Chapter 461 - Trials and Tributions XI

  Cire flexed her wings as she turned to face her remaining opponents. They felt so right. Every feather answered her call, moving exactly as she wanted even without her explicit instruction. They were even more comfortable than her real wings and many times as sensitive as well. She could feel the wind as it embraced her bdes, the snow as it packed itself against her steel. Just as she could feel the blood as it dripped down the tip of her spear.

  She almost ughed as she watched Olethra shudder.

  The ancestral lizardman was a goddess.

  A true goddess, unlike the bird that Cire had never bested.

  She had the raw power to obliterate Aurora’s domain.

  She had the raw power to mold the world in her image.

  She had the raw power to end the battle in a single blow.

  But she did nothing but gawk and tremble with fear.

  She was a genuine fool, an idiot beyond redemption, a moron with no recourse. That much was clear from her barrier’s construction. It was a simple, rectangur wall. There was no rhyme or reason to its shape or size, nor any notable technique used in its reinforcement. In practice, it was but a lump of divinity and mana, loosely arranged as a shield—a sign of her mind’s simplicity.

  Cire raised her free hand and beckoned the buffoon.

  It was clearly a taunt. There was no denying that, but even with her perception of time dited, the goddess never once considered that it might have been dual purpose. Nor did she have the awareness to recall that there were dozens of bdes buried in the hills behind her.

  Heeding the summon, the Borises rose from the snow one by one and each took aim at their targets.

  Sophia was the first to notice. She spun around and prepared to intercept. Both her hands were held in position. She narrowed her eyes, lowered her hips, and braced for impact. But by then, it was already too te. A spear shot through her chest, an axe bore into her guts, and a shield crushed both her legs. A dozen such projectiles assaulted her all at once and blitzed her body to pieces. She tried to recover, but a thick yer of ice spread from each point of impact and froze her before she could.

  Olethra got straight to defrosting her, but it was already too te. Sophia crumbled to dust, vanishing. As if she’d been hit by a breath.

  Abandoning the goddess’ defective shield, Lucius, who had finally stumbled back to his feet, joined Roumalou in kicking off the ground. Both hunters roared as they closed the distance. It was almost hard to tell which one was more bestial; there wasn’t an intelligent thought between them.

  Lucius was first to arrive. Though his body was half-frozen, and though his heart beated no longer, his eyes were still desperate for vengeance. Cire felt a strange sensation as he started swiping at her, just as she did during their previous exchange, but nothing came of it. He pretended to go low, only to kick off the ground and transition into a lunge, but she saw through his feint and countered with a bonk. He threw up his dagger in time to intercept, but pumped full of mana and divinity, her blows were too heavy to be stopped. She blew through his guard and smashed his head down into his ribs.

  The rge cat reached her shortly after his master’s undoing. He swiped with his cws and bit with all the desperation and hatred that he could muster, but his efforts were moot. Cire lowered her posture and kicked him into the sky.

  He only lived because he was lucky. Her blow was dampened by a particurly thick patch of fur. Without it, he would have met the same fate as Agrippina.

  Furthering his good fortune was the presence of an invisible ceiling. Certainly, it had hurt when he was smashed into it and nearly turned into a paste, but without it, he would have kept going. There was enough force behind the kick to break him from the pnet’s grasp.

  With him out of the way, Cire continued her silent advance. One step at a time, she closed in on the trembling goddess. The steady cnks were confident enough to seize the goddess’ heart and grip it tightly with fear, but so too were the steps taken with caution. She watched Olethra’s every move, carefully, meticulously, so as not to miss even the slightest hint of potential retaliation.

  When finally in range, she lifted Boris and pressed his tip against the barrier. It wasn’t so much an attack as it was a light touch. Still, the goddess’ defense was broken. It came apart like a broken vase, its pieces shattering and scattering as they fell.

  It was with that same ck of velocity that she approached Olethra’s throat. The bde glimmered beneath the night, reflecting her terror straight back into her eyes. For a moment, Olethra considered that it was better not to resist. Surely, there would only be more pain if she did.

  She was so foolish that she went on to compute the precise duration and value. But it was precisely that which returned her sanity.

  Her end would not be swift.

