Different sorts of power

This morning's dream involved me as a mage having made a really unwise deal with a demon, so I was powered up but being gradually morally corrupted, couldn't use my most powerful magics for any good purpose, and was physically addicted to spellcasting. The standard GURPS dark magic deal.

I had to stop a balcony from falling for long enough for everyone to run away. Reached for the magic, could only find tiny bits of magic left, just barely held the thing for a few moments, then had to go blow the electricity and set the sprinklers off uncontrollably just to be destructive enough it stopped hurting.

Had to admit that trying to save people when it was that unlikely was pure faith, hope and love. Someone said they loved me for it. Then had to admit it made me nauseous to use the L word.

Seems like a pretty stupid way to power up.

Turns out that when I was a young mage I could call up a whole bunch of angels, only I didn't usually have anything for them to do. Like, here, heavenly host, I just... blew this whistle... because I can... er, this is embarrassing... So then people yelled at me for wasting their time and I stopped doing that. Lots of yelling about how god helps those who help themselves and I should be self sufficient and independent. Which I ended up believing. And eventually I needed to do a thing that was bigger than I had the power for right then so I did a deal with the dark, because the dark says it gives you the power, that seems like independent. But then with all the constraints on using it, no, nope, no it is not, that's pretty much puppety but you're tying on the strings.

So after the thing with the balcony and realising how screwed I was I got to the next big huge challenge, which happened pretty quickly because dark stirs things up so its near-puppets need to do more stuff more quickly to keep the pressure on until they fall, and this time I thought, okay, am screwed, cannot do, this seems like an actual opportune time to call for help.

So I did the whistle thing and called a whole host of angels, and they got stuff done.

But they didn't just stop with the fighty parts or the grand stuff, they fixed every problem I could see. Every little thing. Hungry person? Angel! Slightly unhappy child? Angel! Went through everything and fixed everything great and small. And then, somewhat to my surprise, fixed me. Pulled the dark stuff out so I had some options again. Got filled up with nice shiny instead of dark, set back to as powerful as I was to start with, no more physical symptoms.

And then they left and went home and left the rest up to me.

So I could have done the deal again, if I felt the need, but I could also call them again, any time. And I realised, the first time I called, I said there was nothing for them to do, and felt bad about it. They made disappoint face. You do not want to disappoint angels. But what I realised was that wasn't because I called them, it was because I couldn't see anything that needed fixing. Compassion fail, because there's always something. They were disappoint because I only got as far as thinking what they could do for me, and that was pretty small of me.

But all that practice doing bad stuff with magic and feeling kind of sick when I needed it to help someone, that had like the opposite effect to what the demons intended, because I just got frustrate whenever there was something the power couldn't do, and I got a pretty good map of stuff that needed doing and would piss off demons.

So with that new viewpoint, I could see tons for angels to do, and I had learned real good that I couldn't do it all on my own.

Compassion teamwork for the win.