A Real Goddess Would Let Nobody Die

Suri could tell that while Zyriko didn't want to interrupt her music, his incredulousness was reaching the breaking point. He was listening from her bed, staring at the ceiling.

Right on cue, <How can you possibly think you're not good enough to perform?> he challenged.

Suri continued plucking the strings, while she answered. <I didn't mean for normal recitals. I think it's safe to assume that 'mythical performances' with the Goddess of Joy might have higher standards. She Herself said that no one dares to play instrumentals for Her.>

She could feel what Zyriko thought of that.

<Well I think you're good enough,> he pouted.

Suri was very aware. It was pleasant being mentally linked to such a genuinely admiring audience.

<Don't misunderstand,> she reassured him. <If I didn't think I was extremely skilled by mortal standards, I would never have said anything to Her. About playing the harp, I mean.>

The Language of the Goddesses didn't have a word for the ancestral Keyic instrument, but 'harp' was closest. Suri's inscribed knowledge of the Language told her that her instrument, which fit comfortably in her lap, was smaller than a true harp. And, it could be played as intended only by a blue mage skilled enough to manipulate and modify the strings and frame in real time.

The next few measures were a climax, so Suri and Zyriko paused their conversation while Suri played through them.

Once the complexity of the melody relaxed, Zyriko said, <So, I'm no expert, but I don't think I need to be one to know that you're the only person in history who could have pulled off whatever that was.>

Suri smiled. She had improvised a few gratuitously complex flourishes, as a special treat for her biggest fan. He wasn't wrong.

<Probably, but I'm not playing out of some self-imposed obligation to practice. I missed it, while working on the tunic, and I've always played when I need to focus, and think.>

Suri felt Zyriko's dominant emotions shift abruptly to include contentment and patience, as he realized that the fog of uncertainty filling her was caused not by an irrational lack of confidence in her musical abilities, but by a need to sort out her own identity. He settled in to listen in silence while he waited for the results of her introspection.

The link was especially cozy, right now. She'd gone from Suri the mortal to...this, and nothing about what flowed from the other side had changed, at all.

Suri kept playing, and kept thinking, for the rest of the day and into the next, as Zyriko drifted in and out of sleep. At night, her glow turned her bedroom into something resembling a blue version of the Sanctum.

Shortly before she started playing, Suri had showed her parents the effects of the tunic. At the sight of her timeless daughter, Suri's mother, normally the very image of a restrained and dignified Matriarch of a first-class divine lineage, had collapsed in awe, and started bawling about how their lineage had finally, after hundreds of generations, produced a real goddess. The glory of Keyic would be everlasting! Their daughter's transformation had, in turn, transformed her parents from respectful of the Goddesses into paragons of piety.

That reaction, combined with Suri's own judgment of how the woman in the mirror would be perceived, had been enough for her to decide to seclude herself before interacting with anyone else. She needed to sort everything out in her mind, first.

So, she sat, and played, and thought, while the tunic sipped her mana steadily. It's not like she needed to worry about blisters, or getting sore, or tiring. She didn't need to eat, or drink, or stretch, or bathe, or use the toilet, or...

Did she need to breathe?

Suri held her breath...hmmm, the impulse to breathe was still there, but did she really need to? She kept holding.

After a few minutes, the tunic's drain accelerated rapidly and her hands started to grow clumsy. Alright, best to stop. She didn't have nearly enough mana to power resurrection, if the tunic even knew how to cast it.

She returned to her thoughts.

It was so incredibly weird to be able to remember every single moment perfectly, every one since the tunic had finished its work. She only needed to skim through whatever piece she wanted to play, once, for it to be committed to memory. She would be able to relive that breath-holding experience whenever she wanted, as if it were really happening. It compressed her sense of time, 'long ago' and 'recently' losing distinction, like time didn't really pass. Because for Suri the Ageless, it kind of didn't?

But as remarkable as all the internal changes were, the issue that had dominated Suri's thoughts was how she would handle the external change, specifically its effect on how she was perceived.

Nobody could look at that reflection in the mirror and think anything but 'Blue Goddess.'

The Goddesses had tried to warn them about how their appearances would affect how they were perceived, but it hadn't been real enough for Suri until she had actually seen that reflection. How could Suri the mortal have imagined this? How could anyone imagine herself as a living Incorruptible Altar, projecting from the ground into some timeless divine dimension, lighting up her room with soft blue moonlight? The tunic-wearing Suri of her mortal imagination had looked more like a recipient of the White Goddess' powerful cleaning spells, not the Red Goddess' blue Sister.

