one end of his body to the other, over the course of a little over half an hour.

When he awakened, She gave him a moment to realize what was happening, then sang slowly and lyrically, to the Guard as a whole.

~~By your efforts We are saaaaafe.~~

~~By your devotionnn, Our blessings carry onnnn.~~

~~Through youuuu, Our Age endures, to e-ter-ni-tyyyyy.~~

~~You are Trusted.~~

They had not actually been keeping the Goddesses safe directly this time, only the parents of Their baby Sister while They were away from Esto, but it was the standard song.

When She finished, Kennalaria spoke.

"I intend to join my Sisters forever, at the earliest opportunity. I will never forget whose dedication defended my parents on my behalf, who watched over me for the entirety of my childhood. Thank you."

Time for a prophesy.

"I will smite the ones responsible."

----

Later that day, the bench of Light was hovering in the mountainous rainforest on the southeastern coast of the mainland.

"Are you sure about this?" Izena asked, although She already knew the answer. "I could obliterate the whole place from here, and be done with it. You have never killed anything before."

"That is because You have made my world so peaceful. I'm not so naive as to think I will serve for countless millennia, bringing You to nightmarish worlds filled with unknown horrors that may have festered for longer than our world has prospered, and be some carefree innocent flower the entire time. I have no intention of becoming some half-measure goddess who lacks the resolve to do the smiting part of the job. These anathema tried to kill me when I was five, and then went after my parents because You and I have proven too difficult to touch. If not now, then when will I take this step? This is just one more training exercise. And, I want them to know how much of an ignorant, fatal mistake they've made, who exactly they so aggressively picked a fight with."

Izena nodded. "I don't see a problem if you are resolved. Are You two alright with this? Just watching?"

"Yes," Menelyn said. "She's right. There aren't many opportunities to get this experience. This too is part of the role. She won't be under any danger with Us present."

"We will watch unless We're needed," Izenakee agreed. "Put on a show. Make sure to remind them Who won in this world."

Without another word, Twilight jumped everyone into the no-longer-secret underground facility. Keekee and Twilight had already confirmed that the defenders were fortified in a large garage with mounted enchanted weapons trained on what they believed to be the only way in from outside. They seemed to be aware that if Justice walked through that door, they would be in trouble, but completely unaware that Justice's primary limitation on how far away She could be when obliterating them was Her desire to avoid ecological damage.

And, they had disregarded Twilight's ability to just, go around.

<Get ready. She is in the mood to monologue,> Izenakee warned.

Izena had been waiting fifteen years to hear those words. She blinked Her eyes and popped Her ears a few times to make sure the memory would be recorded as clearly as possible. It had been so long since She had been able to watch Menelyn roast an idiot from a different body, and these next few minutes might need to sate Her third favorite hobby for millennia.

They had appeared in a surprisingly well-lit and modern observation room, overlooking the garage from behind the defenders. For how middle-of-nowhere this place was, it was obviously well-funded, as Izenakee had gathered from Her investigations. Their funding originated from Renewal-era crime syndicates that had gone dormant and grown their assets quasi-legally, after unifying in opposition to their common enemy. Their present-day membership bore little resemblance to how it had started. They had an eclectic mix of reasons for being violently unhappy with utopia.

Twilight checked that it would be safe to do, then jumped to a light fixture hanging high from the ceiling in the center of the assembly area, well above their established fields of fire. She hoped that their collective shock, mixed with relief at seeing only her, mixed with the novelty factor, would get her some time to speak.

Some began speaking.

"Oh look, their pet--"

"If it isn't the 'little sister'--"

"Hi there pretty thing--"

"Wondergirl came all alone, did she--"

"No shield today, I see--"

And so on. Twilight had already heard enough.

“Please shut up. The resentful whining that each of you so badly wants me to hear for some reason is so pathetically predictable that I just foresaw way more of it than I can tolerate."

She began pointing at each of those who had nearly spoken, in turn, as she spoke instead.

"You couldn't be bothered to study in school, are upset at society for valuing skills gained through education, and think attacking my Sisters is the best way to get back at everyone for that. Frankly, a distaste for reading is a prerequisite to be here, so I expect some version of this origin story is pretty common."

"W-witch--"

"We prefer the term 'mage.'"

Then she moved on to the next.

"No one would trust you with the positions of authority that you so, so badly wanted because, I mean, look." She swung her hands in a circle. "You're the kind of person who would join a terrorist organization, in our society. Good job! You're really showing everyone what they're missing!"

----

Back in the observation room, Izena was growing frustrated.

"Little Sister, Your tears of motherly pride are blocking My view," She hissed. "Stop! This is important. You are ruining the memory."

"I can't hellllp it."

"Aghhhh."

----

Twilight was still going. Thankfully, her audience's shock was keeping them quiet and attentive for now.

"You...Gross. The fact that you were actually going to say that...Truly a modern romantic. I'll get back to you in a minute."

Then the next.

"You don’t like that my Sisters' Helpers called your gouging exploitative and capped your prices. In order to register your disagreement with Their sense of business ethics, you have apparently decided to try out terrorism."

And the next.

"You're a conspiracy theorist who thinks the Goddess of Love is mind controlling the world to further Her dastardly plans to, uh, make everyone happy or something, I guess? But somehow not you?"

One more, to get it out of her system.

"You desperately want immortality so you can...keep being anathema forever, I guess, and think it’s unfair that the Goddesses don't give it out on demand. If you can't have it, time for a temper tantrum."

She shook her head, and put her hands on her hips.

"Anyway, blah blah blah, it just keeps going. The Creed does not condemn you for being dissatisfied. You are allowed to dislike the society that my Sisters have raised from the ashes of the old one, even though everyone else loves it. That is not why I am here. It is the part where you turn to violence, your feeble attempt at ruining the society that everyone but you enjoys, that crosses an unforgivable boundary, and earned you my contempt. And that was before you tried to kill me, when I was five."

She sighed.

“So many of you are so proud of what you feel you've 'accomplished,' petty things like making Love fall over, but you are just so clueless. While you are all sitting here stewing in this resentment and cackling your self-congratulations, my Sisters are too busy making the world a better place, keeping it one, to deal with you. It's not that you're very powerful or clever or devious and They are unable to crush you. No. You have lingered for this long because you're so impotent, so irrelevant, that you were never worth Their time, not even worth mine, time that would be better spent on people who deserve it. But now you've made it personal, and here I am. So, here's the deal. You believe that might makes right? That violence is the proper path? That the correct way to assert your ideals, to shape the world into your vision of what it should be, is to destroy me and my Sisters, and what They value?”

She raised her arms to the side in challenge.

“Fine, let's see it then. Here I am! The only thing keeping me from burning out like an over-bright star is my Sisters' omnipotent love. I cannot break all of your minds with a thought, vaporize your entire facility with a waggle of my finger, or make myself invulnerable. I am the weakest, incomparably the weakest."

She jumped behind the member of her audience that she had found most contemptible, touched him reluctantly with a single finger, and jumped into the sky.

"Not fun when I force you to do things you don't want to do, is it? Think about that on the way down."

Then, she jumped back to the light she had been standing on, to complete her challenge.

"All I am is everywhere. I don't need my foresight to know that even that is too much for the likes of you.”