While I struggled with my warring desires, we made our way to the temple in the center of the city. We arrived at the front of the gate to find an imposing man standing guard. It was a big gate, so we could have just walked around him, but his formidable outfit made him stand out. Still, well-intentioned travelers like us were always more than welcome at the temple.
For the sake of manners, we offered a brief greeting as we walked past him, but the man stopped us with his booming voice.
“Halt. You must be Lord Chris and Lady Olivia, yes?”
I then noticed that we were surrounded by people with similar clothing—
likely priests?
“My name is Chris, yes. And, um, who are you, exactly? Sir?”
I decided I ought to be polite. He really did look rather important.
“Ah, how rude of me. I am Trabant, unworthy servant of Tria, goddess of law, and head priest of her temple.”
Head priest did, indeed, sound important. I glanced at Olivia to notice her stiffen with surprise. Or perhaps fear?
“Okay, but can you all back off, please? We’ll do what you want. I know you’re priests and all, but Olivia doesn’t like being surrounded by a crowd of men.”
“Oh, my apologies for our lack of consideration! I will show you around the temple. Come now, my brothers, please return to your duties.”
The priests, suitably chastened, bowed their heads contritely and retreated. Wait, the head priest is going to guide us? When did we become VIPs?
“You see, several days ago we received a revelation from the goddess demanding that we guide you two. Since then, I have been waiting at the gate, ready to receive you at any time.”
Needless to say, this came as a shock to me. I was nowhere near important enough to merit a revelation from the goddess herself.
“Lord Chris, the priests are obligated to carry out the goddess’s revelations to the letter. I believe we should go along with him.”
It seemed that, in the priests’ enthusiasm to obey the goddess’s revelation, a great many of them had volunteered to be our guides, so their surrounding us and scaring Olivia had all been an unfortunate accident.
Given the circumstances, I forgave them.
We set off following the priest. Though I say this myself, I was a fairly well-behaved fellow, all in all, so in retrospect there was no reason for anyone to be suspicious of me. Err, that is, setting aside all the stuff I was doing with Olivia on the way there.
So the priest guided us through the temple, and our first order of business, taken care of easily enough, was having the curse removed. It was all over in a flash, quick and painless, like having a caterpillar flicked off your shoulder. I’d been expecting more effort, really, and was somewhat surprised, until the mysterious individual who had removed the curse appeared before us in a flash of coruscating light. And so it was that, in her own Grand Temple, in her Chamber of Epiphany, so rarely visited by even the head priest, the goddess herself came to meet us.
“First, allow me to apologize for the careless acts of Dia, the goddess of love.”
The priests all knelt in reverence, while Olivia was so afraid that she shrunk back and clung to my arm, almost frozen. The goddess went on to explain the reason for her apology, which began with some explanation about this goddess of love, Dia. It seemed her preferred pastime was linking her consciousness with a human girl of her choosing and making her the darling of the era, allowing the goddess to live by proxy a life replete with love.
That, by itself, wasn’t an issue. The girl whom the goddess of love took a liking to was always a widely celebrated beauty, so there was no harm to her if the goddess’s link and its resulting protection were cut off when the girl was married. However, it seemed the goddess had gone a step too far this time.
She’d granted the girl a blessing which brought her more love and respect than ever before. However, it came at a grave cost, essentially using the girl’s older sister as a sacrifice. The result was Olivia’s love-hate-reversal
curse.
I didn’t know whether the gods had together come to some consensus, but if not, then it seemed the goddess of law had chosen to take things into her own hands. The punishment she selected for the goddess of love was, in retribution for the curse of fifteen years, to be sealed away in the void for fifteen hundred years.
That brings us to the main issue at hand. It was all well and good that the goddess of love was sealed away, but she alone had been gracing the world with her protection, and without at least one god’s protection, the world would apparently fall into turmoil. Thus the goddess of law chose to give her own blessing. The goddess turned to me and spoke her words of gratitude for my service to the world, which apparently moved the priests behind me to tears. Seriously, I could hear them sobbing.
“Thus, young mage Chris, I offer my protection to you, the new hero of this era.”
Wait. What?
“Oooooooh, a great hero! An earthly representative has been anointed!”
No, hold up, there’s got to be some mistake here. Goddess, get back here!
You were just messing with us, right?!
“Oh, I almost forgot. In addition giving you my protection, I hereby bless you two as husband and wife.”
Her disembodied voice came from nowhere in particular, but soon dazzling lights twinkled in the air above us. I had seen this magic before, a blessing cast at wedding ceremonies to encourage fertility in the bride and to ease the pain of her future childbirth. The blessing’s strength depended on the position of the presiding priest, so high-ranking priests were much sought-after among the nobility.
This blessing’s scale and brightness were a world apart from the ones I’d seen back in the country. Come to think of it, if royals and dukes got their blessing from head priests, getting my wedding blessing straight from the goddess herself meant I was a pretty big deal, huh?
“…”
Olivia remained frozen next to me, seemingly overwhelmed by events.
Meanwhile, the priests behind us went into raptures over the news, dancing some bizarre dance. Uhh. What do I do now?