Suri stared at her softly glowing hands, plucking and strumming the strings. They were pristine after more than a full day of playing nonstop. No blisters, not the least bit sore or tired. Even the blue on her nails was frozen in time, free of chips and scratches.

The Red Goddess had urged Suri to ask herself how this immortal version of her was any different from the Violet Goddess. Suri understood Her point, what She was getting at. The Violet Goddess was definitely a Goddess, that was indisputable. So, if Suri could not find a difference...She swallowed.

She understood the Red Goddess' point.

Like Suri, the Violet Goddess had mana limitations, which frustrated Her. In fact, even minus the mana she needed to commit to the tunic, Suri was currently slightly stronger. Previously, there had been an important difference here, one on which Suri had placed a lot of weight: The Violet Goddess would grow and overcome Her limitations, because She had time, while Suri would forever be limited to her current power. This difference had disappeared. Wearing the tunic, Suri had time, too. She wouldn't be able to grow between now and the Goddesses' arrival, but the Violet Goddess had spent seven centuries doing whatever She could with less strength than Suri had now. She had been a Goddess the whole time.

The Violet Goddess had a unique mana color. She could cast unique magic. Suri's mana color was the most common, but there had never been another blue mage like her. No other blue mage who had ever lived could have made and powered an approximation of the Radiant Mantle, never mind a perfect replica. Suri was wearing the Holy Regalia of a True Goddess, which she had made, without cheating or falsification.

The Violet Goddess was the most beautiful entity that had ever existed or could ever exist, but...Suri snuck another glance at the mirror, and blushed. The Violet Goddess' title was safe, but the Blue Goddess in that mirror was absurdly gorgeous, embarrassingly so, beyond what was achievable for mortals. That was just a fact.

Suri knew how mirrors worked.

The Goddess of Twilight incarnated from the Light of the Sun Goddess, but if the circumstances of birth and parentage determined a person's value, then Zyriko was anathema from birth. Suri looked over at her empath, listening from her bed, surrounded by her color. Yeah, no.

Suri thought, and thought, and thought, and could think of only one significant difference between her and the Violet Goddess.

The Violet Goddess was proud of Who She was. Suri was ashamed of who she was not.

The Violet Goddess was not tentative or reluctant, never prone to half-measures.

Half-measures...

There was a flaw in the plan. That flaw had been introduced because of this very problem, because Suri was so ashamed of who she was not, that she had refused to believe the Red Goddess, when She told her Who she was.

The Goddesses had been preparing her for this, trying to ease her into it, as gently as They could. All those warnings and words of encouragement and the walk through Their history and the little pushes and the questions to ponder, all of it had been designed to guide her, during these last two days, toward accepting Who she needed to become, in order to be most helpful.

Suri still felt ridiculous, but if it would liberate one more person, save one more life, prevent one more tragedy, she would walk naked across a ballroom, and call it a bargain.

The only thing left to do was to share her conclusions with Zyriko.

<I have some things I need to say, Zyriko. Still awake enough to listen?>

<I've been waiting. What do you have for me?>

Waiting patiently for more than a day, in fact.

<I want to talk about our plan, how we intend to operate and present ourselves. It is flawed, and I think the Goddesses knew it, but also knew that we needed to come to the conclusion ourselves.>

Zyriko said nothing, and waited for her to continue.

<Regardless of the details,> Suri began, <everyone we help escape will need to be led to our territory. There is nowhere else for us to send fugitives.>

"Mmm," Zyriko agreed.

<A similar pattern will play out for all of them as for this first family.>

Suri waited, plucking away at her harp, while Zyriko reviewed the pattern in his mind, until she could feel that he was ready for her to proceed.

<First, they are contacted by the Red Goddess' Messenger. Next, the Messenger arranges some chain of events that brings them to our territory. When they arrive, they see how much better things are in our territory, compared to the place they fled. Conditions must be much better here. That is not optional, since anything less would mean that there is no purpose to what we are doing. Finally, soon after arriving, they will hear about me, and eventually, see me. After that sequence of miracles, seeing me, as I am...>

Viewing herself objectively, Suri knew how she would appear to those people.

