"Shameless!" She shouted over her shoulder, already accelerating, "I helped you seal the Eye in good faith and the moment it's done you come for me? I'll remember this! When my strength recovers I'm coming back and—"
Celestia unsheathed her blazing golden divine sword and Yvonne summoned the Sea of Thunder, both of them cutting off the Spirit's path. For a moment it seemed like it might work, but it didn't.
The Eye of the Abyss had suppressed the Spirit for dozens of millennia. Without it, her power was already climbing. She hit Celestia and Yvonne like a wave and pushed them back, her voice still ringing through the first layer.
"I am the spirit of a major planet's laws. Even at my weakest, two Supreme Gods aren't enough to fight me, and Celestia, you just spent half your power reversing time to catch me. Do the math."
The spirit wasn't wrong. The cost of reversing time to bring back an escaped spirit of Laws was real, and the gap between them was closing in the wrong direction. A few days of recovery and even if a few more Supreme Gods arrived at that time, it would be impossible to tame it.
"Even if I have to destroy my natal artifact." Celestia said quietly, "I will not let you go."
The Spirit hesitated, just long enough to recalculate whether she was bluffing or meant it.
Just at this time, the aura of a third Supreme God appeared from above, vast and sudden, pinning the Spirit in place like a hand from the sky.
"Another one?!"
The Spirit looked up, certain it was Haru somehow, but he was still standing where he'd been, eyes closed. The integration was not yet complete.
The three of them, Celestia, Yvonne, and Phoebe, who was still hammering at her cage, all looked up.
A figure descended unhurried, dressed in white gauze. Silver eyes, slightly narrowed, with something in them that might have been amusement.
She looked at Celestia, smiled and asked, "Your Holiness Celestia, am I late?"
Celestia recognized her immediately. It was Svetlana, the Goddess of Fate from the Endless Continent, a planet so far away from Arboriel that two vast star clusters were sitting between them. It wasn't exactly a neighborhood you passed through by accident.
"Don't be surprised, Your Holiness." Svetlana's silver eyes carried that same faint smile, "I was just passing by."
Celestia looked at her for a long moment. Then she looked away and said nothing, which was an answer in its own way. The excuse hadn't worked on the Elven Goddess Elunara either, and she was considerably less perceptive than an Eighteen-Winged Seraphim who had spent epochs managing the Illusory Angel Realm.
Whatever Svetlana's reasons, she was here, her divine power still pinning the Spirit of Arboriel's Laws in place, and her intentions were clearly not hostile. That was enough.
"Thank you." Celestia said simply.
Svetlana exhaled in relief, just slightly. She'd been prepared to keep explaining, but apparently it wasn't necessary.
The truth was simpler than any excuse she could have constructed. Svetlana could see the branches of possibilities in the vast river of fate. She could catch glimpses of specific moments before they happened. She'd watched from the Endless Continent as Haru absorbed the origin of Abyss Law, watched the Spirit seize the opening, and knew exactly what would happen next.
So she'd come, crossing two massive star clusters, arriving at precisely the right moment. It wasn't the first time she'd moved for the Great Aetherium. She had personally shielded them against Malakar once and during the Divine Battle, she had sent Elunara rather than coming herself, but that had a practical reason.
As the Endless Continent's Goddess of Fate, the one entrusted by the Spirit of Laws to maintain the River of Fate and keep order on the planet. She couldn't stray far for too long. The job was a leash, and a short one. That was also why she'd been quietly searching for an inheritor, someone to hold the position while she…
In truth, Svetlana herself hadn't fully decided what she wanted to do after that, but ever since Haru appeared, the future she'd glimpsed for herself had begun to look very different from the one she'd assumed. Different enough that she was standing in the absolute core of Arboriel instead of watching from home. She hadn't fully worked out what to do with that yet.
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