I was still myself, I was still on mission, and that I was capable of getting the two titular Lovers back to loving one another. I feel confident that I can say with about forty percent surety this was the case.

Maybe.

See, I was experiencing hallucinations: my soul leaving my body and traveling to a heavenly plane or set of planes, growing wings and a halo above my head. I can’t be sure what the color was; I was experiencing synesthesia and tasting colors instead of seeing them… I can say though they were delicious.

My auras had begun to heal them up and also make them feel better. They were no longer tightly balled within themselves. The one in my hand had loosened its grip on what could only generously be called its face, and two eyes had locked onto my face. It was about this time that my Divine Resistance really began to crumble.

I’d slowly made my way into the house and backyard where the second Lover lay curled up, and was now trying to get the two of them back together. The gamble had been that they were suffering from a mental affliction from being apart, and when I looked over Mender’s Soothing Mental Balm, divinity hadn’t been mentioned. No cure, no treatment, only my abilities for the first time, I gently laid the one Lover down, then fell to my knees.

“Soooo…” I drawled. “Go on, then.”

My hands and forearms were covered with what wounds. It was like if you took a wire hanger and slapped someone repeatedly on the insides of the forearms, but it was the wire hanger belonging to God. The wounds shone with holy golden light and radiated pure divinity.

I reached forward and nudged the Lover towards its companion. In the meantime I was transforming into a Biblically accurate angel, which was bad. Those things were like a collection of rings, eyes, wings and fire.

“You two belong together,” I think I said. I may have declared it with the voice of primal authority. I may not have spoken at all. The UI wasn’t responding. There was no way to tell whether I was making checks, and whether or not I was failing them.

Sometimes when you gamble, you roll snake eyes.

***

Tara felt a strange sensation the moment she entered the area of messed up divinity, deep in her core. She had Divine Resistance and ignored it. Some of the Wizards had taken themselves or their friends out, but some had stopped attacking the gigantic spell mirror of a shield that Ivy held. Those ones noticed Tara darting in between buildings and were coming after her, with their Guardians in tow.

Tara sped up and fired a deterrent shot back at them, but she wanted to conserve her Tokens for whatever was going on with Fletcher.

That lasted until the two houses before her broke apart and reached out to grab her. Then the Agility Tokens got spent, and she launched herself into a spinning dive. And that transformed into a front handspring, which she tucked into a front roll, sprang up, and was quickly wrapped up by a magically enchanted rope. This wrapped around both ankles, brought them together, and yanked her feet out from under her. She managed to roll around until she was on her back, because as soon as the rope started pulling her toward the other team, she summoned her bow. Her only hope was to catch these two off guard.

“Cinzy! Ivy!”

Drawing back her bow, she sat up and fired at the duo. Her arrow split, and split, and split. Several skittered off the huge magical shield in the Guardian’s hand.

“Cinzeeeeeeeeee!” she shrieked.

***

Cinzy was in a maelstrom of activity. Ivy was far faster, far bigger, and far stronger than she had thought. They were now strafing to the right, and it was only Ivy’s hand on her elbow that kept her in the line of the shield’s protection.

She kept up her own ability, though half of them were resisting and overcoming the effects. Cinzy didn’t have any attacks after the sonic blast, but right now she had half of them struck with crippling depression. Tears were rolling down her face as the words came. She shamed them relentlessly, and as a result they were on their knees and staring at their own failings. Who were they to come here and try to stop a man who was doing the right thing? Why would the Agency stop one of its only Healers from doing the one thing that was so desperately needed in this world? They obviously should have chosen to become Healers themselves. They were to blame for this situation, obviously; if there were more Healers, they could be in more places. Their life choices were poor.

Cinzy didn’t go all the way with the ability. She didn’t want anyone  casting fireballs at their own faces or anything. Some stared at their hands, some peered at the cobblestones or the chaos unfolding, and some stared into the middle distance.

The ability required her to keep talking, to influence their emotions like this. It didn’t discriminate, and she wondered how Ivy pushed past the effects.

“Cinzy! Ivy!”

The cry had barely registered before Cinzy was riding her friend. She grunted, hoisted Cinzy onto one arm, and began to really book it. Cinzy’s arms wrapped around her neck as Ivy tucked the tower shield against her shoulder and barged through the griffin rider and another Nakamamon looking like a large white blue lizard. They abruptly changed course, ducking through an alleyway and then picking up even more speed. Cinzy had only experienced this a handful of times, when she’d traveled in a convertible. They could’ve been going some forty miles an hour, maybe sixty, and at the end of it they shifted yet again so Ivy could barrel into whoever she found there.

“Still… guarding!” Ivy grunted. She’d lowered her shield so it looked like a snowplow, and got the first person broadside. The Guardian went careening into the other one and clotheslined her, spinning, rolling and sliding across a narrow road and then a small flowery lawn. She squished against one of those blue bubble houses and came to rest unconscious.

Cinzy had just enough time to see Tara spring to her feet and sprint off before everything went flickering.

The next thing she knew, Ivy had dropped her and both were writhing on the ground. Lightning was coursing through her body, seizing up her body. She watched as her hit points started dropping, but the worse part was the stun condition that stopped her from taking any kind of action.

The Guardian leader and one Wizard companion were limping up toward her.

“We’re going to have you, and your friends, and we’re going to have Fletcher behind bars.” The Guardian gestured to Cinzy. “Bind her mouth. If she starts making any kind of sounds, zap her again.”

“I’m low on spells for the day,” the Wizard said.

“Kick her then.” He turned to the griffin rider, who was slowly getting to his feet. “Reese! Get over here and kick the hell out of these two if either of them move. Shoot to kill if you have to.”

He trotted off and into the deserted part of the town.

***

Ivy peered up at a thoroughly flustered, dirty, disheveled Wizard pushing the sleeves on her robe up. The girl sighed. Ivy saw the hesitation marks criss-crossing her wrists.

“I know you,” Ivy said.

“Hush,” the girl said, but without much conviction.

“You’re from the same cohort as me and Izzy. You’re…”

“Shut up. You’re not supposed to talk.”

“She’s not supposed to talk,” Ivy said, inclining her head toward where Cinzy was curled up and clutching one wrist. “She’s the Bard. But you…”

“Stop it,” the Wizard said.

“What, you the police now?” Ivy asked.

“I have orders.”

“How’s that working out for you… Dakota?”

The girl’s eyes widened.

“That’s right, you were named after a state,” Ivy said. “Dakota. You enjoy being the Gestapo, Dakota?”

“Stop.” The word held zero authority.

“I remember,” Ivy told her. “You came here to get away from having to hurt people, didn’t you?”

Dakota didn’t respond, but one hand drifted down to the inside of her wrist.

“I did too. I don’t like being pushed around, don’t like other people pushing me around. I don’t like people telling me what to do for their own selfish bullshirt reasons. So I’m here, same as you.”

The Ranger came trotting over.

“This guy though… looks like he gets a thrill out of using his power on people.”

“You want to shut that hole before I shut it for you,” the griffin rider said. Reese. He quickly surveyed the scene. “Bard. Guardian. You got one hell of a shield upgrade on you. I like the tattoos. Just keep quiet and I don’t have to do anything you’ll regret and I might enjoy.”

“You remember when they said this place didn’t have violence, Reese?” Ivy asked. “Weird how we brought it with us.”

The bow materialized in his hands, with an arrow already nocked. “You need to shut the fuck up. You’re fugitives.”

“You know why?” Ivy asked, flicking eyes to Dakota and back.

Reese drew back the string and pointed it at her. “You hard of hearing, or you want to see if you can survive an arrow through the head?”

“Our Healer’s gonna cure his mom’s cancer,” Ivy said, staring in challenge.

Reese turned and loosed his arrow, directly into and through Cinzy’s calf muscle. Cinzy shrieked in pain, and clutched at it.

“I got poisoned arrows,” Reese said. “We can see how long it takes her to die if—”

He stopped talking as his feet lifted off the ground and he started flailing his arms. Ivy flicked her eyes at Dakota, but the Wizard wasn’t doing the hand gestures, saying the words, or glowing with magic. Ivy’s Affinity wasn’t that good, but Wizards warped the air around them visibly when they cast spells.

