"So," Menelyn began. "Even if your copies are identical, they will not halt your aging to the same degree as My spells would. In order to freeze Izenakee and Kennalaria perfectly, every spell I have ever cast has been slightly different, to treat the exact damage and degeneration that occurred in the last half-day, in every tissue. The tunic does not have that adaptability. So, any wearer of even the original tunic would still age slightly. If the copies are slightly inferior, the performance will be worse."

"Do You know what the aging rate will be?" Kennalaria asked.

Kennalaria had clearly decided that She wanted Suri to be Her best friend for the rest of eternity. Menelyn completely understood how badly She wanted Suri not to age past Her. Menelyn and Izena had felt the same way about Izenakee, millennia ago.

"If the copies are perfect, I think it will be somewhere between one year of aging for every hundred, and one in every thousand," Menelyn answered. "The exhibit hasn't aged more than a few years at most, after millennia. That would suggest no worse than one year in a thousand or so, but a human body is more complicated."

Kennalaria did some quick arithmetic.

"So, worst case, They would age by about twenty years by the time We get there, or two in the best case?"

"If the copies are completely perfect and they wear them at all times, yes. If they're imperfect, they might do worse than one year per hundred," Menelyn clarified. "Also, Zyriko, you could choose to age a little more, first. I recommend that you do, for the same reasons that We waited until Kennalaria was twenty-five."

<I will catch up to Suri, first,> Zyriko confirmed. <I have no desire to be a not-quite-adult for centuries.>

"That estimate assumes that Kennalaria will need around two millennia to reach the strength required to get Us to you," Izenakee pointed out. "That timeline is based on extrapolating how Her range has grown thus far, but it is possible that Her developing 'floatiness' accelerates things."

"Weight's days are num-bered!" Kennalaria sang. "Zoom zoom!"

True, Menelyn thought. Alright, that's taken care of...what next? Um...

"Suri's mana will be almost wholly consumed by powering two of these," Menelyn continued. "If she is ever in desperate need of her mana, you could choose to go without the tunics' effects temporarily, but every day you do this would lead to as much aging as months or years of wearing them. Do it sparingly. Relatedly, I do not think it will be practical for you to undergo Our pool expansion regimen, at least not consistently enough for there to be much point to it. Suri would need to stop powering her own tunic in order to keep her pool filled, causing her to lose the halted aging effect for the duration, but even worse, she would not receive the necessary healing. In principle, Suri could power Zyriko's tunic while he stretches his pool, but the extra mana required for the healing would put a further strain on her. I think it is better for Suri to save whatever she has left for her generic blue magic tasks."

Zyriko's feelings on this matter were clear. <I will not force Suri into permanent mana exhaustion for many centuries in order to pursue power I don't need.>

Before Suri could say anything, he added, <That is non-negotiable.>

"And it isn't fun anyway," Izenakee remarked, in support. "Kennalaria--"

"Will do what I need to do."

----

That little, dismissive statement by the Violet Goddess pushed Suri over the edge.

She didn't understand what she was feeling. She felt...frustrated? Angry? Was it at herself, or on Their behalf? Or over an inability to express what she felt, adequately? She couldn't tell.

Maybe her other emotions had all burnt out, and only frustration and anger were still intact.

Before she knew it, Suri was on a kind of rant, like the one with Zyriko on the bench.

<Do You all realize, do You fully realize, how unrealistically Benevolent You are? It is not normal to torture Yourselves daily for millennia for the sake of people You have nothing to do with! Even on Your Own world, You would still be beloved Goddesses even if You retreated to Your Island, let people take care of themselves, and intervened only when there was dire need. Even if You rejected payment, You could at least ask for favors in return. No one could or would complain. You would still be worshipped! Instead...what do You even get for all of this?! A Temple where You can go stargazing during the free time You don't allow Yourselves? Room and board, in a few ancient, windowless rooms?>

Suri had a horrifying thought.

<Do You all even have Your Own rooms?!>

All of the Goddesses were laughing.

"Yes," the Violet Goddess chimed, smiling. "Our Sanctuaries all have one extra room, each! I use them as My closets. They're very sparkly!" She made one of Her glittery poses.

