A Real Goddess Would Let Nobody Die

Remarkably, there was something Zyriko had learned on the early part of the tour that he found even more astonishing than the Sacrifice. Mages and non-mages on this world had lived as equals even before the Age of the Goddesses!

<That is only partially true,> the Red Goddess corrected. <There were instances of something approaching the situation on your world, and We will reach one shortly that was effectively identical. The major difference is that these instances were always limited to only a single city, or a small set of cities. The upcoming one that I have in mind is related to the mage training facility that I mentioned, at Our Temple in Ezenta. Remember?>

<The city to the north?>

<Yes. That Temple is called the Temple of the Liberation. Ezenta was enslaved by a blue mage lineage, and Menelyn intervened personally. I hope you will not consider it too much of a spoiler if I tell you that it went poorly for the slavers.>

Suri giggled from the other sofa, for which Zyriko passed gratitude and reverence through the link. Well done, infallible emotion Goddess.

The Red Goddess giggled in reply, then continued.

<It seems that the social instability caused by blue mages having a monopoly on enchantments is a constant across worlds. But, Ezenta's case was the last on Our world. Starting with Ezenta, My Sisters...established some precedents, in the first couple centuries, that...caused a general reconsideration of the profitability of exploitation. I was there, for the second half of it, so anathema couldn't even hide anymore.>

Ah. That was more along the lines of what Zyriko had expected.

<That said, it is true that conditions were better on the whole. I surmise that much of that is attributable to the Corza family, and their Academy. They set and enforced a good example as the preeminent lineage of black mages, for thousands of years, and the Academy treated misbehavior by what it called 'rogue mages' as its responsibility.>

Right. A family that had spawned two perfectly benevolent True Goddesses as its last members had safeguarded its world for a hundred generations prior. Who could have guessed?!

<Does Your Garden still have mage lineages?> Suri asked.

<Not anymore in the sense that you mean, not really, and not like it did in the ancient world. It is uncommon to breed for power, certainly not for many consecutive generations.>

Zyriko knew Suri would be pleased.

<Mages do tend to marry mages disproportionately, but not necessarily of the same color, and only because people with similar backgrounds tend to connect better. So, We have fewer very high power mages like you two, and no lineages like the Corzas, where black mages paired with black mages for millennia. Even the ancient lineages were not as obsessed with maximizing power as yours are, only maintaining a color tradition. Our world wasn't even certain of mana-coloring as a phenomenon until Mine developed. Menelyn and Izena may have been the first.>

Zyriko could feel that the Red Goddess was amused, apparently at something Suri had thought.

<Not only is it normal, I would guess that the most likely spouse for a red mage is a blue mage, since blue mages are most common. If not a blue mage, then a non-mage.>

Zyriko couldn't even imagine suggesting to his parents that he marry a non-mage. What a world.

In the meantime, the group had reached the next exhibit, and the White Goddess continued Her narration of Their history.

<After 943 years of isolation on My Island, I Returned to Rokesha,> She said. <These murals depict the event. They are very old, copied from the originals in Rokesha when this Temple opened.>

<Were the originals made by eyewitnesses?> Zyriko asked.

<Yes.>

The White Goddess wandered around, casting cleaning spells on the people nearby and restoring the murals. Her spells were so powerful that Her glow lingered afterward, granting a portion of Her disconnected-from-reality effect. Zyriko tried to pay attention to the art, but watching a literal Goddess doing what may as well be called blessing Her worshippers and consecrating Her Temple was difficult to ignore.

<You are right, that is exactly what this is,> She admitted. Had the Red Goddess passed along his sentiment? <I too realized this, in Rokesha. I kept doing things that matched or exceeded what was expected of the Salvation Goddess, just doing what I could do with My Own abilities, until the conclusion was inescapable. I am a white mage, and a Goddess, because a uniquely powerful white mage is indistinguishable from a Goddess. The proper term for a very large island is 'continent,' and a continent that calls itself 'just a big island' is being ridiculous.>

<Cite Your sources, or that still counts as plagiarism,> the Black Goddess scolded. Inside joke? Whatever.

Zyriko tried to imagine living through the depicted scenes. The White Goddess of legend Returning at the climax of his people's most desperate crisis, Her intervention preventing extinction, Her omnipotence dismissing an apocalyptic threat, and Her compassion undoing most of the harm it had done.

