“I came all this way,” she said as she kept staring at the floor, “defeated all those enemies, passed through all those trials… for nothing. I’ve failed. I’ve failed my sect, and I’ve failed myself. All for nothing.”
“I know that you’re disappointed. What Nabu told you about Xayon must have felt like a kick in the guts. But you haven’t failed.”
Rami stayed still.
“You completed your quest,” I continued, unsure whether she was even listening. “You found Xayon’s amulet, even if it didn’t give you the results you were hoping for. I mean, that’s what the leader of your sect asked you to do, right, to get the amulet? And you did that. He didn’t ask you to bring the Wind Goddess herself back with you. You’ve done everything you could do. The rest was always going to be out of your hands. Come on, Rami, don’t beat yourself up over this.”
She turned the amulet over in her fingers, staring at it dejectedly. “What you’re saying is true. I did succeed in getting this amulet, even if it’s now powerless. But I didn’t just embark on this quest because the leader of my sect asked me to. I chose to accept this mission because I hoped, I believed, that Xayon was still alive, even if she was in a greatly weakened state. I was hoping that by wearing this amulet and doing great deeds in Xayon’s name, I could restore her power, bit by bit, until she was the mighty goddess she had once been. But now… now that I know that she’s dead, well… those dreams have all died. I’m left with… with nothing but a trinket, as Nabu said. A useless piece of metal. A souvenir.”
For the longest time, I had believed that Isu was dead too, but that assumption turned out to be very wrong. I didn’t know if Nabu had been telling the truth about Xayon or not, but I suspected that being dead wasn’t quite as final a sentence for gods as it was for humans.
“I know it seems that way now,” I said. “And I get why you’re feeling how you are. But don’t give up on everything just yet. Maybe, just maybe, Xayon isn’t quite as dead as Nabu said she was.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “Don’t get your hopes up, but maybe Isu can come up with something if we give her enough souls.”
Rami set her jaw in grim determination. “Then I’ll continue feeding the Death Goddess until her divine stomach can bear no more souls.”
“Here it is!” Elyse cried out.
I turned to see her with Nabu’s foot in her hands. She pried a ring from one of his toes and grinned.
“The putrid old man’s fingers were too fat to wear it on his hand.” Elyse lifted up a large ring, set with a gleaming red ruby. She slipped it onto her finger before she picked up her mace and walked to the cathedral’s center. Moonlight shining through the stained glass bathed her in a myriad of colors.
“I call on the power of the Lord of Light!” she cried. “Shower me in your warmth, fill my mind with illumination, and protect me with your brightness!”
As it had with Nabu, the moonlight turned from silvery blue to dazzling gold, and I watched, spellbound, as Elyse herself was transformed. Unlike Nabu, she didn’t turn into a towering warrior. She remained the same physically, but magnificent golden armor materialized, covering her body, and her flanged mace also turned gold and grew larger, into a two-handed weapon.
“Armor suits you,” I said. “Can that mace do what Nabu’s warhammer did?”
“If I’m able to draw on the power of natural light, I can channel and focus it, as Nabu did, into holy fire,” she explained.
She aimed her mace at a pew and blasted out a river of white flame that turned the heavy oaken bench to ashes in seconds. The fire wasn’t quite as intense as the one Nabu had used, but it was impressive.
“Nice! But do you have to be standing in a source of light?”
She walked out of the beam of light, and instantly, her golden armor disappeared and her mace shrank back to its normal size.
“Unfortunately, I do, yes,” she replied. “Nabu’s mastery over the magic was far more advanced.”
“Perhaps augmented by his devotion to the Blood God,” Rami suggested.
Elyse shuddered. “Perhaps. Something I will never stoop to. I serve the Lord of Light, and him alone. Nevertheless, with this bishop’s ring, my other powers will be enhanced. Witness this.”
Her fingers began to glow, but instead of the usual golden rope, golden chains now cascaded out of her hands one link at a time until they snaked through the air like hungry serpents. They coiled their ends around a life-sized marble statue of Nabu on the other side of the cathedral. With a snarl and a jerk of her hands, Elyse ripped the statue off its base and flung it. It hurtled through the air and hit the floor with a boom, shattering into a mess of marble chunks.
“Handy,” I said with an appreciative nod, “very handy.”
“The cleric should consider serving the Blood God.” Rami smiled conspiratorially as she gestured at Elyse’s cleric robes, spattered liberally with the blood of Nabu and his followers.
“I guess I was a little overcome when I was, um, taking my vengeance.”
“The whole ‘covered in the blood, brains, and skull fragments of my enemy’ thing probably isn’t the best look for a bishop,” I said. “For a northern barbarian, sure, but for a cleric in the service of the Lord of Light? Not so much.”
“I’ll have to find something else to wear,” she muttered. “I don’t think this mess is going to wash out very easily. I’m sure there are plenty of robes in Nabu’s chambers, though. Let’s go have a look.”
“Shouldn’t we be worried about more guards?” I asked.
“No. Not now that I wear the bishop’s ring.
