Finally, Terrance felt useful as he led Persephone deeper into the mountain. The Angelican Sister had been in charge up until now, not just during this invasion but on the whole trip since Brighton. None of the paladins had fought her for control, even though they felt just as at fault for the Elementals falling into enemy hands as she did. She had earned the leadership role too, as they had made excellent time and were now effectively scouring through the Supplanter temple without any opposition.

After dealing with Quarton, they had quickly found a small chapel that looked like it got frequent use, but it was empty, so either the ceremony hadn’t started yet, and the captives were still in a dungeon, or it was happening elsewhere. The two hoped desperately for the first option, and Terrance had led the hunt for the prison cells. The knight had been to many more keeps and castles than Persephone, and even though this structure was a temple in name, it was built much more like a fortress.

After only a few minutes of searching with minimal backtracking, they finally found a stairwell that led down to a dank room with a lone guard on watch. She looked like a body disciple, and Terrance yielded the fight to his partner. The female supplicant had a mace ready and screamed as she charged the pair. The tall islander stepped forward to meet the charge with her swords still on her hips. It looked as if Persephone would try to block the strike with her forearms but spun at the last second, pirouetting out of the way and causing her attacker to stumble forward when her weapon hit only air.

The mace swung down beside the bigger woman’s side, and the former acrobat skipped to that side, grabbed the handle of the over-balanced weapon, and wrenched it from her opponent. The pull on the mace forced the supplicant to spin toward the invader, and she barely got a chance to cry out again as Persephone continued her spin and brought the weapon up to smack the guard in the side of the head.

Terrance winced at the attack, thinking it would be fatal, but he was a trained warrior and saw how the skilled woman’s elbow collapsed when the mace felt the resistance of the doomed woman’s skull, and the power transferred was just enough to knock the guard unconscious. She crumpled to a heap on the floor.

Terrance rushed to the fallen woman to investigate. She was out cold without a trace of blood on the side of her head. Persephone had never held that weapon before, yet she had controlled the force so perfectly on her first strike that the woman might wake without even a bruise. Terrance feared he was falling for her, but when he realized how dangerous that relationship would be, he quickly put romantic thoughts aside and reached instead for the ring of keys on the guard’s hip.

As he rose, Terrance found he was again not needed, as Persephone had located the one cell that still had someone in it and had already forced the door open, the sound of the snapped lock reverberating through the stone room. The knight tossed the keys back onto the prone woman and jogged over to attend to the prisoner. It was Sir Jenkins.

Terrance breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the leader of his Order was not dead. However, as his companion effortlessly lifted him off the floor, out of the cell, and over to a table in the center of the dungeon, the paladin wondered if the older man wouldn’t be dead shortly. His body was covered in dried blood and bruises. It looked like his arm had been broken, and the raspy breathing made Terrance think that one or more of his ribs were also probably cracked. Persephone had been a perfecter before joining the sisterhood, and so, despite her connection to the physical element, she had no divine healing powers without the Elemental.

“I think I can do something for him,” Terrance said, and the woman backed away to give him access. Terrance was a young knight and did not specialize in healing, but all paladins were trained in the essentials. Even a little blessing would be beneficial in easing the older man’s pain, even if it did not save him. After a few minutes of meditation, Terrance moved his glowing hands over the worst of the wounds as he could see them. He focused on Jenkin’s chest, and the labored breathing relaxed a little.

After a few more minutes, the head paladin opened his eyes and winced as consciousness brought back the pain. Still, he managed to sit up and shove off Terrance’s insistence that he remain still.

“I’m okay,” he lied, though, other than the broken arm, there was no permanent damage that would prevent him from moving about. He was not without his own healing powers, and while he sat there in meditation, he seemed to grow stronger as his shoulder’s straightened and his breathing improved further. Eventually, he hopped off the table and could stand with minimal assistance.

He looked at his rescuers briefly as if seeing them for the first time. He had never seen Persephone before, but his face lit up when he saw Terrance. “They tortured me to get information about the location of the last Elemental, but I didn’t tell them. It looks like they got it anyway. Last night I had three cellmates.” He motioned to several of the empty cells around him. “Dame Emoyen and the two youths. I wasn’t in much shape to talk with them, but I assumed bad news.”