How many of the hundreds of thousands huddled in the Temple of the Sacrifice had been praying to exactly Her? How many had been hanging above despair on that last thread of hope provided by Her legend, at the very moment that Salvation had entered Her Temple? Regardless, hundreds of thousands had watched literal divine intervention even more miraculous than what anyone had prayed for. A Goddess so radiant that She hurt to look at, manifestly ageless, reviving the dead and repelling corrupted monsters, right in front of them.

And then before leaving, instead of asking for anything in exchange, She left another blessing in Her Temple, as if She owed them a debt.

How would Zyriko have felt?

Glad that Her Temple was already constructed. Glad that She approved of it. Hopeful that his Goddess would tell him what She wanted him to do with what he was feeling.

At the next set of exhibits and murals, Zyriko learned that She had done exactly that.

<I still needed to understand that being a Goddess didn't require being perfect in all ways, and that no one falsely believed that I had been born anything but a mortal like them. Once I understood this, once I knew that no one placing their faith in Me believed Me to be anything that I was not, and still they wanted Me to-->

She shook Her head.

<--and still they needed Me to provide an address for their prayers, to provide a cozy blanket of security that only the Goddess of Salvation could provide, I decided that the best way to be helpful was to embrace the reality of Who I was.>

She smiled.

<Who I am, Who I will always be.>

<Sun, not candle,> the Black Goddess said smugly.

She was called the Sun Goddess for a reason. In this scene, as in all the others, She was pure white, and as in many, so brilliant that Her body was indistinct behind the glare, more a humanoid blur. Her current form seemed at first to be similar, a blindingly bright silhouette of sunlight wrapped in black mana, yet at the same time Her physical body was comfortably visible. Zyriko suspected that the White and Black Goddesses would both be invisible if They were in separate bodies, lacking the compensation of the Other, for opposite reasons.

<The white clothing that You are wearing in all of these murals is what You intend to show us?> Suri asked.

<Yes,> the White Goddess replied. <It was standard wear for female white mages during the Ancient War. Millennia of being saturated by My mana and warped by My spells made it into an item that passively casts echoes of My magic. It is always activated. If a typical mortal tried to use it, it would deplete its mana supply almost immediately, trying to make them immortal and clean. If you really are a general-purpose perfect replicator of magic items, then you should be able to copy the tunic, simulate the mana it needs to operate, and keep it charged. You would exhaust yourself trying to power an immortality spell all at once, but you are strong enough if the cost is spread over time.>

Zyriko was still amazed by Suri's ability, and that even the Goddesses found it impressive. He had known that she was an extremely powerful blue mage, obviously, but the Keyics had wisely kept her special talent secret.

After covering the Ezenta situation, the group finally reached the stage of the Goddesses' history that Zyriko had been most anticipating. There were no artifacts here, only murals encircling the chamber that depicted 'The Anastasis of Justice.'

Zyriko wasn't sure what he was looking at. The Sun Goddess pouring Her Light into a shadow at the foot of a rock?

The Black and White Goddesses had left to meet with the awestruck museum visitors in the chamber, so the Red Goddess explained.

<I pulled the memory from Menelyn's mind, and showed the artists. She is standing over Izena's disembodied mana, reconstructing Her mind from the personality imprint stored inside it. She placed Izena's reconstructed mind inside Her Own, and They remain bound to this day, sharing Menelyn's body.>

...The idiots on Zyriko's world who called themselves gods and goddesses were so far from being anything remotely comparable to actual deities, so utterly clueless and delusional, that Zyriko felt embarrassed on their behalf.

The Red Goddess expanded on Her explanation, which was helpful, because She had lost Zyriko at 'disembodied mana.'

<You are aware that Our bodies are immortal, but We are immortal in a deeper way, too. Mana holds an imprint of the mind, or personality, or soul, or will, or whatever you want to call it. It is this imprint that makes each mage's mana unique. When the pool reaches a certain size, around the same size as when mana-coloring occurs, the imprint can contain enough detail to be something recognizable as the core of the original person. With a strong enough will imprinted inside it, mana can persist beyond the destruction of the body. This happened for Izena. She did not want to leave Menelyn alone.>

So, True Goddesses aren't only ageless, They also don't die when They are killed. This did seem consistent with the degree of omnipotence that Zyriko had observed.

