The Unified Theorem (Insert, Warcraft, Science is Golden)

The Wheel Everturning
The World of Warcraft moves rather oddly once in a while.



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Chapter 12 – The Wheel Everturning


"-. September 18, Year 580 of the King's Calendar .-"​

If not for the recent spot of bother, and the fact that we had to live in a tent for three weeks while Master Zidar's crew fixed our house, the past few months would have been the most rewarding time of my life. I was making the best of my craft, I was seeing fair success in my business affairs, and I was finally learning arcane magic.

My brief talk with the Council of Six had set off the motherlode of all political crises in Dalaran, but no red she-dragon had made an appearance yet, and Antonidas had not been recalled either. Neither had he chosen to leave, or even set a deadline for his stay with us. Naturally, I was making the best of both those facts.

At the same time, I had also overcome my bottleneck in alchemy. More precisely, Granodior had done it for me. Having a part of him grafted to my spirit allowed me to use his frame of reference during all my rituals and experiments. It wasn't even a crutch, technically, this was literally a requirement for the higher levels of the art. I just had the 'high' honor of being the only practitioner in history so inept in the field that I actually needed the intercession of elementals as early as the entry-level stuff. Narett gave me no end of tough time for it.

I'd be more annoyed if I didn't derive all the amusement I could ever want from his frustration, over me not running into the same problems with arcane magic. He never lowered himself to the point where he competed with Antonidas for my time, but I was sure he'd have stayed around a lot more if he didn't have his own affairs to mind back in the city. Also, he never made it a secret that he wished I'd stay away from arcane magic entirely.

I understood why, on a professional level. When Malfurion said arcane magic was inherently chaotic, he was not, in fact, talking out of his ass. Alchemy was the art of leveraging the inherent order of things for utility and self-attainment, whereas arcane magic relied on its disruption to force things to happen against natural order. On that basis, arcane magic may or may not attract demons by itself, but any weak points it leaves in the Arcane certainly will. It only makes sense for an attacking force to concentrate in the spot of least resistance after all. That was why the War of the Ancients had revolved around the Well of Eternity.

My reservations weren't enough to stop me from learning it, though. Also, they were somewhat undermined by Narett's continued refusal to explain to me his more laser-guided antagonism towards Dalaran. Not mages in general, but those of Dalaran specifically. When I pressed him on the topic, he was as concise as he was vague.

"The proud in those high and mighty spires will do anything to recreate the feat that won the troll wars, and Titans help us if they do. I should hope you, at least, have more wisdom than them. But with how well you've taken to that mage's teachings, I am now reduced to hoping you won't rediscover it for them."

If Narett was right about anything, it was how well I absorbed Antonidas' instructions.

I had discovered that being able to perceive Arcane patterns let me practically copy spells just by watching them a few times. I still needed to adjust the weaves relative to me, as the Self was a major reference point during casting, and mathematics were always different when you changed a quantity, something particularly important for sacred geometry. Also, things would get much harder once I was faced with those spells that needed me to manipulate the Arcane on scales greater than my spirit could cover by itself, at which point calculus got involved. Assuming it didn't grow indefinitely thanks to how I cultivated it with the Light. Regardless, I could learn arcane spells in a tenth of the normal time, even if just by rote memorisation and repetitive practice.

For now.

It was a supremely useful side-benefit of my ability to Reveal everything with the Light, including the Arcane itself. But it was not unique.

Advancing your mage sight to the point where you could perceive arcane weaves and matrices, especially as they were cast by others, was one of two major prerequisites for any human to become better than average as a wizard, never mind an Archmage. The other was being able to understand, process and apply what you discerned. Not just because of the usefulness during instruction and duels, and certainly not because the other races were inherently more powerful – if anything, it was the opposite. The real reason was that a human just doesn't live long enough to advance their arcane mastery sufficiently, without this shortcut.

I myself was still having trouble twisting the Arcane into the patterns I wanted. It was like learning how to walk and handle things all over again. I was getting there though. It was like using different legs and hands, figuratively speaking, but thankfully not for the first time because they were the same legs and hands I'd been using to wield the Light.

And oh, the ideas. The Light Reveals, which meant I could actually use it to divine what a new weave would do without actually casting it. I had a feeling I would be improvising a lot on the fly, once I practiced enough. I was leaving that for when I improved my ability to visualize in three dimensions, though, never mind four.

