Elise finally managed to contain her outburst.
The result was unsettling: the top of the temple was completely stripped of everything that had been there before. Thrones, ornaments, servants… everything vanished as if it had never existed. Only we remained, under the open sky, in an atmosphere heavy with unstable power.
"Are you better?" I asked, watching her pant. It wasn't fatigue; with the amount of faith she had absorbed, she was at the most powerful point of her entire existence. Even so, her energy remained chaotic.
"Yes…" she replied after a few seconds.
"Good…" I said, stepping closer and patting her neck. "Let's resolve this."
"No. I'm fine like this," she replied seriously, regaining a firm composure.
"What?"
"Only now do I notice how much I've changed," she answered. "I didn't realize that absorbing that faith was altering me… but I don't care. I can control it. Adjust it little by little. But I am not going to let go of this power."
She turned toward me as she spoke. Her tone was eloquent, overly calculated, almost enlightened. It wasn't her usual way of expressing herself. She seemed to have had a revelation: she was using her entire cognitive capacity, amplified by faith.
"I have never had so much power," she said. "And although I haven't mastered it completely yet… with this, I believe there is nothing I cannot do. Even change the past. Save my mother. Punish her killer. Meet you sooner…"
As she said it, she rubbed against me naturally, as if those ideas were obvious.
"I am going to keep this faith," she added, confident and calm. "I will fix it by gradually changing the people's perception of me, until their belief stops deforming me. At some point… I will be almost exactly what I should have been."
"Elise…" I sighed. "You're wrong."
"No," she denied calmly. "I have never been so lucid. Well… perhaps not entirely. Some of the gods they worshiped here were mad and cruel… but they are balanced by the others."
She said it with cold analysis, a byproduct of the faith directed at intelligent deities.
"All this power opened my mind," she continued. "I've re-evaluated my life, my decisions… even you. The idea that I shouldn't be bothered by mortal women is true. What we have is above that." She looked at me with a mix of love and something almost maternal. "The faith of those evil gods helped me understand you better. Carnal pleasure is part of your nature… and it doesn't bother me. I will even help you. Because you are the moon in my starry sky, the sun that illuminates my days…"
Seeing her so centered and, at the same time, shifting emotional registers with such ease was strange, almost comical… and deeply terrifying.
I had to stop her.
"No," I told her firmly. "Even if you wanted to, you couldn't. The faith you absorbed won't serve you when we return to our time. In the future, those religions won't even exist. There will be no worshipers… or not enough of them."
My words made her eyes widen with a genuinely surprised expression. For an instant, she looked like the old Elise again: a bit clueless.
All that faith made her more powerful, more intelligent… but it didn't prevent her from still having blind spots. Perhaps it even amplified them.
"We can solve it," she insisted. "The faith won't disappear immediately. I can rebuild those religions from scratch, but done right this time. Even if I have a period of weakness, I will rise as a true goddess." Her voice became almost messianic. "I will bring peace and harmony to a world that needs it. Humans are problematic… my presence will end wars and disasters. No one will suffer anymore from the malice of a few. They need a god to believe in. And their faith will give me the power to bring happiness to everyone…" She looked at me with sincere love. "Especially to you. I will be able to give you everything you want. In the future, there are no gods. Only me. And I will make sure it is the world of your dreams."
Her hoof rested on my face. It was heavy and soft at the same time, charged with power, influencing me unconsciously. Pulling it away cost more than it should have.
If it weren't for the fact that I had a part of Elise within me and my other peculiarities… I might have been moved enough to become just another worshiper.
Is this how others felt under my own auras? That irresistible sensation, so hard to reject…
Fortunately, my other abilities prevented me from losing control completely.
Though, unsettlingly, my penis reacted by pure inertia, as if a part of me wanted to submit… and dominate her at the same time.
"Elise… it's not worth it," I said, gently lowering her hoof from my face. "This faith isn't what we're looking for, remember? We can acquire all the faith we want, but only after you consolidate the divinity of your domain. Once you do that, no matter how much faith you absorb, it can never change you completely. We are so close… do you really think it's worth risking everything? If I want you by my side, I want you to be the real you, not a version molded by the beliefs of strangers."
Elise looked at me with doubt. Then, her gaze drifted toward the sun in the distance, one of the divinities the humans had attributed to her. She wavered. The power of faith was intoxicating… or perhaps that was exactly what faith did. Were gods strong because of faith, or did faith create them? Perhaps, inside her, those beliefs were trying to revive the ancient gods through her. After all, those faithful hadn't worshiped Elise from the start: they had simply confused her with their absent deities.
