Vilja was less than pleased when she heard about the plan in more detail. ”So what you’re saying is that we’re going to do what Alabaster wanted to do? You know, the evil guy we killed.” She asked and packed some tobacco into her pipe while sitting on the roof of a broken-down horse wagon, just so she could look down at Sylvia and feel like she had some authority over her. “And how exactly would doing it not be evil? I literally just asked you to not do anything evil!”

“It was not his goals that made The Great King Alabaster an evil man, but his methods. Deep down, his greatest ambition was to free the mortal realm from the grasp of uncaring and lazy gods. That is a purpose both the Father of Light and I are willing to rally behind. Both of us have seen the wretchedness and corruption of our kind, to a point where some of the most worshipped of us no longer even glance at their ever so loyal followers! This rotten behavior needs to come to an end if we ever hope to regain what little honor gods once held, and I sincerely hope you will aid us in this.” The goddess of joy pleaded on her knees before Vilja.

The young goddess calmly lit her pipe and puffed out some smoke without saying anything. She had heard the plan a couple of times before, but never really paid attention to it and this was the first time she had to give it some thought. She more or less understood what Sylvia was after and why it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing – but there was something else she needed to be sure of.

“I am well aware that what I am asking from you is far from a small favor and runs a risk of both of us being destroyed, but surely you understand that our goals are in the best interests of both the mortals and gods! You know better than anyone that I only seek to make amends for my past and would never even consider asking you to perform a single evil deed.” Sylvia continued her plea.

“Or so you say. You’re thousands of years old and I’ve known you for a very minute part of that, it’s not impossible that you’re just lying to me to get me to help you in some dark ambition you have. Isn’t that right, Pyria?” Vilja grinned and blew smoke at the kneeling goddess in front of her.

“Why… Why would you use that name? You know I have changed since then! My name is Sylvia!” The goddess of joy exclaimed.

Vilja jumped down from her seat, kicked a hole in to the realm and slid the lifeless simulacrum in it to protect him from what was about to happen. The simulacra may have been durable by mortal standards, but for a god they were brittle at best. With the innocent bystanders cleared from the surrounding area, Vilja started hopping around Sylvia and annoying her. “Maybe this is all a ruse, so you can get back to eating those tasty, tasty mortal babies again? Did you even do that? I forgot. Maybe you’ve started to crave for some good old-fashioned torture after all this time? There’s nothing quite like the screams of someone who is being skinned alive, is there? Trust me, I know. You would have fit right in with the folks back at Mournvalley. They were really starting to run out of ideas on new ways to mutilate people, so you could have given them some pointers!” She teased Sylvia, stopped in front of her and leaned in to whisper right in her ear. “Or maybe you’ve been alone for too long and wish to resume some of the other vices you had? If you know what I mean.”

The flowers around Sylvia started singeing, as the heat emitted by the goddess increased. “What are you trying to achieve? I beg of you, please stop saying these things.” She said and clenched her fists tighter.

“Oh! Could it be that I hit a nerve, or maybe I’m getting closer to the truth? People never change, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that applied to whatever you are, Pyria.” Vilja continued to push Sylvia’s buttons and dance around her. “Maybe I should pop back to Valor and see how Emilia is doing? I’m sure she’d be interested in hearing what you are like! It’d definitely be worth seeing whether she’d abandon you or just work with the new ruleset of torture and rape. I’d like to say she’s a good person, but maybe you’ve already made her rotten on the inside?”

“Leave her out of this! Emilia deserves to live without knowing my past!” Sylvia cried as metal wires started growing from her arms and coil around them.

Having found the chink in Sylvia’s armor, Vilja continued to push on it mercilessly. “You did already make her into an alcoholic though, so there’s that. She’ll be thrilled to hear that she doesn’t need to try to stay sober anymore, or does she need a clear head for the baby smashing? Just a warning though, that time your plan got me killed in Crescent, she took it pretty badly and blamed herself. So I suggest you get her very drunk before all the horribleness you have lined up after we go through with this.” Vilja pointed out and leaned on Sylvia’s shoulder. She noticed some molten metal seeping from under her mask and continued. “Ah, but maybe I have this wrong! What if she’s the victim you’re preying on! You’re just trying to keep her happy until we get this thing done for like a mega-betrayal! Wait, she’s still my friend though… I don’t really want you violating her. I really should warn her in advance…”

By then, the goddess of joy was shaking and scorching the entire clearing to a point where the ground had started to melt under their feet. Though Vilja wasn’t really fazed by the heat, it took a lot more than that to even warm up a god.