Terrance nodded. “They have all four elementals. We assume the Supplanter will want to transfer them as soon as possible. He’s probably doing it right now. Were you awake when they led the prisoners out this morning?”

Jenkins shook his head, but then all three of them braced as they felt a slight tremor, and the sound of exploding rock echoed up from one of the tunnels leading out of the dungeon. “No,” Jenkins answered the question aloud, “but I think I know where they are now.”

The three didn’t say anything else and moved as quickly as Jenkins could manage down the appropriate tunnel.

Sera felt the rush of power into her, but she was ready for it now. Already having the body Elemental inside her gave the young woman a firm anchor to consciousness, and she wasn’t sent reeling. It helped that the mind Elemental was now divided among three people, as Emoyen was still holding on to life with everything she had. It also helped that Ethan wasn’t a walking library, and other than a few interesting facts about blacksmithing, Sera wasn’t overwhelmed with knowledge.

She looked mournfully at her love as Ethan’s life ebbed away but knew that this was necessary to ultimately save him. Unlike an axe, spear, or sword, a dagger kills slowly, and even without divine healing powers, Ethan would be able to hang on for a while. Still, his inevitable death entered the young woman into the contest for the mind Elemental, and she fought with a vengeance.

Looking up from her crouched position, she saw Prince Dantell falter. He had been preparing another epic lightning strike, but the energy he had required to free himself from the stone tower took a while to build back up, and the knowledge on how to do that quickly ebbed out of him. As she stood, Sera saw his feet gently alight back on the stone dais, and the wind which whipped about him slowly died down. His ever-present storm was only mist and a few sparks now, and the young woman smiled at his handicap.

She didn’t have the knowledge yet on how to use the mind Elemental appropriately, and with Dantell in possession of the wind sapphire, she wasn’t going to do any flying, but she did KNOW what she had to do. Sera doubted he would be able to make his body insubstantial with his waning control and strode purposefully toward him, clenching her right hand into a tight fist as she drew power up from the stone beneath her.

Dantell grew nervous at the approaching woman and threw several more lightning bolts at her that did nothing more than highlight her stern visage. He attempted to float away again and did manage to jump over the wide crevice he had carved into the platform earlier. Sera didn’t slow and took two running steps toward the canyon’s edge before leaping high into the air. The prince smiled at her vulnerable position away from the ground, but fear crept into his mind as the disappearing knowledge left a void.

She seemed to hover over him, twenty feet in the air with her arm swept back, the tatters of her clothes rustling about her body as if she were a mythical warrior of legend leaping out of the abyss to pulverize her foe. Her right fist was cocked and looked like a block of granite poised to strike. Dantell only managed a few harmful sparks in her direction as she landed before him and delivered her massive punch. Her fist was granite, and as her feet touched against the stone just as her knuckles connected with his very tangible chest, she funneled as much power from the earth into her strike as possible.

Dantell shot through the air like a ballistae bolt, striking the cavern wall so hard that he rebounded twenty feet before the shattered wall crumbled behind him into a massive pile of rubble. Sera knew he wasn’t dead, even though that punch would have killed a dragon, but she KNEW what to do. Before leaping off the raised platform after him, Sera scooped up the spear and then took to the air again. Feeling more comfortable in flight as the mind Elemental settled into her more fully, and the physical presence of the bird she had killed rose to the surface, she floated gently to the ground before the doomed prince.

He was lying face down, and Sera flipped him with her foot. His chest was utterly collapsed, his ribs having been turned to powder from her punch, but not before shredding his heart and lungs. He should have been dead, but with the life Elemental, he didn’t need to breathe to live and instead lay there, eyes wide open in exquisite pain with no ability to talk or scream.

Sera wasn’t one to quip and stabbed the spear down through his chest and into the stone beneath, pinning him like a bug. Now Sera did stagger, as the transfer of the life Elemental was more instantaneous, Dantell dying before the spear finished quivering in his chest. The young woman lost her footing on the rocks beneath her and fell to a sitting position and then forward to brace her hands on the ground as she felt the rush of power move through her.

