The most superlatively good being to have blessed the realm of Eiren was Evangeline Temperance Virtulios, more colloquially known as Eva the Congenial. While other good beings were spoken of in Eiren’s history—the descendants of dominions, conquering kings, priests to any of the one hundred and seventeen gods of goodness and light—there was no argument that Eva held the highest-ranking place for three reasons: One, it was well established by the Holy Order of Osurehm that her deeds had been monumental, selfless, and, most importantly, in the interest of serving the gods; two, there was a song about her altruism and consequently the death she suffered for never wavering from her morals, which was quite popular amongst schoolchildren and those seemed to really stick; and three, she had in fact been dead for almost one thousand years so couldn’t ruin her own ranking by slipping up and saying something untoward on a bad day.

The legacy of Eva the Congenial was often taught to children in theology as a way to both define good behavior and instill great guilt at considering taking part in that which was bad, so it was perhaps not strange that Ammalie Avington, daughter of the Baron of Faebarrow, thought of the holy figure as she walked toward a dark tower in the middle of the Accursed Wastes beside not one but two blood mages. Amma had just faked her abduction, and it wasn’t even the first time she’d done that, but the most recent performance did have an awful lot more death and destruction, and that made wonderful fodder for the guilt that roiled in her belly. Eva the Congenial would have never trusted one blood mage, let alone a second rival demon spawn, so Amma couldn’t help but measure herself against the well-known deeds of the realm’s most virtuous woman and recognize that she was coming up significantly short.