One whole 'extra' room, so 'extra' that it was needed as a closet. The Goddess of Beauty needed Their only 'extra' room, for Her closet. That--Suri finally understood her mysterious anger. The Goddesses were so egregiously undercompensated that it violated her sense of justice. It felt shamelessly exploitative, for the world to receive so much while They received so little in return. Worse, Suri was herself contributing to the problem right now, accepting for free a gift that could purchase civilizations, with no clue what she could give in return that would have any value to Them, never mind something of comparable value.

Someday, Suri and Zyriko and their world would need to come up with their own Star Temple, to keep the shame manageable.

"'No expectation of--'"

<Don't even start!> Suri snapped at the Red Goddess, then froze in horror.

The emotional beating of this day had destroyed her filter. Suri had been disrespectful to a literal Goddess, the Red Goddess Herself, to Whom she and her world already owed an unpayable debt, which was only growing. Worst of all, these Goddesses would just sit there and giggle at her because that's what They were like. There would be no justice, because Justice Herself would see no crime in this.

It felt so disgraceful, the whole thing. So unbalanced. So unbalanceable.

<The Black Goddess jokes about it,> Suri sighed in resignation, <but no Goddess motivated by flattery makes a Sacrifice of Herself to defeat an evil godlike monster. No Goddess Who really cares about that kind of thing would live in Your Sanctuaries. So, You don't seek power or wealth or praise or anything else. Then why go so far, for everyone?! Why not retreat to Your Island? Never mind the why, I still don't understand how it is even possible.>

----

Izena dropped Her usual demeanor and answered solemnly.

"We were all born with gifts that We did not earn, at least not fully. So were you. We have enormous power to help people, if We choose. So do you. We are aware that nothing forces Us to help. We know from extensive personal experience that most others would not, not like We do."

Izena and Menelyn knew this very, very well.

"During Our world's Ancient War, Menelyn and I resented those who chose not to help, especially mages. They could have saved half the world before things got out of control, but they chose not to act because it would be inconvenient. Why help people they had nothing to do with, for no reward?"

Izena avoided mentioning what most upset Her about that inaction, to spare Menelyn a series of unwelcome memories. All that 'not my problem' had led directly to the state Her Sister had been in at that camp. Orphaned, alone, unwanted. Filthy, discarded garbage. Responsible for Her mother's death. Traumatized. Timid.

The damage still lingered. Izena was still cleaning up their mess.

"To do anything less than what We do would make Us hypocrites. We would be the people We despised. We would be people Who could help, but choose not to. Never."

No one ever needed to wonder whether Izena and Her Sisters would help or not. No one would ever need to wonder. Izena and Her Sisters could be taken for granted.

"Because We chose to help, and were uniquely helpful, people placed their faith in Us. They worshipped Us, sincerely--you saw My memory, where I explained why this happened. They had no other choice. They needed Us to be benevolent Goddesses for there to be any hope, so We must be, and how else could they compensate Us? Gratitude and reverence were all they had to give. You have just now felt for yourself the frustration and shame that are produced when you cannot give anything in return. Rejecting the only thing that people can give Us for Our help, the only thing that allows them to be at peace with themselves, would not be helpful."

Izena had thought this through, very carefully, as a teenager.

"So, Menelyn and I chose to accept faith with the same sincerity as it had been offered. We still do. We do not call Ourselves Goddesses lightly. Izenakee and Kennalaria have made the same choice. They do not call Themselves Goddesses lightly. That is why We are Who We are."

----

Zyriko and Suri were silent. Menelyn was grateful that Her Sister had handled that part of the conversation.

She stared at Her old tunic. A person with a perfect, vivid memory was highly resistant to nostalgia, but currently, Menelyn was close to feeling it for Her time wandering the streets of Rokesha, when She had first Returned.

Hmm. Izena had been dead at the time. Never mind.

Alright, what's next? Um...

"You need to be prepared for how you will be perceived, the reactions you will generate," Menelyn warned. "If you are successful in liberating people through your tireless efforts, using powers unique to you--"

"Keep in mind that you will be very obviously immortal," Kennalaria interjected. "And, you'll appear to stand outside reality, and glow, like We do, blah blah. You get the picture."

"Yes," Menelyn agreed. "As a result of all of this, you will surely be deified by at least some of the people you save. You can try to deflect those impulses to Us, if you want. Izenakee did that for forty-five years, with Izena and Me. That's fine. But, even if you only claim to be serving Us, doing Our work, you will still be seen as something like 'the chosen agents of the Goddesses.' You will be treated accordingly. Be prepared."