It seemed to snap into place after several moments, and with her new outlook on life, she could feel one nearby steadily slipping away. She rose to her feet, running, jumping, and flying toward where she had left Ethan. Emoyen lay there too, her breathing steady. The paladin no longer had a supernatural Elemental sucking her life away, and since Sera had closed the wound and healed it as best she could, the woman would survive.

Ethan was another story. Sera KNEW she was the Savior, and to lock the last Elemental in place and complete the transformation, Ethan needed to die. He had already given his life to her, much as Natasha had done for him. Sera KNEW it was required and gripped the dagger in his chest to finish the process. She held him in her arms, feeling his life ease out as gently as she could manage.

The imbalance in Sera’s nature with three full Elementals inside her and one partial was slowly righting itself, like a safe tumbler slowly clicking toward the last digit in its combination.

As the last bit of energy flowed into her, Sera rose from her love and became light.

In the tunnel, still over 100 yards from the vast cavern, Jenkins stumbled.

“Are you okay?” Terrance asked, but then he felt it too and fell to his knees.

The world had suddenly changed.

Outside on the mountain slope, Gerhold and Celaina had avoided the worst of the avalanche and had found the few supplicants who had survived, still fighting for their master. The paladins were each far more skilled than any two of the fighters, but close to ten of the devoted soldiers had found them, and even after the paladins had dispatched five of them, the others came on more determined.

Gerhold was remembering all the wounds he had obtained since the beginning of this adventure and was in the process of collecting a few new ones. He wasn’t going to hold up much longer. And any hesitation the attackers might have had in striking an older woman disappeared when Celaina had taken down three of them in the initial moments of the fight. Now three more surrounded her, and after a blow to her head from a club, she stumbled to her knees and waited for the killing strike.

It never came. Instead, the heavens opened up, and light poured down on top of them. It wasn’t sunlight, for the sun was still rising in the east. Instead, it was pure white, and the two paladins could clearly feel its Divine source. Everyone dropped their weapons and fell to their knees. Even the injured men, though not dead, sat up, giving their wounds no regard and prostrating themselves.

“The Supplanter has awoken,” one of them said, though even he felt that this was more a Divine power descending than a human ascending. Still, the supplicants didn’t know what else to think.

Soon, the crowd was no longer kneeling but lying face down. The light had a weight to it, seemingly trying to penetrate deep into the mountain. Gerhold could feel his wounds healing and his mind clearing but worried the strength of the light would eventually undo him. Turning his head, he saw his wife struggling similarly and reached out to her to join hands and pray.

Sera stood beneath the light that streamed into the cavern unhindered by the hundreds of yards of stone between her and the heavens above. She did not bathe in the illumination but was its anchor, which originated as much from her as it did from the Divine above. She was the Divine Savior, not just a human who had achieved godhead, but a Divinely blessed individual chosen from the beginning of the world to one day bring purity and perfection back to all life.

Seraphima felt secure in her transformation and ended the light show, sensing the struggling people on the slopes above her. She felt more than their struggles too. She felt the pain of those trapped beneath the avalanches. The tortured body of Jenkins, just outside the cavern, was a wound in her soul. Even the few supplicants that Terrance and Persephone disabled cried out to her in pain.

But more than that, she felt everything everywhere. Babies cried. People died of disease. Families mourned the loss of a loved one. Bullies picked on smaller children. Rapists, murders, and thieves plied their dark trades. Politicians cheated, and people in power abused their authority.

But she felt the good too. Lovers embraced each other. Children played. Adults laughed and celebrated. Families ate meals together, and workers looked over their job sites with a sense of pride. Sera didn’t have time for all of this right now, but she reached out to all of those people at once to give them momentary assistance. Those in pain, she granted relief. Those about to do wrong, she gave a moral sense of hesitancy. And those who were happy, she gave a further understanding of fulfillment. It was a brief blessing, but everyone everywhere in the world had a momentary sense that something had changed.

Sera hadn’t realized she had closed her eyes, but she opened them now, trying to bring her mind and heart back to the situation around her.

Ethan lay motionless on the ground.

“Oh, Ethan,” she cried and leaned down to bring him up into her arms, his body still warm. She kissed him as he had kissed her. But instead of only passion, she filled him with everything she had: heart, mind, body, and most of all, life. He came alive in her arms almost immediately, the first of humankind to be renewed. She felt awkward holding him off the ground like a child and gently set him back on his feet.

