Eight Arms and the Mask

I have often thought that the greatest weakness of our Goddess Sedenya is that She is marked by magnanimity and kindness in equal proportion to her selfishness and cruelty. When she defeated the older gods at Castle Blue, what she extracted from them was an expansion of the universe to create a place for her and for those of her kind. She did not displace anything, she did not demand the forcible incorporation of the remnant Blue Moon, she did not remake the Air, she did not demand submission, only acceptance of her existence.  Oh, tyrants can never prosper for long, in the grand scheme of things. Her reign would have been foreshortened as those of Orlanth and Yelm the Second were. But if, as now seems increasingly likely, all that we have been, all that we have made over the past four hundred years and change, shall be obliterated from the world, made as if it never were, and its remnants perverted and despoiled, would not it have been better if She had ruled in justice that transform

Leika "Betty" Ballista Taraling, Queen Regnant of the Colymar alliance, looked out over the remains of the day, at the red banners and vexillae haggard in the light breeze as the enemy retreated, and thought of her glorious deeds. Lo! The Quivini stood querulous, absent administration- no. Lacking leadership, when the foe pressed upon them, they routed and broke, beleaguered and brittle-made by the Prince, but then the Colymar arose, the Black Spear flew free, and the blood-clothed- the blood-garbed- the blood-cloaked- "Fuck me, where's my bard?" she said aloud. "Here," Donanarth said from behind her. He had at first tried to insist that he wasn't a bard, that his teacher and master had died so suddenly in the violence of the liberation that he had never been certified past poetry of the second order and humorous anecdotes of a historical character, that true bardship, of rattling off entire genealogies on command, of making remarks so cutting they