For now, I was content to use maintenance and convenience cantrips. Not having to take baths or stop to clean myself up after an experiment or hard labour saved a lot on time, and the Light made sure I always ate and digested things optimally and had as much energy as ever. Conjuring food wasn't ideal, but it was definitely helping me get closer to being able to just summon nutrients into my bowels if necessary. The Light could sustain me fine for a long time, but it was always good to have contingencies. Drinking my various herbal and alchemical successes was also giving me effects to memorise and replicate. Manifesting at will the effects of the potions you make and imbibe was among the highest forms of Alchemical expertise. That was how Narett had become invisible. He'd even combined the effect with a notice-me-not effect. Eventually, I should be able to do that too.

In theory, I should also be able to manifest new weaves from the Light instead of twisting the Arcane to form them, thus casting Arcane-like spells without the weakening side effect on the fabric of reality. The Light is the power of creation, so theoretically I should be able to just make the end result manifest. I'd made brains from walnuts by complete accident, surely I could get better results if I actually tried? I didn't technically need to test the weaves after all, the Light would let me know if something was a terrible idea by my standards. Any day now I might just make the breakthrough. Then I could start experimenting with systemic refinement and enhancement.

Probably not soon though.

Not without a good and thorough course in the established empowerment spells, especially the ones affecting the intellect. Narett cautioned me against haste on empowerment potions despite alchemy being fine relative to natural order, as spells worked by overriding it. Antonidas was being very careful and thorough in coaching me on those. Which was good. As glad as I was that all the bad times hadn't ruined my passion for learning and improving, I also wasn't in any rush. I was plenty powerful already.

Also, I had a dragon.

I should probably revisit druidism properly too, though, at some point.

Even if I didn't learn it conventionally, exposure training was a thing. Could I find someone to cast Mark of the Wild on me a few dozen times, maybe? A portal to Kul Tiras one day? Drustvar? Experiencing the spell enough times should let me replicate it, at last on myself. I was already touching Nature every time I lightforged a plant. Or the Emerald Dream, if there even was a difference. Even if I fail to learn it properly, I should be able to reproduce the effects with the Arcane or the Light like the others, I was sure. Or some of them. And then add the original Mark of the Wild itself on top of everything else, maybe.

Buff stacking, the tool of any competent adventurer.

Granted, I wasn't an adventurer – still? Yet, maybe? – but I was increasingly learning that the skill set required to live the life I'd chosen was every bit as eclectic.

Right now I was testing a supersensory spell. I had the perfect spot too. Granodior had been kind enough to grow me a nice perch – practically grew the entire cliff out – from which I could see everything down below in the valley. Emerentius had also used his own geomancy and fire to make me a paved path and terrace. There were polished marble steps, a footway of the same, some plots of earth for flowers, a fountain, even some expertly carved marble benches and a table. Plus a huge statue of me that appeared overnight, wielding a staff and sword and wearing a magnificent cape, but we don't talk about that.

The tip of the terrace stuck out deep above the valley itself, so far inward that most of the mountainside was actually behind me. I could see all the way down and up from the ever-growing pilgrim encampment. I was sitting at the tip of that terrace right now, with my legs dangling over the edge. It was how I tended to spend most of my downtime now, little though I needed these days.

I still had to focus on enhancing individual senses at a time, but I was getting comfortable enough with auditory enhancements that I expected to be able to pair them with a second enhancement soon. Sight, I decided, to let me hear and see everything happening down there. It wasn't anywhere near the scope and utility of shamanic farseeing, never mind its ability to go around obstacles, but amazing for an unaided feat.

The pilgrim camp was beginning to look vexingly like a village now, one steadily evolving from tents to proper buildings. Well-worn dirt tracks, fences, a main road with a stable, a forge, mother's herbalist hut away from home, and its garden where I'd been lightforging plants now and then, while keeping an eye on her. Mostly medicinal ones. And seasonings. They had a pronounced healing and invigorating effect with no drawbacks. A new wave of herbalism experimentation was going on, Narett had organised an entire area and group of people just for that. I wasn't directly involved beyond altering the fundamental nature of flora itself, but I was getting a share of the returns. Ingredients, curatives, drugs, reagents.

Tribute, it's all tribute, let's call it what it is.

All told, the foot of our mountain couldn't quite be termed a new settlement yet, but it was a sizable enclave. Hell, they were even building a longhouse now. It would soon replace the huge pavilion currently serving as a tavern for the literal battalion of soldiers that Richard had moved over. The troops were camped around the place in neat tent rows. It was a small battalion, lest we really make the king believe we're amassing an attacking force right on his doorstep, but a battalion nonetheless.

Speaking of auditory enhancements, there was a spike in noise down there. Enough that I could make out specific words and voices even without the spell. Greetings and well wishes. Looking down, I saw Master Blacksmith Smid Keyton's horse-drawn wagon – and armed escort – passing the farthest border of the camp on the way here.

