A Real Goddess Would Let Nobody Die

I landed at the base of the rock.

"Hello, Sister," I said, strangely calm. "It's good to see You."

I used My healing abilities to check Izena's mind, as I had done with the storm fly.

...<worry>...<anxiety>...<regret>...<protectiveness>...<affection>...<tenderness>...<determination>...Sister needs me!...<worry>...

"Fluuhhhhhhh....." I touched My necklace, and sat crouched next to Izena for about ten seconds, eyes closed.

I am Focus incarnate.

I tried a little bit of healing, to see if My spells would be able to reconstruct, interpolate, anything at all, or if it had been too long, the decay from the original too great.

...<worry>...<regret>...<love>...I will never ever leave her alone!...<determination>...<adoration>...Little sister needs me!...

That seemed like progress.

"Ok Sister, here goes."

A Goddess does not do half-measures. She is excessive. She is spectacular. She is extraordinary.

Like My Sister.

The Goddess of Salvation would hold nothing back today.

I ramped well past the point of pain.

My bones cracked and healed and cracked again, My skin split and resealed and split again. The world oscillated black to white to black as My own brilliance blinded Me then healed the blindness.

I used the life-guiding arts of white magic to shunt My personality into half of My brain, preparing to reconstruct the pattern that composed Izena inside the other half. We would not be one mottled mess like the storm fly and its enslaver, not a master and its minion, no tendrils from One creeping into the Other. We would share. Two minds in one mind, separate and equal personalities, distinct but fused.

Then, I caused the Light to be swallowed by the Void on the ground, connecting it to My Own mind, at the other end of the torrent of Light.

...<love><love><love><love><love><love><love><love><love><love><love>...

The raw intensity of it knocked me over, gasping.

I got back up and into position once the nausea had faded. That had turned me into a 964 year old girl who needed her sister back.

"Come on, sister. Not just your core. Thoughts too. Your personality. Your charisma. Your skills. You need to remember who you are."

...<love><love>...<confusion>...<love><love>...<confusion>...<love><love><love>...

"That's it, think! Stretch. Push through!"

...<love>...<confusion>...<love>...<love><hope>...<regret>...<awe>...

"Please Izena, more than echoes of emotions," I urged. "Thoughts. Logic. Can you do it?"

...<love>...<regret>...<confusion>...sister?...<awe>...

"Yes! I am here! I am your sister! You are my sister! You would never leave me! And yes, I am awesomely powerful. I do not need to let anyone die, you least of all."

...<guilt>...<remorse>...<confusion>...<worry>...<lonely>...sister?...

My hope turned into frustration and desperation. It was mostly cycling through her core feelings. The spell had access only to the skeleton of the mind and a few stray details, not enough to reconstruct Izena's full richness. The magic needed help. Izena's mind had lost too much of itself, and needed to be reminded what it once was.

The solution was obvious.

"Let me show you, sister, who you were. Let me show you who you are, who you will always be. Not to the world. Not to your worshippers. To me. To Menelyn."

I had never been so thankful that my memories had never faded. After nearly 1000 years of the Izena of my undamaged memories being the single most important thing in my life, I had a better appreciation of who she was than even she did. I would be able to bring my sister back, because she had never really left me.

One by one, I poured every single memory I had of Izena into her mind, everything I knew about her, everything I had ever seen, every single thought I had ever had that Izena had influenced, all of the impact that she had on me, every decision I had made in which I considered her advice, every time I felt pride in being her sister, every time I felt thankful that she was there for me, every time she teased me, every time she made me giggle, everything Izena meant to me, I showed to her. Izena would learn about herself, as I had learned about her.

And then I remembered. She would be saved because the Goddess of Salvation had Decreed it.

"Take this from Me, mind interpolation spell. Use this. Use it to figure out what goes in the gaps. You hold all of the mana of the Goddess of Salvation, all that I can give without removing Myself from the world. Save My Sister. The Resurrection of Justice will be Salvation's Greatest Miracle."

Now, Menelyn spoke to Izena.

"I will make you remember. I'm your sister. I know you better than anyone. You were always able to read my mind. Read my mind. Take who you are from it. Become yourself once again."

As the memories circulated, I would tell her who she was, and who she was to me. I would call my sister back to me. She always came whenever I called, even if I didn't call. That would not change now.

"Are you ready? Listen," I warned her.

"When your sister let you and father die to save herself, your immediate response was to worry about the guilt and self-hatred and loneliness she'd feel, and regret that you wouldn't be able to comfort her."