  Sure, the deadly strikes had been enough to exterminate her companions, but that was only on account of their mortality. The bde cked the force it needed to quickly erase her existence. In fact, it was likely incapable of inflicting such extensive damage at all. She could endure hundreds of thousands of brutal stabs before her consciousness faded. It would end in just a few seconds if she did away with her distorted perception of time. But even that was more suffering than she was willing to bear.

  Cire would—could—not kill her in a single blow.

  There was no reason to present her head on a silver ptter.

  Finally channeling her strength into her shaking hips, Olethra picked herself up and escaped the weapon’s path. For a moment, she considered obliterating the caldriess with a mass of divinity, but she knew it wouldn’t work. That was precisely the tactic she’d used with her daggers and neither had nded on target.

  It was shameful for a god to show no restraint when challenged by a mortal. But having already put her fear on open dispy, Olethra was beyond the point of caring. Opening both hands, she called upon the divine arms she was gifted upon becoming a celestial.

  In her left was a giant fountain pen, its tip sharpened to the finest of points. And in her right was a divine scale. Glimmering in gold, the bance was precisely the sort used by money-grubbing merchants who spent too much time abroad. There were a series of pedals built into its base, but they were bnk. What they represented would change with the amount of divinity inputted.

  The scale’s tip was certainly sharpened to a point, but it wasn’t meant for melee combat. It functioned more like a wand. The efficient pathways built into its form accelerated her magic’s composition.

  Olethra’s pen transcribed the world as she swung it across the horizon, converting all matter into the ink that flowed freely from its tip. The dark, viscous liquid was empowered by each component used in its making. From the snow it swallowed, it earned the essence of frost. From the sky it split, it drew the essence of freedom. And from the trees it ate, the essence of life. Putting all three together, she called upon the vitality that was unleashed with the end of winter—a concept that would allow her to rend Cire’s skull in two.

  Olethra was slow for a god. As ashamed as she was to admit it, she knew that most celestials could readily outpace her. It couldn’t be helped. She was more of a mage than a warrior, and though she could certainly hold her own in close quarters, she worked best at mid range. Still, being a god, she was far faster than the mortal.

  Even at her best, Cire was maybe a fifth of her speed—too slow to nd any attacks on target. It was such an obvious fault that the goddess began to wonder why she’d ever feared her. There was no reason to consider the mortal as anything but a lesser being.

  Her confidence renewed, she steadied her weapon’s course and directed its tip towards the caldriess’ heart. She further bolstered its power by pouring her magic and divinity through her muscles. The extra enchantment was completely and wholly unnecessary. Cire was dead even without it. The concept she’d forged was a perfect counter to her sole means of defence. But she yered her buffs regardless. Not because she was worried she was still underestimating the mortal, but because Cire had used the same technique to defeat Lucius and Agrippina.

  She even accelerated the bde at the very st moment.

  Only for it to wander astray.

  She didn’t understand exactly how it happened, but her bde slid too far to the right and completely missed its target.

  Shaking her head, Olethra chalked the mistake up to her once-frazzled nerves and followed the stab with a swing. Her second attempt came with greater confidence, but she overlooked the dagger her opponent held front and center and bashed her pen’s shaft against it. She tightened her grip and forced her weapon through, but thrown off course by the collision, she missed by just a hair.

  Again and again, simir coincidences repeated, until she was finally convinced that they weren’t coincidences at all.

  Cire was intentionally avoiding her attacks.

  Despite being only a fraction of her speed.

  It was a terrifying thought, but Olethra ignored it and continued pressing forward. She was convinced that it couldn’t have been easy, that Cire needed to fry her brain to accomplish the impossible. And that soon, she would mess up and fall victim to her bde.

  The reality of the situation, however, was the por opposite. Olethra was so predictable that the lyrkress was on the verge of yawning. Her spearmanship was far from outstanding.

  Still, there was some truth in one of Olethra’s assumptions.

  She couldn’t keep up her defence forever.

  Because the thorae charged her in the midst of their seventh exchange.

  He aimed his dagger at her neck as he rushed her. The attack was twice as fast as Olethra’s—fast enough to force Cire to drop her facade. Suddenly ramping up her speed, the snake-moose kicked the goddess’ pen away and twisted out of Lucius’ path. The counter she returned was even faster. Using her momentum, she drove her spear into his guts and swung to send him flying.

  She had used all of the same techniques as she had during their previous encounter, but the bde was unable to pierce his skin.