"Besides," I continued, "don't you remember what awaits you back at the fief? This is just an avatar. Your real body is there… in your own world, the one we built together. And you know who is waiting for us there." I stroked her face carefully. "Do you really want your faith to come from these humans? Or from your true people? They are there, the fruit of our work and our love. They should grant you your first divinity through faith. Not a confusion… but the worship of the true Elise. Not only do they deserve that. You deserve it."
Elise's vacant gaze sank into the void, as if she were contemplating that growing world. It was still expanding, and the beings inhabiting it—though still in the process of evolution—already closely resembled the image she had desired… an image that this faith, while not erased, had distorted, pushing her perspective toward something far from what she had been.
"You're right…" she finally said, closing her eyes with a hint of annoyance, but sincere. "I don't know why I held humans in such high esteem just because there are many of them and they can give me much faith… they will never compare to the true definitive race."
"Wow… that sounded so much like you it's scary," I commented, seeing her regain her judgment.
"Fine. Let's forget all this faith… though I liked the power it gave me. In the end, even though it was immense, it did almost nothing. I just stayed here, enjoying it," she huffed, moving away slightly. "It's the fault of the image mortals have of their gods. And… I really wanted to make this place so beautiful it would leave you speechless. To surprise you with everything I achieved… though, to be honest, I was so confused that the sacrifices and sex slaves would have been countless."
Now far enough away, Elise frowned. Her body began to glow as she tried to free herself from the ties that had formed upon becoming the "goddess" of those natives. But it wouldn't be easy.
Hannah clung to me as her eyes began to lose focus. The divinity Elise exuded was altering not just the environment, but also the minds of people for miles around. We two were the most affected by the proximity. I was fine—my mind, as always, was an impenetrable bastion—but I felt… tired. Divine power couldn't break the "void" that protected my mind, but it did cause friction. I would have to keep that in mind if I ever fought gods or beings of similar power.
Elise fought against that "borrowed divinity," trying to rip it off. But it wasn't simple. She had grown accustomed to it, and now it clung like a parasite. The biggest problem wasn't letting go of the power… but the people who still believed in her.
As long as there were humans convinced she was their goddess, that faith would continue to fall upon her. No matter how much she resisted now that she had accepted it once, if the true gods to whom it was directed did not reappear, it would always return to her, fed by the belief that "she" was their "goddess."
After a long while, the light emanating from her body diminished, though it did not disappear completely. Elise panted, now truly exhausted.
"I… tried," she said sadly. "But I couldn't get rid of everything."
Her tone and way of speaking were much closer to the Elise I knew. She wasn't completely herself yet… but she was close.
"It will be a slow process," I replied. "But as long as that faith doesn't control you, we'll be fine. When we leave this campaign, we can take advantage of the restoration to leave everything as it was before. For now, you just have to endure like this."
Elise rested her head, exhausted, on my shoulder, as if dozing. I stroked her while we established a telepathic connection to analyze everything that had happened. Hannah, for her part, was sitting with her knees wide and a blank stare, as if she had lost her soul. Seeing so much divine power from a mortal perspective had consequences… but she would recover with time.
Now we understood how it had all happened. Elise, as a real goddess in the process of consolidation, was a perfect catalyst for faith. That's why it was so easy for her to absorb it, especially when the original gods had disappeared. If absorbing faith were that simple, new gods would have emerged long ago. Our "incorrect/erroneous" presence allowed it. At least, now we had experience for the future. In a way, Elise had been our test subject for the upcoming gods in our group.
The faith she still possessed would be suppressed until the end of the campaign. She would take advantage of the power it gave her, but she would reject any new faith. Making everyone stop worshiping her would be unnecessary and complex. It was enough for her to learn to control her absorption. If all went well, this avatar would reach a stable state of a demigod: not too much faith, not too little. An acceptable balance.
There was still much to resolve. Among it, going back home.
To avoid problems, Elise summoned the priests—former mages subdued by her power and divinity, who in the end were converted into clergy—to inform them she was leaving. The news was not well-received, but no one dared to question it, especially when she explained she was leaving with her husband to try to conceive a little god. The looks of surprise, envy, and worship directed at me were… notable.
With the excuse that it might take a few years, we left, leaving instructions to manage the religion in a way that the faith toward Elise would be more controllable.
On the way, we passed through the other cities that also worshiped her as a goddess to repeat the announcement. They were many. Far too many. And the devotion was overwhelming.
The reason so many humans surrendered so easily to Elise was simple: the absence of the ancient gods. The presence of a real divinity in a world empty of them was like rekindling an extinguished fire… born from the ashes.