<I can't speak for Suri, but I will definitely 'deflect' all of that to You,> Zyriko said. <I want to push back against our world's 'mages-are-deities' custom, not encourage it. My parents demand worship. I want no part of resembling that, in any way. In fact, thinking about it more, I think it's very important for us to push back. We need to establish the idea that people on our world are equal, regardless of whether they have mana pools or not. The real Goddesses are somewhere else, not people on our world. That will be important for completely overturning the established order, instead of only modifying it. You can serve as a third party, that shows how similar mages and non-mages really are, compared to real Goddesses.>

<Agreed,> Suri said firmly, almost growling. <Definitely agreed. No matter what You say, I would feel ridiculous letting people treat me like I am a real Goddess, knowing what You are really like.>

"That's fine," Izenakee said. "Believe Me, I understand. It would be hypocritical of Me to insist that You not deflect to Us. What We have been saying is that you should not undervalue your abilities and what you do for people. That's very different from saying that you ought to embrace people revering you as a literal deity. That is entirely up to you. That said, instead of comparing yourself to Me, I encourage you to try comparing yourself to Kennalaria. If the difference in Our mana pools makes it ridiculous for you to be considered a Goddess, then what about Her? What is the difference, between what you will be, and the Goddess of Twilight? You don't need to answer, just think on it, in the future."

Alright, with that out of the way, it was time for the thorniest issue of immortality, which Menelyn had least been looking forward to discussing.

"You will hold the keys to immortality," She pointed out, "and you will need to monopolize them, as I do. It is necessary. I cannot make everyone immortal--I do not have the time, and Our Garden does not have the space even if I did. In your case, Suri does not even have the mana. You will earn this privilege; that's not what I'm worried about. There's another issue."

Menelyn still remembered Torezia's funeral, as if it had just happened. And all the others that had followed.

"When I became immortal, I was aware that I would spend eternity watching people die while I lived on, if I ever rejoined society. This was a small part of the reason that I did not return. Still, I expected that while it would be painful, I would be able to handle it. Izena felt the same way, when I resurrected Her. We. Were. Wrong. Watching people We met as adults die was painful but tolerable, as We had expected. What We did not fully anticipate was that watching people We met as children age past Us, fade, and die, would be unbearable."

Menelyn steeled Herself as best She could. She could feel Izena doing the same.

"In particular, We had close relationships with the children among the first generation of mage trainees. Seventy years after We started training them, they started..."

----

Izenakee's elder Sisters started weeping after Menelyn trailed off. Sharing the same body, They were prone to positive feedback loops when They were both feeling the same emotion, strongly. And, They both had an abundant supply of perfectly vivid, unfading trauma to trigger this kind of thing.

At least Izenakee had a hugging assistant nowadays, for when it struck.

"There is a cost to having the perfect memory that accompanies immortality," Izenakee explained, from the group hug.

After a moment, She told Her Sisters, "I will cover this part."

Izenakee switched to private telepathy to spare Them from having to listen.

<The train of funerals that Menelyn was about to describe happened more than 8600 years ago. The names of the deceased are largely forgotten by the world, outside textbooks, never mind the people behind the names, but for My Sisters, they may as well have died seconds ago. When they died, they may as well have been the children that Menelyn and Izena had first met. For My Sisters, it feels like They met those children seconds ago, and they died seconds ago, and now They are telling you about it. All memories remain permanently as vivid as real-time experience.>

Menelyn cleaned Izenakee's Own empathic tears.

<My Sisters have never shared the full details of why They made Me immortal with the public, because They are still ashamed that They made a 'selfish' choice. The single largest reason that I am immortal, and the same apparent age as Them, is not that I was the only red mage, or that I was selflessly devoted to The Creed, or anything like that. It is because I happened to reach Their apparent age just as Their first child pupils began dying. Even these deaths were destroying Them, and They knew that Mine would be far, far worse. I was more than a pupil, closer to an adopted daughter. They could not handle it. I noticed.>

Izenakee had never stopped noticing. Her Sisters needed the Goddess of Empathy more than anyone else alive--They had made sure of that--and both tacitly knew it.