Ethan took no time to adjust, knowing instantly what had happened as his mind had been made pure. He dropped to his knee and bowed his head. “My Savior.”

Sera chuckled. “Ethan, it is still me.”

He dared to look up at her. “It doesn’t look like you.”

Sera looked down at herself and understood why. Gone were her tattered clothes, and instead, she was robed in a sparkling white gown, trimmed with gold and silver that glowed as if the sun shone at it from every angle. She also noticed that as she looked down at Ethan, she was looking WAY down. She must be over seven feet tall. With hardly any effort, she reduced her size to something Ethan would remember and turned down the brightness of her attire.

“Is that better?” she asked.

“Nothing you can do will change what you’ve become,” he said solemnly. “But,” he grinned, “it is a little better.” He stood quickly and boldly hugged the Savior of the world. She hugged him back.

Ethan pushed away for a moment. “I thought, ‘The faithful alive inherit first.’ Why did you renew me before the others?”

She smirked at him. “Since when did you become an expert in the ancient prophecies?”

Ethan shrugged. “I just know them.”

Sera laughed. “There was no one who believed in me more than you. And you were only mostly dead.”

That made them both think of Emoyen, who was barely alive, and Sera knelt before the woman and renewed her as well, only this time, without the kiss. As the paladin woke, though, Sera looked her in the eyes and realized that she did love this woman, perhaps not as she did Ethan, but she knew that she would need to have a deep emotional connection with everyone she saved. Still, she quickly rose before the paladin embraced her.

If she loved everyone, where would that leave her and Ethan? She turned to the young man, and they read it in each other’s eyes. Sera already KNEW it, and Ethan wasn’t slow in figuring it out. “I love you,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry it’s taken this long for me to say it. But now I fear . . .”

“Do not fear, my love,” she said. “There is nothing now to fear. All is going to be as it should be. You know what I must do. You gave your life to save me; now I must give mine to save the world. Many will say that they love me for decades to come. But please know that none of them will have a place in my heart before you.”

“But what will I do without you? How can I go on?”

Sera tried not to laugh at him. Ethan had been made perfect for less than five minutes, and already he was displeased with it. “Oh, child,” she said, and though she didn’t mean to be condescending, her position of authority and station was made clear by her words. “I will always be with you. But we can’t exist as we want. I think you know that. But I will not leave you alone.”

Ethan wondered what she meant and then saw a light growing from within the crevice that split the room. Within a few seconds, Natasha rose from the depths, her body aglow with the white light of Divine splendor. She alighted gently on the platform and already knew everything that had happened. Her eyes met Ethan’s, knowing the anguish he was in and not wanting to insert her where she didn’t belong. The young man allowed no doubt to creep into her mind and raced over to embrace the woman.

Sera smiled at the pair, confident they would find the love that Natasha regretted not having earlier. She could not tarry, though, for she had much more to do. Before she left, she summoned the last two natural elementals to her. The diamond and ruby were still embedded in her palms, and she placed the sapphire over her heart and the pearl upon her forehead. Both also sunk into her skin until they became permanent adornments.

With a smile to Emoyen, who was slowly getting to her feet, Sera rose from the ground straight up to the ceiling. The stone parted for her, creating a hollow sphere around her body that closed behind her once she ascended high enough.

Emoyen looked away from Ethan and Natasha, wondering if her love, Diedre, would eventually be restored. Already she missed her sisters. As if on cue, Persephone raced into the cavern, followed not too far behind by Terrance and Jenkins. Emoyen jumped down from the raised platform and ran to meet her sister, embracing her and exchanging a friendly kiss on the cheek.

“You are all right,” the taller woman said, and as Persephone looked her friend up and down, she whistled. “You are more than all right.”

“I have been renewed,” she said. “We were wrong about everything. Well, not everything, but some things. I mean we . . .”

The islander laughed. “Enough. I shall hear about it soon, I am sure. So, the Savior has come? Not the Supplanter, I hope.”

Now Emoyen laughed. “Thank the Savior, no. Not him.” She told the story.