<Any escaped non-mage in that situation can come to only two possible conclusions: I am one of the True Goddesses, or I am one of Their chosen agents.> Suri could feel Zyriko's fervent agreement through the link. <We can do absolutely nothing about any aspect of this core sequence of events, without badly limiting our activities.>

<That will be generic and unavoidable, agreed. Sending infiltrators instead of using me to communicate would be even riskier.>

"Mmm," Suri agreed. <Previously, I thought that since we would need to hide refugees anyway, it would not matter if they connected Keyic with the Goddesses once they arrived. Our enemies would never interact with them. But, I failed to consider that, out of simple enthusiasm, some of the refugees will surely tell their stories to their new neighbors and share who they believe me to be. When this happens, rumors will spread. Even if everyone living in our territory is completely loyal, at some point, one of them will be captured by our enemies, or get too close to a nosy red mage, or the rumor will simply be overheard. We've been lucky so far, that Yonen and Elli seem to appreciate the need for discretion, but that will not always be true.>

<I can sense that you have an idea for how to deal with this,> Zyriko said.

She did. Unsurprisingly, the solution was to do what the multi-millennial infallible Goddesses had told her to do.

<The only choice available to me is which of the two interpretations I encourage: either I am myself a True Goddess, or I am one of Their chosen agents. So, which interpretation is better for us? Which could be played off, explained away, if it were to leak to our enemies, and which would be more dangerous?>

Zyriko did not need to think for long.

<If rumors that you are an agent of the True Goddesses were to spread among our people and at some point reach our enemies, it could lead to our annihilation. If instead there were a general belief that you are yourself a True Goddess, then it could be explained away.> Zyriko smiled. <Of course our non-mages believe that you are a peerless 'True Goddess!' They are 'well-disciplined,' and even our enemies called you the 'goddess of goddesses' before you made yourself immortal! You are so transcendent that you can make clothing that grants immortality! What else are non-mages supposed to think you are, but a Goddess that reveals all others to be mere imitators?! It's not our fault that they are 'so stupid' that they think being incomparably divine means you must be the Red Goddess' Sister or something. Our enemies wish that their 'worshippers' thought the same of them!>

The idea of the Red Goddess calling her 'Sister' was...Deep breath.

<It is so safe for our people to believe that you are 'the Blue Goddess' that we could practically declare it openly,> he continued. <The false gods know that you can't be related to the Red Goddess. You were born here, the same as they were, to a well-known, distinguished lineage. That's a fact! A widespread belief among non-mages that you are a Goddess like Her would be dismissed as just one more piece of evidence that they are ignorant inferiors. But a widespread belief that you are working for Her? That would not be so easily dismissed.>

What an absurd world, where anything less than claiming to be a deity was suspicious.

<That is my conclusion, too. If I try to 'deflect' to the True Goddesses, try to tell people that They are the real Goddesses and I am only an agent, it will reduce the number of people we can help, because we will need to manage the extra risk. That is unacceptable. I will not doom people to slavery because I am too weak-willed, too diffident, to go beyond half-measures. I must operate as the Blue Goddess Herself.>

The Goddesses had not only given permission, this was what They had encouraged from the start.

<There is another benefit,> Suri added. <If our enemies one day learn or suspect that non-mages are fleeing to Keyic territory, even being guided there, the explanation will be that they want to live in the land of the 'Blue Goddess'--why would they not?!--and that I want more worshippers. Of course I do! Do the other lineages not want the same?! Our enemies could accept that situation--theft of worshippers--in a way that they could never accept us being on a campaign of general liberation, at least to the extent that it would not provoke a united worldwide backlash, because it does not threaten the fundamental order of the world. There would be complaints, maybe wars, but only ordinary ones that we could win, local conflicts over 'stolen property.'>

Zyriko didn't seem to be upset about Suri wanting to change the plan, but she still felt like she needed to apologize.

<I'm sorry, Zyriko. I know what you said, about it being important to fight back against the conflation of mages with deities that poisons our world, and I agree, I still do-->

<I did say that, but,> Zyriko gestured at Suri, <that was before I saw the light.>

He paused, waiting for praise that would never come.

<Don't follow the teachings of the Black Goddess too closely,> Suri sighed. <Especially when She's not here.>

For some reason, Zyriko still oozed satisfaction through the link.

<Heresy!> he accused, in mock outrage, then chuckled. <The sentiment was serious. No one will think that You are just a different version of the pretenders. Rather, by contrasting so strongly with them, in appearance and actions, You will highlight how fake they are. There is no conflation, if people think You are a Goddess. I will say it again: I am serious.>

Zyriko waited for Suri to process what he had said. Soon, the Blue Goddess was rather red.