  The cause was clear from the stench that radiated from his form. Kael’ahruus’ divinity was as putrid as a festering fish. The reek only intensified as Lucius’ head returned to its proper position. It was not new flesh that filled the gap, but a wad of divine force. Sourced from the tattoo ingrained into his chest, his god’s holy might flooded his muscles and circuits in tandem.

  It was clear from the look in his eyes. He was not just Lucius anymore. If anything, Lucius was gone, his existence transformed into a sedentary observer.

  His god had seized his flesh. Circumventing the boundaries that guarded Aurora’s domain, Kael’ahruus had incarnated by proxy.

  It was by no means a hostile takeover. Lucius had specifically chosen the ability to become a holy conduit. The ability was his trump card, a st resort baked directly into his flesh.

  There was neither time nor need for further discussion. The possessed bee-ogre kicked off the ground and closed the distance. His dagger glowed as his divinity flowed through its circuits, a dark, filthy gold with streaks of bck mixed in.

  He aimed for Cire’s neck, but turning Boris into a dagger as well, she parried the blow with ease. He was faster to transition into his next attack, but she grabbed a second bde from her wing with her free hand and matched him blow for blow. He had the upper hand—every strike was heavy enough to throw her off bance—but the exchange only furthered her confidence.

  She could see it.

  Lucius was a cklustre vessel. Cracks ran through him with every subsequent exchange. The gaps were filled as soon as they formed. Kael’ahruus padded them with his divinity, further bolstering his host’s raw power.

  Paying the change no mind, Cire stepped forward and drove both daggers towards his chest. He moved to parry the blow, but she kneed him in the elbow and stopped him from catching her weapons. They were clearly on course for removing his heart, but his free hand caught her ribs midswing. She gritted her teeth and bent her knees, but the blow was too heavy. She was sent tumbling through the air. Half her bones were dislocated from just the one hit. She probably would have been winded had she still needed to breathe, but Cire nded on her feet and immediately engaged again, her body healing all the while.

  The speed of her regeneration wasn’t quite Cadrian. She couldn’t fix herself the instant that the thought came to mind, but she was at least outwardly repaired by the time their bdes next cshed. She could fully recover from any wound within the span of a second, and his fist had only removed a fifth of her total.

  At the speed that they were moving, it would take a few more exchanges before she could unscramble her internals, but they were entirely irrelevant.

  She didn’t need her exterior back in pce, nor bones returned to their previous positions. Her body was still incapable of keeping up with her mind, and she had all the time in the world to compute the vectors she needed to push any less functional parts along.

  Of course, neither combatant was quite satisfied with a basic exchange of martial prowess. Kael’ahruus was hardly proud of what little power his vessel could handle, and Cire had no intention of drawing out the encounter. She needed to put on a show if she wanted to impress her mother, and there was nothing less impressive than wasting an excess of time on a pair of nitwits.

  They both upped the ante at once.

  Most lions initiated their hunts in silence and communicated in secrecy with the other members of their pride. The coordination and teamwork built up with their peers was what allowed them to capture their prey. But Kael’ahruus had no peers. None were ever able to keep up with his unbound genius.

  He was a lone hunter.

  His pride was not a group, but his ability to assure a kill even after announcing his presence.

  His pride was the moment that his prey accepted the inevitable and abandoned all hope of escape.

  His pride was the cry that heralded the end.

  The roar that erupted from his throat was accompanied by a mass of magic so dense it burst like a bomb. The initial bst was followed by a pilr of light that burned the sky and the ground in turn, leaving not a crater, but a cylindrical hole that extended deep into the mantle.

  Only after vaporizing everything in his immediate vicinity did the god rein in his mana. He tempered and molded it, forging it into a metallic lion head on a chain that would endlessly pursue its prey. Upon entangling its position—a task it would accomplish by any means necessary—the magical construct would lock it in pce until it was time for its master to y cim to his quarry.

  A tried and true trump card he had used a thousand times over.

  Cire's approach was not quite as well tested, but neither was it devoid of practice. She waited for him to advance before opening a portal in his path and returning him to his previous position.

  Under ordinary circumstances, that would have been the extent of the effect. She should have been better off closing the gate and slicing his body in half.

  With Olethra’s counterspell in py, however, the conclusion was flipped on its head.

  He was subjected to a divine assault the moment he passed through the portal.