<If Kennalaria's body were destroyed, Menelyn would be able to do the same for Her as She did for Izena, but without struggling, since She is much stronger now than She was then. If My body were destroyed, it would be trivial, because My pool is sufficient for My mind to be fully intact and conscious. Even if Menelyn's body were destroyed, Her mind stored in Her mana, a perfect fully conscious replica, would easily be able to reconstruct both Herself and Izena into either My body, or Kennalaria's.>

Zyriko and Suri again said nothing for a while. With this information, Zyriko was having a difficult time distinguishing the True Goddesses from the incarnated essence type that They claimed not to be.

<Yes,> the Red Goddess responded to what must have been one of Suri's thoughts. <Destroying all of Our bodies, as challenging as it would be, would only be the first stage of defeating Us. The second stage, destroying Our mana, would be even more impossible. Izena's mana during Her death was mostly dormant because there wasn't enough to store Her full consciousness. That would be true today only for Kennalaria. If an enemy destroyed My body or Menelyn's, Our disembodied mana would be fully conscious, very upset, and so nearly bottomless that it could cast spells for a long time before meaningfully consuming itself. An enemy would need to be prepared to destroy Our bodies, and then survive Our mana's counterattack for long enough to deplete the mana. I think that is impossible.>

A moot point, because stage one was already impossible, Zyriko thought. No one would ever get a chance at stage two.

<We are vulnerable while asleep. At least, Kennalaria and I are. Menelyn's passive healing might be enough to make Her body literally indestructible, now, for mortals. Regardless, all of Us could incarnate again, as many times as We believed it to be necessary, if We had volunteers willing to host Us.>

She giggled.

<You know, like Menelyn said earlier, She used to think that She was not really a Goddess because She wasn't incarnated from Divine Light for the purpose of bringing Salvation to the world. But thinking about this now, if She ever needed to place Herself into a new body, that's exactly what that incarnation would be: A new Goddess, reincarnated from the Divine Light of the old One, for the purpose of continuing Her work.>

She paused to think for a moment.

<I had never really thought about this, but Menelyn, Izena, and I really have crossed some kind of threshold, haven't We? We're completely divorced from mortality, more like concepts stored in human bodies, as impossible to destroy as, say, the concept of 'bright.' Kennalaria will get there in a millennium or two.>

<I'm working on destroying the concept of 'weight' first!> the Violet Goddess chimed in suddenly, apparently still listening from the Dome.

Even the normally pensive White Goddess chuckled at that one, Her giggles overlapping with the Black Goddess' to produce a fit of snorting and gasping incongruous with the gravitas of a Goddess. It was charming.

The Red Goddess added another explanation once Her Own giggles finished.

<I remember being a red mage of average power as if it were seconds ago, like I instantly jumped from being a twenty-five-year old with crippling mana limitations to an omniscient, indestructible, interstellar, multi-millennial Empathy Goddess. I remember everything in between too, obviously, but all of those days feel as recent as the first time Menelyn cast the immortality spell. Who I was yesterday feels as relevant to Who I am now as Who I was at twenty-five. We are frozen in time mentally as much as physically. So, thinking about Ourselves as that kind of maximally transcendent Goddess, a conscious divine spirit that can incarnate into a physical body, feels especially odd, even if it has become true.>

After finishing the rest of the museum tour--the highlight for Zyriko was seeing that the Red Goddess had not been exaggerating or speaking hypothetically when She mentioned that She exterminated those who used mind domination--they arrived at the Sanctum of the Sacred Mantles.

At the White Goddess' request, all but the Goddesses retreated, ushered out by Their Trusted Guard escorts, and the Violet Goddess reappeared beside the Red Goddess.

On the other side of the transparent wall was a softly glowing room, in which the Sacred Mantles rested on a shining altar.

To call what Zyriko was observing 'tunics' felt blasphemous. To call them 'magic items' felt blasphemous. These Sacred Artifacts were not 'items' enchanted with 'magic,' they were Holy Regalia emanating Divinity.

<Suri,> Zyriko said. <If you really can replicate the Sacred Mantles, you are a goddess. I am no white mage, but the red one is beyond mortals.>

Zyriko could feel Suri's mental swallow.

<To--to attempt to replicate the...Sacred Mantle of Immortality, I think I will need to view its...Divine Aura through the eyes of the White Goddess. Is that possible?>

The White Goddess crumpled to a squat and put Her face in Her hands. The Black Goddess cackled.