My word, it's still business as usual, I still have trouble believing it.

Ever since I took his master assassin and let it be known far and wide that I had a huge fuck-you dragon, Aiden Perenolde had refrained from anything more that could be construed as a direct move against me or my interests. I was given to understand that the town criers had been hard at work 'clarifying' the 'misunderstanding' for a couple of weeks there. Those were clearly blatant lies while the king rethought his approach, but malicious compliance was popular among dissidents for good reason. Case in point, my new guild mates had – thus far – been spared collateral retaliation.

Of course, the fact that I even had these guild mates was a miracle unto itself. That my new associates hadn't immediately ripped our guild charter to shreds and disavowed me after that disaster of an 'audience' was still the source of everlasting amazement. Orsur had even told me, rather fatalistically when he dropped by a month ago, that with their association well and truly exposed even before that mess, it wasn't like they weren't on the king's black list already.

"We're sure the King will gather up nerve and yes-men to try something again, eventually," Lady Blackthron later confirmed when she dropped by on a 'detour' of her own, two weeks after Orsur's own visit. "But none of us believe the king won't have us killed anyway, after he proved willing to do more and worse to the nobles. At this point it's all down to how much we can secure for our heirs, before the order comes. Unless, of course, serendipity decides to solve the matter before then."

She'd given me a meaningful look with those last words. Not accusing, not even demanding, but expectant. Like me saving the day was to be expected.

The humans of Azeroth are a cut above the rest, even the more cutthroat ones.

It was a warming show of faith, in a time when everyone but me was under surveillance, and our customers were seeing passive-aggressive trouble as well, despite the official stance that we were fine to do business with. Sure, it wasn't all bad, the new guild technologies and services were incredibly popular with all strata of society. Also, my reputation – and dragon – was more than enough to shut down any notion of hostile takeover. Especially with a duke shamelessly swearing himself as my underling. Not in public, but it was implied.

Unfortunately, all of this on top of the disaster at court, and everything that resulted from it, had the increasingly paranoid king certain we were planning to depose him. And while he was refraining from direct action against us, the indirect ways had returned with a vengeance.

Anyone who'd commissioned our new plumbing and electricity, in particular, had started to find themselves higher on the priority lists for financial audits, supply requisitions, troop requisitions, and even getting outright drafted into the army in the case of anyone below noble rank. Particularly the common workers, all except those directly employed by us.

Because yes, border incidents had worsened as well, to the point where one seemed to happen every other week at this point. Instigated by our side, however it was done when General Hath was definitively not the type to engage in false flags. I'd never met him, but everyone who had – including Richard – agreed on that much.

It was plain to see why it was going on though. In this time when King Perenolde lacked the popular support – or even a casus belli – to declare war himself, 'border incidents' were a transparent attempt to force Strom to do it instead. The moral high ground from not being the aggressors would be priceless to the Alterac Crown right now, I imagined.

Perenolde isn't preparing for a mere border war, he wants total war.

Gunpowder. Perenolde surely saw it as me giving his rival the opportunity to destroy and subsume this country once and for all. He believed Trollbane planned to do just that because that's what he would do in his place. So he decided his only option is for Alterac to do that to Strom first.

Projection, all over again.

Alas for him, King Liam Trollbane was obstinately refusing to take the bait. Likely because he wanted to have a good stockpile of gunpowder first, now that the recipe had surely reached his country.

That, too, was a mistake – while Alterac did have the head start on gunpowder, it still hadn't finished weaponizing it. Strom would do best to attack now before our side finished making the bombs and cannons, or whatever else they came up with without me or a dwarf giving them ideas.

Further, unlike Alterac, Strom actually did have a valid casus belli. Per Richard's most recent report from the border, General Hath's most recent armed exercise had devolved into a skirmish against a force led by Prince Thoras Trollbane himself. A nearly bloodless one, or we would be in open war regardless of what else. But one of the more stubborn rumors since – on both sides of the border – was that the prince had also gone missing in the aftermath.

All told, it was bizarre that King Liam hadn't done anything in the time since. Especially with time running out. Once the snows began, nobody would be marching anywhere.

But there had been a steadily growing feeling of significance ever since that happened, so I was withholding judgment. The disturbance in the Light was only comparable to the one I'd felt leading up to the ambush on Richard's retinue.

On the whole, I had precisely zero complaints about being given all the time I need to prepare my solution to this mess.

I'm only surprised people don't nag me about it more.

Perhaps that was set to change too, though, now that Smid Keyton was here. Yes, it was for actual business we'd discussed on and off since our guild's founding, in letters and missives. But I was sure this would do nothing to stop him from asking what I planned to do about everything.