  His body was squeezed and contorted, bent out of shape by a series of explosions. They pierced his divine shroud and echoed through his flesh, battering it with dents and holes.

  But none of the damage changed the fact that he had unleashed his attack.

  The hunt god’s summon moved with a mind of its own. It gnawed at the air whilst charging towards its target. Its chain never held it back or tied it down. The golden links extended, growing in number with every step traveled.

  Chief among the head’s greatest strengths was the malleability of its course. She sidestepped its initial attack, but it skidded to a halt as it passed her and corrected its trajectory. Striking it served as no means of deterrence. It soon regained its bance and charged her yet again.

  She reversed her grip on her dagger and moved to deflect it a second time, only for the divine vessel to appear in its pce. He grabbed her by the wrist and drove his bde towards her skull, but she parried it with her other hand. He repeated the attack three times before she cut through his hand with a wing and kicked him away.

  Another hundred heads appeared all around her, but Boris allowed no numerical advantage. The many copies scattered all over the battlefield rose into the sky. Hovering around Cire, they deflected her assaints and ran them through. Not even by swapping with them could Kael’ahruus secure the advantage. She always knew exactly where he was and parried his strikes without looking in his direction.

  Manually controlling so many Borises at once was certainly a mental load. But none of it was on Cire. Each bde operated independently and computed its next action on its own. Their bdes enchanted with her draconic magic, they pierced right through the hunter’s shroud and bit into his bones.

  Cire wasn’t the only one to nd blows. The lion abandoned all pretense of defense and allowed her hits to return his own. His mana burned her skin just by passing it by. The slightest gnce ripped apart her flesh. He knew it was silly to engage. He was losing the battle of attrition. But so too did he enjoy every moment.

  Drool leaked down the side of his face while his tongue lolled with joy. It had been a long time since he’d found any prey with bite.

  His eyes alight, he poured even more divinity into his limbs. Lucius’ body cracked and splintered, but Kael’ahruus was unconcerned. He began striking with even more power and precision, so lost in his trance that he began to lose his restraint.

  And again, the duel degenerated into a dance of bdes.

  The exchange was so fast-paced that Olethra struggled to intervene. She was finally made to realise that Cire had been toying with her.

  Unable to track all the different actions and reactions, she knew she would only get in Kael’ahruus’ way if she threw herself into the melee. But if anything, that only worked to her benefit. She had always been better at providing mid-ranged support.

  She raised the scale that was her wand and emptied her pen’s ink into one of the bances. It immediately began to sink, but she forced it to bance by weighing the other side down with a lump of mana.

  One press of a button ter, and the contract was signed.

  The property would apply to every spell she cast.

  And she began with one that was awfully familiar.

  Tightening her grip on her wand, she spawned a circle of bdes around the target and fired all sixty at once. She almost wasn’t surprised when Cire raised her wings and neutralized her projectiles with her lizards. The few that weren’t dispced, she destroyed with her strange socket puppet without sparing a gnce.

  It took repeating the attack twice more for the caster to make a difference. Attacking at just the right moment, she forced Cire to choose between absorbing one of the two gods’ attacks. She didn’t hesitate for a moment to block Olethra’s whilst allowing Kael’ahruus’ fist to shred her stomach.

  Everything from her chest down to her torso was obliterated, but she healed it back in short order. In the grand scheme of things, her attack was a failure. None of the damage could be attributed directly to the goddess directly. But the result had her jumping for joy regardless.

  She gleaned a few important facts from observing her opponent’s defense.

  Cire was not keen on being struck by her attacks, and for good reason. While Kael’ahruus possessed only a fraction of his power, Olethra had all of hers. While she certainly couldn’t match up to a greater god tens of thousands of times her age, she could easily overpower him while he was in Lucius’ form. Her firepower was what would make or break the battle.

  That was where her other observation factored into the equation.

  Cire had an obvious weakness.

  Though she almost seemed omniscient when dealing with frontal attacks, there was a small spot to her rear where her perception fell short. Another few waves of attacks, each more calcuted than the st, revealed a cone of roughly fifteen degrees positioned at the back of her neck. And coincidentally, she was rather desperate to ensure that the spot was protected—she constantly swung her head around to ensure that it was covered and prioritized defending the location over every other part of her body.

  She knew where she had to aim.