<I am telling you all of this to emphasize that We speak from personal experience when We say that it is best for immortals to avoid close relationships with any mortals, and essential to avoid close relationships with children. My Sisters and I learned from Their first century, and We have all maintained a certain aloofness ever since. You are free to decide that this sacrifice is too costly. We will never force immortality onto anyone. But if you believe that We have accumulated any wisdom at all, then please accept this advice: If you choose to serve, if you choose to accept immortality, above all else, do not have children of your own. Watching them die would break you, and you would not be able to keep all of your children and grandchildren and so on alive.>

<As the White Goddess said, I do not have the mana myself,> Suri reasoned. <And, it is unlikely that any but a tiny fraction would be strong enough to power their own copies, if they even wanted to.>

"Precisely," Izenakee agreed, speaking aloud once again, now that the painful part was over.

<It doesn't much matter,> Suri said. <I don't expect that we would have time to be decent parents, anyway.>

For some reason, it wasn't as flustering for Suri to discuss hypothetical children abstractly, in the context of immortality, as to imagine what mana color they might have. It made no sense.

"That is also true," Izenakee agreed again, while amused at Suri's constant introspection. "We managed Kennalaria with help from Our followers, but if She hadn't been an impossibly good, precocious kid, being basically a reincarnation of Menelyn, I am not sure it would have been possible. Our world is also in a much better state than yours."

Understatement of the millennium, everyone present thought.

<I agree with Suri, and I have no desire to be a father any time soon, regardless,> Zyriko said. <The only issue I see is that going without children would call attention to us, but that is probably irrelevant, because of something else I have been wondering about. Assuming that the tunics work, it will soon be obvious that we aren't aging normally. How do we explain this? Announcing that we were blessed with Holy Regalia by the True Goddesses would be suicidal.>

Izenakee had already thought this issue through, after seeing Suri's replication ability.

<Tell the truth, but a version of it,> She suggested. <Suri is a 'goddess of goddesses.' She has such a transcendent mastery of blue magic that she can produce clothing that slows aging. This may create enemies, but that's useful in its own way. Any lineage that becomes hostile out of envy or whatever would likely be among the more deplorable. Perfect. Crush them, in the standard way. This will allow you to eliminate some of the worst of the worst without making it obvious that your true motive is liberation. Your enemies won't realize that they're all sitting on thousands of hostages, or that you are actually hostile to everyone, not just those who antagonize you. It will look like you are destroying normal political enemies, just like any other lineage would.>

Izenakee could feel that both Zyriko and Suri were doing the mental nodding to themselves thing again.

<We are strong,> Suri said, in support of Izenakee's suggestion. <Keyic, I mean. Even stronger with Zyzz included. We could defeat significant coalitions, and I am sure that our non-mages would be more than happy for the opportunity to fight. We only need to be careful about uniting the entire world against us, or close to it. So long as it does not become common knowledge that we are serving the True Goddesses, and so long as we are not so powerful and expansionist that we make the others feel like they need to unite to crush us before we reach critical mass, we should be able to handle things, militarily. Perhaps our goal could be unifying our continent, and turning it into a safe haven.>

Izenakee smiled. Suri had been thinking about these things, laying the groundwork, since she was a child. How unrealistically benevolent!

"In the immediate future," Izenakee continued, "you will need to be careful about secretly fomenting outright revolts. Your weapons would be easily traceable, especially Suri's creations, since they are all her color. So, if you offer support to the non-mages of nearby territories, you will need to make absolutely sure that they are successful, and you will need to be prepared to 'intervene' immediately, before other lineages do, to conceal that it was you who armed them."

Zyriko laughed. <Being such good little petty despots, it's only natural that we take over such territories ourselves after 'quelling the uprisings.' For the glory of Keyic and Zyzz, of course.>

"I like this guy," Izena swelled with approval. "He really gets it."

<We can more freely help individuals escape, with small teams,> Suri mused. <We would just need to hide them, once they arrived at our territory, and be careful not to leave evidence.>

Izenakee smiled again. They both 'got it.'

"Every single person you can help is someone who would have had no hope, without you," Izenakee concluded. "Our ultimate victory is guaranteed, a matter of time. Always remember that. Everything you achieve in the meantime is a bonus. There is no need for foolish risks."

Now, one last loose end.

"Make sure to tell your parents that We very much appreciate the risks that Keyic takes, so much so that We have granted Our Holy Regalia to their incomparable Heiress, so that she and her husband may rule permanently in Keyic's rightful place as the world's most glorious lineage, with Our blessing."

Suri's eyes widened. Right. They would like that a lot. A lot.