<It is similar to what the White Goddess said in the Dome, about how people thought She was a Goddess because She was a Goddess,> Zyriko resumed. <When refugees arrive here, they will believe that they have reached the realm of a benevolent Goddess, because they will have reached the realm of a benevolent Goddess. You are different from the fakes, so different that the Red Goddess Herself named You the Blue Goddess. In case You have forgotten, as a judge of character, She is infallible. She said that making a copy of the Radiant Mantle would be equivalent to proving that You are the Blue Goddess. Here You are, wearing a perfect copy, which You made, and Who do You appear to be, to anyone with eyes?>

Suri's limbs were too weak to keep playing. She felt so ridiculous. She really did feel so ridiculous, but...

She had eyes. And a mirror. She knew how mirrors worked.

The woman in the mirror was the Blue Goddess. She had a sacred purpose.

Suri had the approval of the True Goddesses. Their encouragement. She was comparable to One of Them, differing only in self-perception.

Zyriko wasn't done.

<I've spent the last two days trying to figure out what my wife is the Goddess of,> he admitted. <I thought about something like Prosperity, but that alone felt incomplete. Then, it came to me: The Red Goddess said it best, when She called You a one-woman military-industrial complex. You are Prosperity and War, together--all of Them have two sides, like that. And, of course, You are the Sky Goddess. In fact, I think operating as 'the Sky Goddess' would be better than 'the Blue Goddess,' since it's completely unique to You. It will emphasize that You are different from the pretenders, and help justify why non-mages are drawn to live in Your territory. It may also help to discourage our enemies from linking You to the Red Goddess.>

Suri felt a level of soul alignment with the White Goddess that she didn't think was possible to feel with another being, and decided that she needed to apologize for saying things that had embarrassed Her, at the earliest opportunity.

Well, she should practice acting the part. If she couldn't even do it here, with just Zyriko, then--

No.

Suri scolded herself, internally.

Acting was not allowed, not for this. She acted the part of the 'goddess of goddesses.' She acted like a delusional, petty tyrant who loved the flattery of sycophants. To act like the Blue Goddess was unacceptable, forbidden. The Goddesses had been very clear--explicit!--that there was only one acceptable way to take this step: with utmost sincerity, complete commitment, no holding back, no half-measures, full acceptance of the identity, claiming it, embracing the totality of the role, permanently. All in, or not at all.

There were only two options. Be worse at helping people for the sake of feeling less ridiculous, or discard the only significant thing that distinguished the Violet Goddess from Suri.

So, there was only one option.

Suri was born with gifts and privileges that she did not earn. She had enormous power to help people. The only reason to be ashamed of what she had, was if she chose to squander it.

'A Goddess performs miracles that no other could have performed in order to help any who need help, undoes tragedies, and opposes forces which would cause them, using powers unique to Her, may be liable to fail in some ways but never in compassion, and serves The Creed relentlessly, seeking any opportunity to be helpful, all with no expectation of reward.'

So be it.

When She felt prepared, the Blue Goddess rose from Her stool, and stared at Her reflection. She took some time to choose Her words carefully. Once She was satisfied, She spoke aloud, for the first time without the Others present, in the Language of the Goddesses. It felt like Her real native language, because it was.

"Thank you, Zyriko, for everything. I am Suri, Goddess of Prosperity for those who deserve it, and War for those who imperil and impede it. In diligence, I am infallible. If I am present, only poverty has anything to fear, and subjugation is reserved for those who through theft and exploitation, fraud and corruption, construct a counterfeit prosperity for themselves alone by stealing it from others. In the domain of the Sky Goddess, noon is not a time of suffering and oppression, but a time to remember that people are people, a time to remember that there is more to life than work, and a time when all enjoy the fruits of their own labors. Let any who would violate these principles be warned: The more people you oppress, the more rebels I can equip, and it will not be My forgiveness that you need."

That was what She was now. Her ambition was far greater.

"After many years of exponential growth, I will be able to provide any necessity, make luxuries commonplace, and create as many paradises as there are people to fill them. There shall be no leverage for the privileged, no monopolies birthing aristocracies, anywhere in the stars. Scarcity will require My permission. This will be My most sacred purpose."

<I will answer your question, some day,> She promised Zyriko. <What are the limitations on the Blue Goddess' ability to make planets?>

<Looking forward to it.> Zyriko smirked, now sitting cross-legged on her bed. <What are the chances She'll be able to make one in my favorite color?>

Suri smiled. Very high.

"I accept gratitude and reverence as consequences of what I provide, but I do not demand them in exchange for My aid. If any would offer worship in My name, then let it be born from genuine love, given freely, proudly, unrestrained and with the sky in view, never extracted with coercion, or forced by obligation, never reluctantly, and never staring at the ground."

It was so liberating, not holding anything back.