  It was just a matter of finding the opportunity before Lucius’ body gave out.

  And in that, she was perfectly confident.

  Cire was trapped in the melee. The snake-moose wanted to prepare a more powerful attack, but Kael’ahruus denied her attempts to disengage. He ploughed right through her stunning blows regardless of how hard she pushed.

  But then, suddenly, he stopped and backed away.

  They both knew why.

  Lucius’ time as a vessel was coming to an end. His body was beginning to crumble. If Kael’ahruus pushed any further, he would surely come apart at the seams.

  The thoraen hunter was well aware that it meant certain doom. But he begged his god to continue regardless.

  Even if he somehow survived the encounter, he would be forever crippled by the divine possession. He would live the life that Cire had endured prior to her recent awakening—a life where his circuits were fried and his existence was constant agony. With his mana veins out of commision, his muscles would be unable to draw out most of their potential, and his dexterity would be shot by his seizing flesh.

  Even if he were to return to being a hunter, he would be left as a shell of a man stuck ciming game that brought him no excitement.

  He would be left menting that his companions had thrown away their lives in vain.

  There was no meaning in his survival.

  He was better off committing his all to the cause.

  Though surprised, Kael’ahruus accepted his disciple’s conviction and threw all restraint out the window. Howling again, he returned his chained heads to his body. Obliterating his circuits, he doubled his magical throughput and crafted a single giant cw in the space behind him. Standing at ten meters tall and thirty meters long, it was all he could manifest of his body.

  And so too was it all that he would need.

  Unlike the fang that had become Lucius’ dagger, unlike the incarnation that leveraged Lucius’ body, the cw—the left pinky he had recreated—was at full power.

  The only problems were his limited time and energy. He had maybe three strikes before Lucius completely gave out. He had to make them count.

  His first strike was a ssh. He raised his hand diagonally and cleaved across the space directly in front of him. Mirroring the motion, the cw ripped straight through the portal that Cire put in its path. Nothing was left in its wake. Any hillside it touched was repced with a stretch of vacuum—the same fate met by the Borises who sought to intervene. Edges enchanted or not, there was nothing that they could do to resist.

  Even true ice struggled to dey his advance. He shredded the massive wall that Cire pced between them, but not before she escaped his range.

  He twisted his arm to catch her in midair, but he was unable to move it. When looked towards it, he found it wrapped in a series of chains.

  Cire nded in front of him before he could remove the binding and nailed his arm with her daggers. One went straight into his elbow, while the other struck his wrist. Slotted between his joints, they locked them in pce and effectively bound his finger. She spun around and cwed his chest with one of her wings whilst drawing another two bdes from the other. An axe went into his throat, and a spear went through his stomach. A katar went through his chin and into his brain while a hammer crushed his knee.

  He thought he had her when she committed to tearing his shoulder apart with a saw-toothed greatsword, but she twisted past him and avoided the cw whilst driving a butterfly sword into his gut and smashing the back of his head with a studded gauntlet.

  Kael’ahruus was down to his final move. It looked like his loss was imminent, but he still had a trick up his sleeve. He maniputed his smallest finger with a vector and snapped it out of its socket.

  His cw suddenly spun around, completing the same twist in the blink of an eye. There was no time for her to escape. But she didn’t need to.

  Cire caught the god’s weapon with an open palm and transferred its momentum on contact. The cw was frozen in pce, stopped where it was, while the object between her fingers—Lucius’ skull—inherited the twisting motion.

  Kael’ahruus groaned as his pupil’s body began to disintegrate.

  The connection weakened. He could feel himself being expelled from the scene.

  But he did at least manage one st surprise before he finally departed.

  He left Lucius’ body early.

  She kept her gaze on his spirit as it peeled from the mortal’s form. And that was precisely why she missed the moment where Lucius regained control.

  Mustering up the st bit of his strength, he rammed his dagger straight into her gut.

  The bde, Kael’ahruus’ fang, met her flesh for the first time since the battle began. And it poured its power, its poison, straight into her system.

  The lion’s divinity ate at her insides, melting them away as it turned flesh to goop. Just from the act of touching the edge, she was practically digested. Blood poured from her mouth, her nose, and her eyes. She stumbled backwards, tottering without a hint of bance.

  Right then, at that moment, was when Olethra attacked.

  Appearing directly behind Cire, she raised her divine scale and unleashed the spell that she had spent the past minute preparing. It appeared as would an ordinary bolt of magic—a vaguely arrow-shaped blob painted with a golden brush—but its appearance was intentionally misleading.

  It was engineered to hide its true nature so that it might fell an unsuspecting god in the case of war.

  It was engineered as one of Olethra’s most powerful weapons should the heavens descend to chaos.

  It was engineered as a means of self-protection in case Vel’s insanity stepped on the wrong people’s toes.

  Compulsory Liquidation embodied every bit of her power as the goddess of weights and measures. It was a spell whose final damage was based on all of the numbers of which its target was ultimately constructed. Every number that the system tracked was wrapped into a lump sum and applied directly to the target’s health. It was nigh guaranteed to afflict a fatal blow.

  Percentage damage reduction was the only in-system way to survive it, and even then, it was unlikely. It wasn’t just the stats that showed up in one’s status that were taken into account, but also all of the other values tracked by the system’s telemetry. The total number of steps accrued over the years. A full count of breaths, tabuted over a lifetime. Even the number of system ticks that had epsed since the individual’s creation. All sorts of ridiculous numbers were taken into account and weighed against the target’s life force.

  In reality, enduring the hit required an out-of-system solution, something that not even most gods could intuit in time to prevent their destruction.

  Olethra smirked as she watched time crawl.

  The hit was guaranteed. She’d fired it perfectly into Cire’s blind spot from nearly point bnk during a moment of weakness.

  She had fulfilled Lucius’ ardent desire and wrought the end of Cire Augustus.

  The goddess was so convinced of her victory that it took her a few moments to realise that the world was in motion. And then another to recognize the bde in her chest. Cire had run her through with a spear. Even though she was supposed to be beyond the range of her perception.

  Time was in slow motion.

  And though Cire was as well, it almost looked like she wasn’t.

  With a graceful step, she shifted out of the projectile’s path. And with another, she twisted her hips and brought the tip of her spear, and Olethra along with it, towards the heavenly bolt.

  The goddess paled. She kicked, she filed, and she screamed, but she had only just expended all of her power.

  Her body was running on fumes. Still, she called upon her magic, the vectors at the tips of her fingers to invert the forces upon her body.

  But simple as it was, the spell never came to fruition.

  The st dregs of her mana were sucked from her body, stolen by the lizard in her chest and used to grow the hooks he spread all throughout her body.

  It didn’t matter what she did.

  There was nothing she could do to keep Cire from impaling her on the back of her own projectile.

  She howled in pain as she tried to recall the appropriate countermeasure, only to recall that she had never quite worked out the necessary out-of-system solution. She’d assumed that it was unnecessary, that she would never find herself on the receiving end of the attack because it was only through her abilities that it could be constructed.

  She eventually realised that she could isote the wound and cancel the system’s operation. But she was far too te. The computation was already complete. All the damage was done.

  Her consciousness started to waver as she bled out in the snow, her eyes on the stars above.

  She wanted to scream in confusion, to beg the question of how.

  But she was too weak for even that.

  She didn’t understand.

  It shouldn’t have been possible.

  The only cases she’d heard, where an aspect had killed a god, involved a blessing gone wrong. She wasn’t sure if there had ever been precedent for someone even weaker to fell one.

  But somehow, she knew, as she looked into the mortal’s cold, dismissive eyes, that she’d long anticipated—plotted—the outcome.

  Cire said nothing as she stared.

  For a moment, Olethra thought that she would simply continue to watch as her divinity continued to fade, and that perhaps, the terrifying gaze would be the st thing she saw.

  But eventually, it softened.

  An almost gentle look on her face, Cire sat down beside her.

  She didn’t answer her silent query. But she took her hand and held it.

  At first, Olethra was confused. Scared, even.

  But then, as the pain began to fade, she recalled the reason she’d set along her path.

  It was always for a brief moment of respite that she had always longed.

  A moment where she no longer had to think and care and worry.

  A moment where she could finally kick back and rex.

  A moment perhaps not all too different from the one at hand.

  Her breath steady and her fingers rexing, Olethra returned Cire’s gentle smile.

  And then she closed her eyes.

  She couldn’t help but feel that all her hard work and effort had finally borne fruit. That maybe, just maybe, for its blissful conclusion, her life was worth its trials and tributions.