Unfortunately, what I planned to do wasn't something I was going to share, regardless of how polite and reliable the company. Operational security in this case meant that nobody could know until after it happened. Even speaking a word aloud might ruin it. The Light even agreed with me.

How will he react to that, I wonder?

Come to think of it, isn't there something I should very well be reacting to right now?

Frowning, I decided to skip straight ahead to dual-sense enhancement and enhanced my sight. Then, with both hearing and sight taken beyond the farthest natural limits, I spied the events happening down below. It was disorienting, but my cognitive adaptability was quite fair these days.

My hunch was correct – Master Keyton's guards weren't all from Richard's army. All of the duke's men were accounted for, but the escort had grown beyond them. By over a third. There were more dependents than there should have been too.

The explanation that came quickest to my mind was that some soldiers had coerced their way into the guard force, maybe as a way for the king to gain some official representation in this new holy site. But then I saw the face of the man looking up. Searching for me with weary hopeful eyes after I was pointed out to him by one of the locals.

I recognized him. It was the one guard that had tried to block my path after I resurrected Orsur in the plaza. The man who'd then stepped out of my way and dropped to his knees to pray as I passed by.

Not for the first time, I wished the steam elementals weren't still sulking in the cauldron. I could really use them for a long-distance soulgaze on the man down below. Instead, Richard or I was going to have to get close and personal, if I wanted to assure myself of his intentions.

Well isn't this the motherlode of all powder kegs?

There were three scenarios I could see that could have driven these men to come here, and none of them were happy ones. One, the king had sent them here deliberately to see if I would escalate. Two, they had been let go from the military – or worse, the Crownsguard – and come here, either for the coin of honest work or seeking sanctuary. And three, they had not been let go from the force, meaning they had effectively deserted in order to come here, in which case they were definitely seeking sanctuary. There wasn't a concept of constituted police on Azeroth, it was all soldiers like in the Roman Empire.

Seeing as there was at least one of the newcomers who had his family with him, I was strongly leaning towards option three.

I live not even two days away from the capital, my presence here must feel like a gun held to the back of the king's head.

I rose and turned for home.

Time to play host.



"-. September 25, Year 580 of the King's Calendar .-"

I watched as the master blacksmith reverently finished affixing the hilt to the new sword we had made, out of a steel alloy that should have been impossible on this planet. At least with the current level of technology. S-type steels required the inclusion of not just manganese, but also a bunch of other elements, especially silicon in very particular proportions. The former was fairly straightforward. The latter was practically impossible at the current level of metallurgy on Azeroth. Even for the dwarves, I was pretty sure.

Ferrosilicon was extremely common, you could get it from scrap metal, but you needed silicon added in its pure form to create the microstructures key to resisting deformation after tempering, and pure silicon was impossible to extract with the means available in the known world.

Don't even get me started on molybdenum, people still could couldn't tell it apart from lead here. It wasn't their fault, but it was still a hurdle we had to overcome.

Fortunately, when you could manipulate matter on a subatomic level and were soul-bound to an earth spirit capable of doing the same for anything from a molecule to industrial capacities, many technological limitations became academic.

"Well, Antonidas?" I finished folding the paper airplane. "What's the verdict?"

The mage looked up from where he'd been carefully inspecting the sword with mage sight. "Magic charge remains zero."

Which meant that all its enchanting potential was still free. "Excellent." I tossed the airplane out the door, bespelled to seek out Richard wherever he was. Arcane magic was useful like that, especially when the caster had auxiliary means of devising guidance parameters.

I grabbed the sword and exited the workshop, whiling away the time doing random swings and testing the sword's balance while the other two watched.

When Richard finally arrived, I held out the weapon to him. "Come inside." I led him back into my workshop and waited until the other two were also there, for effect. "Now, Richard. Please use that sword to strike this anvil as hard as you can."

"WHAT?! NO!" Keyton balked. "You can't do that!"

I looked at the man and raised an eyebrow.

"I-I mean, surely, Young Master, we needn't go that far, that is an impossible standard for any weap-!"

CLANG

Richard swung down with all his Light-assisted might and flinched in pain when the strike was completely rebuffed, dropping the sword as he grabbed at his arm. "Unh – feels like my bones are shaking apart, damn."

Keyton rushed to pick up the sword and mourn its fate, but then he gaped in wonder. "There's no – it didn't dent!"

It better not have. S5 steel was ten times stronger than blade steel and had the best impact toughness of its category. If it couldn't take even one full blow without denting, it meant we hadn't made it right. You could literally cut a car door without denting a blade made from this thing, back on Earth. