Dear Diary,

"Children are meant to be loved, As long as you're doing that, All else is secondary." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Children

As she has shown with all the Verses of the Book of Children, our Goddess' most treasured Domain is this one. While she Passionately seeks Ecstasy, and her Bloodlust has given many Vengeance through Justified Homicide, Children are her greatest Passion. Her least guilty Ecstasy is the simple overwhelming joy she feels at connecting to them and guiding them to grow. Her most passionate Bloodlust, her most Justified Homicide, her bloodiest Vengeance has been inspired by wrongs done to them. With all these Domains, with the founding of the Alliance itself, with her position as High Priestess and Champion of a God of Wisdom, she could have claimed her space in the Temple of Wisdom, of Justice, of Storms, of Kings. Those of us who have paid attention to her open secrets know she could also have claimed the Sun or the Moon. But the Temple she chose, the temple chosen by the Highest Priestess of Tabitha Diaz, not out of expediency or irony or ease, but because upon completion of her Trials the Highest Priestess could think of no more fitting Temple, was the Temple of Love. Because Love is the core of what drives our Goddess, her Values and even her chosen Domains. In this Verses of the Book of Children, she makes the connection between these things, much as she created a School for Children in the Temple of Love. While she knows that Children need nurturing and protection, she is well aware that without love, those practical concerns may not be enough, but with love, even a failure to provide or defend can be forgiven, can be overcome. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Definitely on point with this one, even if I am still a little bit sheepish about the whole 'Love Goddess' thing. I know that sounds super stupid, given that I have literally exchanged semi-public orgasms on the Altar in the Temple of Love in Phileo, and all my other Temples across the Alliance. Shit, this past Revel I wound up projecting an image of me into the M-Space sky above Boltophsberg. But I think part of that might be the subtle thing I don't think about much, that I'm not Blended when I'm Reveling with my watchers. So along with the idea that some of my Revelers, some of the people who've seen my O face, might not recognize me when I'm not fuzzy, there's also maybe that psychological distance.

Weird that it's me without a mask rather than me with a mask, but then I think some tiny part of me still thinks of 'me' as that sorta doughy brown girl with a big smile and ass for days.

At any rate, she's absolutely right. If you love kids, they're gonna know somewhere that you did so. Hell, I know my mom loved me, even if she didn't show it real well, and my biggest complaint is that she didn't, even though I understand why. So I'm glad Kitten got that point across.

Speaking of kids, at sunset yesterday Ilya showed up at the base of the Questing Tentacle's boarding ramp carrying the Mortal remains of Ivan Ivanov. You seeing this, Kitten?

That would explain what set the Sailors off.

Now the only question is whether they did it on purpose or not. That got an odd kind of pause from my mental High Priestess collective as I pushed my Blend up and stepped in behind Karen. Wave him up.

She did so, but before he got to the top of the ramp Tallulah thought, do you really think the Adventurers of Boltophsberg so amateurish that they killed him by accident?

Oh, that? Nah, they offed him on purpose, definitely. The question is whether they meant to set off the riot.

That got another round of silence. When Ilya got Ivan to the top of the ramp, Karen reached out and gently lifted him from the kid's arms. "I have him, Ilya. Come with me, you're safe now."

His signing stilted, halting, from the lack of a hand, Ilya managed to communicate, cut down. Liars.

Take him inside, Karen. I didn't wait for her, I reached out, brushed my hand across Ilya's shoulders, and stepped him into the cabin, dropping my Blend down to normal as I did. "Hold a moment, Ilya."

He jerked, but went still when he heard my voice. I Co-Located to M-Space, pulled Mana from my tentacles, and let Siobhan take over. With enough Mana, a Healer can replace lost tissue. It's not pleasant, and my estimation of Ilya skyrocketed as he clamped his jaw shut and shuddered as his arm grew back, inch by inch, over the next minute.

By the time we finished and Siobhan let go of me, Karen had Ivan laid out on the table in the center of the room. Ilya looked at him, looked at me, and said, why me?

"Because you're the one who can tell me details on what happened in there, but you can't do it with one hand."

He just froze for a second, then shook his head angrily. No, not why did you heal me, I meant why didn't you Revive him?

I'd kind of half expected the question. I sighed, leaned against the wall, and said, "first of all, I can do both. It'll leave me a little winded, sure, especially with it being what, an hour at least since he died?"

About that, Ilya confirmed.

"Yeah, at any rate, I could do that, and I will, but I kinda wanna make sure it's not gonna make things worse."

That got a serious booger look on the kid's face. My lips twisted in something superficially related to a smile. 'The kid'. I wasn't entirely certain he was younger than me. He looked it, sure, but once she stopped the 'serious Healer face' Siobhan looked younger than me too, and she was older than me. Saffron was younger than me, but definitely looked older. Human Adjacent alternate aging fucked with things like that. At any rate, when his hands stopped shaking too much for him to do anything but stutter and stammer, he carefully signed, you think he started this?

I shook my head. "Nah. Not really. I mean, y'all Sailors are fucking up the Adventurers something fierce, but..."

Idiots. Ilya interrupted me. At my raised eyebrow, he practically spat out, we're maybe killing one of them for every half dozen of us that fall, and that's here on our home territory. They're lurinng us back to an ambush.

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I thought about that casualty rate cross referenced with the numbers I'd seen from the Marshall's report. The Adventurers definitely couldn't sustain those losses. Yeah, there were a lot of them, at least twice as many as I'd seen in that big formation, but there were literally tens of thousands of workers in the Sailor's guild, all of whom worked physically demanding jobs and knew the City. A couple hundred Alliance Heroes with support could take fifty thousand untrained rioters in an open field battle, but the Adventurers weren't Mages, didn't have formations of Volunteers around them, and this was urban fighting, which meant in sections of the City that weren't their home ground they had a huge disadvantage.

But the Scribes were Mages. And if there was one thing untrained combatants really sucked at, it was laying siege to a prepared position. They were only slightly better at reacting well to an ambush.

That all flashed through my head in an instant. I took a deep breath. "Okay, Ilya. Tell me, brief but clear, what you remember happening."

He gave me a look, but signed, Andre's dog Casimir came in with four of his lackeys. They accused Ivan of the murder of Sonja Novak, wanted to arrest him. He refused. Casimir drew steel to cut Ivan down. I stepped in the way, Ilya paused, rubbed his hand like he had to remind himself it wasn't gone. I... I tried to stop him, but he punched me with his fist, and I fell. When I came to, Ivan was dead, still sitting in his seat. The barkeep told me he never lifted a hand in his own defense.

I could tell by the confused, angry glance he gave the body that he didn't get that. The kid deserved an answer for that, and even if I didn't know the answer, I could think of at least one thing that wouldn't fuck up his previous low key hero worship of Ivan. It might even be true. "Yeah. That was a shitty position. If Ivan fought, one on five? The best he's gonna do if he fights is die and maybe hurt one of them enough to back up their story about him being violent."

Yeah, the anger on his face went from mixed anger at Ivan and the situation to anger entirely with what had happened. But that was, in a way, an improvement. After thinking a second, I asked, "can the bartender back up your account?"

Ivan shook himself, then shook his head. Maybe. If he's alive. He lead the rest of the bar patrons out to join the mob.

I shook my head, annoyed. What Ilya said pointed at a deliberate provocation. Even if Ivan was in on it, this was still a deliberate provocation, an engineered riot. I wasn't really prepared to believe Ivan was in on it, either. He seemed the kind of guy who would die for a cause, but that cause would be the Sailors. If the fight were one his boys could win, he might do it, but not something like this, not a lure into an ambush that would break the Sailors for good.

I closed my eyes, thinking about what I knew about the Guilds. The Sailors didn't really have a 'headquarters'. The Adventurers and Scribes both worked out of buildings that were part of Vyenemoinen's Palace, which was basically Boltophsberg's City Hall. The Courtesans basically did too. Anything I did against the Adventurers or Mages would probably be spun as an attack on Vyenemoinen himself.

But fuck sitting here letting the Sailors get the shit kicked out of them, fatally for a lot of them, just to let the assholes on top get away with this kind of shit. "Karen? Do we have maps?"

She glanced at Ilya, shrugged, then said, "they're incomplete."

I gently shifted Ivan's body to one side of the table. "Here. Now."

A few moments later she spread a map across the table. 'Incomplete' was an understatement. The waterfront was pretty detailed, as was maybe a six block radius around the end of the Questing Tentacle's dock. About as far as somebody could reasonably go wandering for shore leave, i guessed. Other than that major landmarks stood out, but not much else.

Fortunately, the central building complex of the local government was a major landmark.

Marie? Need you, Mittens.

A moment later Ilya jumped as Marie appeared wearing her Maid's outfit. Before her skirts fully settled, I pulled her into a hug, then pointed at Ivan. "I need you to find his Soul. If he's wandering, bring him back here. If not, let him know I want to talk to him. Reviving him is absolutely on the table if he's willing."

She nodded, head bunted me, and disappeared; the me still in M-Space felt her for a moment before she dashed off along some axis other than the normal six. I turned to Karen and pointed at Ilya. "Keep him safe. Get him some food if we have anything. Clean them both up?"

She nodded to me, which is when I realized she was wearing her Academy uniform. "Champion."

What are you going to do? Ilya asked.

I smiled at him. "What I do best. Fuck shit up. In this case, the plans of the high and mighty."

With that I collapsed to the me in M-Space. I rose into the sky, moving toward the Palace, pulling Mana the whole time. When I had enough in me I glowed a little, I Co-Located back to the Mortal Realm. The Palace stood out, a beautiful complex of buildings, which were also lit up like a lighthouse, especially compared to the darkened streets. Okay, plenty of the streets had lights, but they were all of the 'torches issued with pitchforks' variety, not nice big Mana powered lanterns. They mob had surrounded that formation of Adventurers, who had turned and begun cutting their way toward the Palace. Honestly, if they'd been in Phileo, with it's wide, straight streets, they'd have been there already. The Palace had four wide avenues heading away from it, one in each cardinal direction, and four more at the corners, but the mob had blockaded those streets.

Then lit the blockades on fire.

Yeah, shit was gonna get nasty, because the fires were already spreading, but I couldn't deal with that quite yet.

In M-Space, I got the idea someone inside the Palace was watching me. Not super concerned, because arrogant assholes never are. Then again, matte black tentacles are hard to see in the darkness, and for what I wanted, they were gonna do the bulk of the work.

I poured some Mana to the me in the Mortal Realm, and both of me fired up that public address spell the Academy instructors loved so much. Then again, I kinda agreed. "People of Boltophsberg! Rioters are advancing on the Palace with unknown intentions. The Alliance stands ready to offer humanitarian medical aid to any unarmed persons harmed by this conflict."

Kitten? I sent her the idea of what I needed.

You could have warned me.

Can you do it?

That got nothing but a derisive sniff. She slipped into my mind in M-Space, where she helped me weave the Shape I needed.

While she did. I continued my PSA. "In order to prevent the collapse of Boltophsberg's lawful government, the Alliance will now be placing defensive Wards around the central government complex."

That got a response, sort of. I felt Mana rushing in to a couple individuals. Pyevatar. Lemonkyenin. One other I recognized, but couldn't name. Two more who felt kind of... Bigger. Older. Stronger.

Not fucking strong enough, and nowhere near fast enough.

I slammed a modified Divine Ward around the entire complex on the M-Space side. A moment later, I did the same thing in the Mortal Realm.

Both of them glowed, almost too much to see through. Not because I needed to obscure sight lines, but because I didn't want anyone stumbling into them and saying they didn't know they were there. Because those Wards didn't just stop Gods, Worship, and Mana. My Kitten had also set them to prevent weapons from passing through.

Any kinds of weapons. Arrows. Swords. Thrown rocks. Harsh language.

Heroes.

Then I stepped back to the Questing Tentacle and waited.

You realized they're going to be furious, Goof?

If they're very, very polite about it, they can kiss my entire ass.

A few moments after I got back, lightning struck the Questing Tentacle. I stepped to the crow's nest, where Ilmatar stood looking a little stunned.

"Hey, Illy. Sorry, we build our ships really lightning resistant." I hit the smoldering lightning rod with some Created Water to cool it. "Got a proposition for you, though."

"You wish to steal my Ivan away from me, I knew it!"

I shook my head. "Nope. But do you want him alive?"

She gave me a look. "Who would you sacrifice for him?"

I shook my head. "That's my lookout. None of yours. Simple deal. It rains enough to put the fires out, you get your Ivan back in the land of the living."

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