“You’re kinda ruining my flowerbed here… Maybe deflowering is just your thing huh?” She laughed and started to slowly tear a hole into the realm. “Anyway, I’m off to have a chat with Emilia. You just hold the fort here until I get back and we can see what’s what about this whole plan.”

As Vilja climbed into the hole, she felt something grabbing onto her leg and got pulled back out.

“I… I can not allow that. What you are saying is not at all true. I know it might be hard to believe, but I will prove it with my actions!” Sylvia said and restrained Vilja with the wires that spread from her arms. “I beg that you believe me and stop this nonsense.”

“Well the thing is… You can’t stop me.” Vilja said, smiled calmly and nodded up, where an entire frigate, that had sunk during a naval battle earlier, gathered speed and fell right towards Sylvia.

She hadn’t expected a retaliation from Vilja, whom she considered to be a dear friend, and was smashed into the ground by the ship’s figurehead as rest of it collapsed on top of her.

Freed from the vires, Vilja sat down on a piece of the ship’s mast to poke fun at the confused Sylvia. “Guess we’ll get to figure out whether or not I can eat you if she denounces you!” She heckled the other goddess and was immediately rewarded by a bundle of chains whipping at her but missing by a hair. Vilja wasn’t moving, so it was more than likely never intended to hit.

The ship’s wreckage burst in flames as Sylva crawled out from it. Her mask was dented, and a large splinter of wood had pierced through her arm, right above the wrist. The wound oozed molten metal that quickly burned through the wood and it fell off. “Why are you doing this? I do not understand you at all!” She asked before getting hit by a cannon that fell sideways thanks to Vilja’s trickery and was thrown back into the wreckage.

“You need to do better to stop me, Pyria!” Vilja laughed and took out her pipe once more.

The wreckage exploded, sending burning shrapnel everywhere. A few pieces flew towards Vilja, but she simply stopped them with a few strands of her hair. Sylvia hovered in the middle of the crater and flapped a pair of fiery wings that had sprouted from her back. Any further items launched at her were stopped by barbed wires and sheets of metal she conjured around her.

“Have you lost your mind?! Cease this foolishness immediately!” She continued pleading as she flew towards Vilja, intercepting anything thrown at her. At least until a second frigate appeared above her head, forcing her to stop and concentrate everything she had in tearing the ship apart before it reached her.

“Me? It’s you who wants to continue that madman’s life’s work!” Vilja continued pushing the goddess of joy and used the gap in her defenses by sending a pile of cannonballs at Sylvia, just to have them bounce off her metal corset. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

The same series of events repeated a couple more times: Vilja dropped an entire ship on Sylvia to slow her down and dealt some damage while she was busy stopping it, and Sylvia kept trying to speak sense into her friend in vain; until finally they were only a couple of meters apart.

“Please allow me to explain everything to you. I understand that it sounds absolutely horrid, but just give me a chance!” Sylvia kept insisting. “I am not Pyria.” Even with her garments dented and cracked, she wanted to talk everything through, and even with multiple grievous wounds on her body, she didn’t raise her hand to attack Vilja. “Let us just stop this madness…”

“You could just stay down for a bit and let me pop into the mortal world, or you could destroy me. So which is it: will you die to prove you’ve changed or kill me to protect your little secret?” Vilja asked and grinned wider than ever.

“I choose neither!” Sylvia coughed and tried to restrain Vilja by wrapping her in a bundle of wire and chain and melting them together.

Vilja giggled as the fires in her eyes went out completely, leaving behind only the vacuous, black eye sockets. “Wrong answer!” She laughed as a massive ship of the line materialized above Sylvia. It had caught fire during the naval battle in the mortal world and had a massive hole in the side, where one of the black powder storages had been. The ship’s actual name was ‘Insult to injury’, which the goddess found hilarious but to her disappointment, couldn’t convey to her opponent as her mouth had been covered by the molten mass of metal as well.

This time Sylvia had ample time to avoid the falling vessel, but either couldn’t due to her injuries or didn’t want to, as she didn’t even try to move or stop it before it crashed into her and crushed the goddess into the ground.

Vilja waited for a while to see whether Sylvia would crawl out of the wreckage again, but it seemed like she stayed down this time. While she chewed her way out of her metal shell, the remains of the ships she had dropped on Sylvia slowly turned into dust as she consumed them. Typically, she would have let them be at the bottom of the sea for a while longer, but the area where the battle happened was so deep that there was no hope for recovering anything from them, so they fell under Vilja’s rule almost immediately and just in time for the fight. Once free, she stretched her back walked over to the mangled Sylvia.

