Penance

                                    

                                          
                 Falaya knelt near a small stream, the trees rose above her providing a feeling of shelter as she concentrated on the water flowing across the smooth pebbles and the gurgling sound it made. She dipped her hand into the water and brought it to her face to wash away the tears that stained her cheeks. She took several long deep breaths before sitting back on her heels and looking skyward. She had barely managed to get her emotional feelings under control but her heart would remain forever broken. She had reached out with her mind to get a sense of the damage and felt it, all of it, their anger, their hatred, their sadness and their death, so many deaths.  
          She had left the temple only after making sure those that wished to remain were safe in her Inner Sanctum. They were so few yet regardless of the carnage taking place in the village's, humanity would move on, with or without her.  Ohas and Mira would remain as their protector and guides. She only hoped they had learned from her mistakes and would make better decisions than she had.  Fayala attempted to make one last psychic joining with her Sisters, the two beings she held most dear in this world, but she was too distraught to make the connection,  it pained her that she might never see them again. 
          Fayala passed a field where hundreds of  shattered bodies littered  the ground, their blood blackened the soil.  She approached a group of humans that had gathered in mass along a wood line a safe distance from the last of the Spirit Priestess temples. She was unsure as to how the people would react to her.  The survivors were tired, angry and in no mood to pay homage to any deity, not even Fayala, the Earth Goddess. She was deserved of their ire, even more so than the Spirit Priestess for it was she who created the Order. Ultimately it was she who destroyed their homes, placed them in servitude and took their children from them.  
     Fayala had to accept the responsibility for what has happened, so many people killed on account of her. She had allowed her own feelings of vengeance to cloud her thoughts and wrongly believed that humanity should be strictly controlled.  
    Fayala looked skyward, they believe me to be a God she thought, Perhaps it's time I acted as one.  She must not give up and while they may not accept her help, humanity needed Goddess Fayala to put an end to the carnage.
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          Amitabha was exhausted, her servants and temple priestesses were either dead or had been dragged away by the humans. She had withdrawn to her shrine having made a last stand on the crest of the hill just below her temple. The humans had retreated but only after hundreds had succumbed to her psychic  onslaught, their bodies lay on the slope of the hill one atop the other like so many chords of stacked wood. 
     She was the first, and last of the Circle, her energy was all but depleted and she was about to use the little psychic power she had left to  reach out for help. There were few options available and the chances of her surviving another assault was slim.   Amitabha  took a breath and concentrated ...
 "I hear you, my Spirit Priestess." It was the Goddess herself, Fayala had come to her rescue.
  "Goddess, is this really you," she pleaded. 
 "Yes it is me," Falaya responded. 
"Please help me," begged a relieved Amitabha. "The humans have killed everyone, they are murderous and I am afraid I cannot hold them off any longer." 
 "Yes my priestess, I am here now, lower your guard and let me comfort you,"  soothed Fayala.  
Amitabha yielded,  "yes, yes I am so tired and there was so much death, so much blood..." 
Fayala calmed the distraught Priestess, "it is over now Amitabha, I want you to relax now and rest, let me in and I will take away the pain." 
"Yes Goddess, forgive me, please forgive me," cried Amitabha" ... 
"You are forgiven,"  replied Fayala. 
Amitabha felt the darkness come and realized too late that Fayala was not there to save her. "But ... you made us ...,"  she whispered with her last breath. 
          Fayala stood amongst the humans, they were not kneeling or bowing to her, they did not offer any deference at all. As much as they scorned her for having unleashed the Spirit Priestesses upon them, they were tired of the fighting and dying and she offered an end to it. So they tolerated her presence, she consented to putting Amitabha down in return for a promise that those in the temple complex would not be harmed.  If the truth be told the remaining humans had their fill of death and readily agreed to her request.    
          She looked down at the scant few left of the thousands that once populated the land. The villages and towns were all gone, Fayala noted that the children now outnumbered the remaining adults. Perhaps a new, more positive future would be in store for humanity.