“Hey! What the—” Reese shouted, beginning to turn over in the air like he was in zero gravity. Ivy had seen this trick before. This was the Mindela.

The assorted townsfolk were around them now, led by the cat, the heap of rocks, and the Mindela. But they were far from alone. A column of blue jelly with big eyes squished up behind the three probable leaders, along with a walking tree-faced shrub, an owl-person, and dozens of others. They had a somber look, like they were at a funeral. Or rather, they had a look of mild distaste, like they’d been forced to watch a particularly rude person get ejected from a business.

“We will not permit you to raise murder in our town, even between humans,” the Mindela said.

And then the wildest thing happened: a healing aura flowed over the scene and stopped the bleeding in the arrow wound in Cinzy’s leg. After this, several of the townspeople swarmed her, holding a mortar and pestle and grinding up leaves to put into a cauldron being held and heated up by a porcupine leaking copious amounts of smoke.

“What…” she started to ask, but stopped herself. It was Fletcher. It had to be. He couldn’t keep his dick out of anyone, anywhere, ever. The thought made her smile for just a moment: she and Fletcher were going to have the best Isabelle sandwich just as soon as this whole business got taken care of. She couldn’t wait to have Fletcher spearing her, and Isabelle’s body pressing against her.

The Ranger twisted in the air and tried to shoot an arrow at her, but was suddenly shaken by the telekinetic force holding him. The shot went wide, thudding into the wall of the nearby bubble house the Wizard had mutilated.

“You are guilty of violence in this place,” the stack of rocks said to the Ranger. “You will be cast out.”

“You can’t—” the Ranger started, only to find himself floating into the grasping tendrils of the plant aspect Nakamamon with the stern wooden face. He was soon wrapped up from shoulders down to his feet, with the Nakamamon’s face staring accusation at him from inches away.

“You can’t do this!” He shouted, “we didn’t break your tre—”

A vine across the mouth stopped him from talking.

“Should you break your restraints, you will be doing more violence, and possibly raising murder,” the rock creature said. “Refrain from doing so and you will leave without being damaged.”

“Could I ask your elders to allow me to go in and save my friends?” Ivy asked.

“Me too,” Cinzy said. Around her, the healers were finishing up a simple potion and one of the cold aspects chilled it to a drinkable temperature. Cinzy made hard eye contact with Ivy, raising an eyebrow as if begging her to send a psychic message to figure out what the frack had happened here. It was Fletcher, of course. She knew it was, because she had her own ability. Izzy had one. Tara had one, Regina had one, and even Cinzy had one. What was there to understand?

Ivy grinned at the lost and beseeching expression.

“If you have the wherewithal to enter the divinity sickness area, you are free to go,” the cat Nakamamon said. “Be warned that the effects are… exciting.”

Cinzy cocked her head but said nothing.

“May I… may I come and help you?” Dakota asked.

The moment all the townsfolk, Ivy and Cinzy turned to look at her, the Wizard shrank back like she was about to have the frack slapped out of her.

“You must raise no hand against these humans, these friends of Fletcher,” the rock person said. “Pledge this upon your life and your magic.”

A tiny pink marshmallow, like a ball with little bunny arms and legs and smooth long ears, came ambling up to the Wizard. It had a circlet of whitish beige mushrooms on its head, and Ivy thought at first they were like a woven crown. The closer she looked, the clearer it was that they simply grew out of the creature’s head.

Fairy magic twinkled up and out of the tiny Nakamamon.

“Repeat the words,” the thing squeaked in a teeny voice. “I will raise no hand in interference or harm against these humans or their allies.”

The Wizard repeated the words in a shaky voice, and she watched in fascination as the fairy sparkles settled on her skin like dew. She stared at her hands, and didn’t seem surprised to find twin rings of mushrooms appear like tattoos on her palms.

Ivy dusted off her palms. “You’re part of the Divinity Rescue Corps now.”

“On a probationary basis,” Cinzy added.

“You protect Fletcher, our Healer, you take orders from him.”

“Also from us,” Cinzy said.

Ivy had to keep from grinning and rolling her eyes. “We’re wasting time here. Our mission is to save Fletcher. You got a spell against divinity, like a shield or a ward?”

This is Christopher about to get backup.