But you were able to comfort her from beyond the grave anyway, through the memories you had already provided her.

"You felt this so strongly, that your desire imprinted on your mana, and held it together."

How can I ever thank you?

"You fought the enemy of humanity alone and won."

The true enemy fears Justice even now.

"You were excessive, spectacular, and extraordinary in every way. You are my hero. You are who I aspire to be."

I love you.

"Your magic is so beautiful that I need to heal my eyes after watching it."

I can't wait to see what you can do now, with our combined power. I think you'll be able to one-shot a storm fly.

"Uh, I don't mean that in a bad way. That's a good thing. You know what I like. Oh shut up, I know you're crying from laughter in there."

Although I'll never say it, I love it when you tease me, and I know that's why you do it.

"You would hug a girl you just met even when she will make you smelly and gross."

After all, that's why we're here of all places.

"You would get excited about that girl's magic, to show her that there's no such thing as 'too magical' to you."

I've learned to embrace how magical I am, thanks to you.

"You would praise her and show off her mana-sword skills to everyone, acting like she's the one doing you a favor, so she can see that she doesn't need to apologize for being extraordinary and the center of attention."

That helped me stop being so timid, you know. If you thought I was extraordinary and cool, then I must be, and it must be a good thing.

"You're so cool...maybe a little cocky."

You know you are, too. Seriously, who unironically calls herself a goddess and encourages her sister to do the same?

"You told your little sister that she earned her worship, and that she was objectively divine. Recently, I understood what you meant. I am the Goddess of Salvation, and I always will be. Not just like one, a genuine Goddess, forever. I claimed it."

And You are one, too.

"You say that you can only break things and I'm the one who fixes them, but then how have you been healing me since the day we met, even when all I had was memories of you?"

Even when you were gone, memories of you raised me. See for yourself, I'm showing you right now.

"You're always a helper."

To me most of all.

"The world calls Me Salvation, but sometimes even Salvation needs saving. If You aren't here, then Who can I pray to?"

No one.

"Your little Sister is not so little anymore, Izena, but She still needs You, even now."

She always will.

"If you don't come whenever I need you, I might miss dinner. You wouldn't want that."

Please come back to me.

"You lingered for 944 years because You knew I would need saving again."

It wasn't working. Ahhhhh.....

"So Come. Back. To. Me," I screamed hoarsely. "You are the Goddess of Justice, and a real Goddess would never die!"

Nothing was happening.

"Please come back to me," I whimpered. "Without the ocean, the mainland isn't even an island."

Nothing.

"And, the world needs You too, and stuff."

I was desperate.

"And...We'll be really cool! I'm really powerful now, and You'll get to share it."

Bargaining.

"Doesn't that sound nice?"

Nothing.

"...please don't leave me all alone again," I whispered, broken once more. What had it all been for? 944 years, ascension to literal divinity, and I still couldn't save her.

I stared at the black smudge that had been my sister.

It pulled itself together, disappeared from the ground, and climbed up the beams of Light connecting it to me.

Instantly, my aura was no longer a pure white glow. There were now black arcs coursing through it, racing across the surface of my body like lightning across clouds.

"Little sister." Izena's words used my own mouth, my own voice. "I did not fully understand what is happening right now from that rush of memories. They went by too fast and I did not catch all the details, and I was never fully lucid until the end. We will get to that, but first I need to make some things absolutely clear."

She paused for effect.

"I was so proud of you for making the right decision, so glad that you did not make an idiotic emotional mistake, and I will never, ever, ever, ever leave you alone, ever again. We are bound, permanently and irreversibly, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

I collapsed onto my back.

"Are you real?" I asked in a monotone. "Or have I gone insane? Or are you a fake that I created? A manifestation of my own perception of you?"

I refused to put any faith in it. Wishful thinking is dangerous.

My left hand rose from the ground without my will, and fired a thunderbolt into the sky.

"I think I'm real," Izena said, again using my own mouth and voice. "I do not think it's possible to fake that. You would not know how to cast that spell, and if I understood the storm fly memory correctly, only my fully-reconstructed mind stored in a body, not the echo in mana, is connected to my mana in a way that can cast magic without my mind consuming itself. I remember dying, or the time shortly before, as if it just happened. Now I feel normal, except I feel like we are two separate personalities, in your body? Is that right?"

I, the millennium-old Goddess of Salvation, started sobbing incoherently.

Izena had to wait before saying anything more, because we share the same body now.