The goddess of joy tried to say something but was in far too much pain to be able to do so.

“Shh shh now. You already passed the test, so go ahead and rest – you’ve earned it.” Vilja whispered calmly and carefully wrapped the beaten goddess with her hair.

When Sylvia woke up again, she was still in pain but nowhere near as much as before passing out. Her entire body was wrapped in Vilja’s beautiful, silvery hair, and the small goddess herself was sitting next to her with her face buried in her hands. They were both surrounded by the same old field of flowers they had spent their time on, before the sudden fight. The cinders of Vilja’s forest had also been replaced by and a seemingly endless forest of tree saplings

“Why…” Sylvia uttered before coughing up some more molten metal.

Hearing that, Vilja flinched, wiped her eyes and lifted her head. “Good morning! I can’t even begin to explain how sorry I am… For everything I mean! The things I said were so horrible even I’m disgusted by myself, and the boats…” She said through what was very clearly a forced smile. “Before you ask, I haven’t said anything to anyone. Those were all empty threats and I was never ever ever ever going to go through with them! I just needed to be sure that you were being honest with me, and now I am. I damn near broke you in half and you never as much as looked at me angrily. I was never much of a plotter, so this was the only way I could come up with…”

Sylvia smiled calmly as always and took Vilja’s hand. “This is perhaps the first time I have witnessed you be so serious about any matter. I knew you could be a proper god if you put your heart into it.” She stopped briefly to cough. “I am quite happy to see you act on your own, even if it comes with a slight cost to my wellbeing. Though I must say, your tongue is far sharper than it needs to be. My past is mine to deal with, do not take it so lightly again.” As she said that, her grasp on Vilja’s hand turned into a crushing grip.

“I won’t mention it again. I just wanted to anger you and didn’t exactly have a lot to go on… But you really shouldn’t move around much, I am literally holding you together right now…” Vilja said and made sure everything was still holding on. Sylvia wouldn’t actually die from having her physical body destroyed, but apparently reconstitution was a troublesome affair, so Vilja wanted to avoid it if at all possible.

Sylvia was correct about her taking something seriously for once, Vilja was almost certain that she wasn’t just being used again, but she also knew about her own naivety and decided that it was better to play safe for once – or that’s what she told herself. In truth, her sudden hostility had a second purpose: Vilja wanted to know if she could stop Sylvia. Even is the goddess had reformed, she had never been a normal mortal, and would no doubt have trouble seeing things from their point of view. So Vilja had decided that it was her purpose to make sure the mortal world wouldn’t end up suffering for their plan. Though absurdly unfit for the job, she was still the better candidate from the two of them.

“So can you tell me how us doing this isn’t the same as what Alabaster did?” She asked to distract herself from the guilt and hopefully her friend from her pain.

“Ah! Yes. As I said, his goals were honorable, but methods cruel and unredeemable. There are a few ways to truly destroy a god, but by far the simplest involves separating them from the source they draw their power from. The Great King Alabaster interpret this in a very… characteristic manner and proceeded to massacre entire countries just to get his hands on a god he thought might have been unworthy of their position. He achieved many victories this way, and in process, extinguished the majority of the intelligent life in the mortal realm. Though the remaining mortals hailed him as a great liberator, which he certainly was.” Sylvia explained with as much excitement as she was able to exude in her state. “The power vacuum created by him allowed the creation of many new gods, such as myself, and for a long time these gods worked to improve the lives of mortals. This however, is a distant memory now, and the gods have abandoned their followers once more.”

Vilja nodded. “Right… I know most of this from books in Mournvalley. He kills like a bunch of gods, establishes a kingdom for necromancers, challenges the sun for some reason, gets his ass beaten and at some point, creates a really annoying bracelet and dies. What I want to know is what are we going to do differently.”

“You have the patience of a much younger child, do remember that you are now among the immortal and have all the time in the world. But if you insist, I shall move on with the plan. As I have also said before, we agree with the decision to cull the ranks of gods and remove the ones that have lost their way, and as gods, we are not limited to the brutish ways like he was. I assure you that our conquest will have no ill effects on the mortal world. The exact method will always vary slightly depending on the god, but as long as we successfully force them here, cutting them from their energy source will be child’s play.” Sylvia continued. The long explanation was clearly starting to take a toll on her, as the coughing got worse and her speech slowed down. “Is this enough for you to be able to trust me?”

“My answer hasn’t changed, don’t do anything evil and I’ll be there for you.” Vilja said and placed her hand on the wounded goddess’ chest. “You just rest now, and we’ll get to it once you’ve recovered.”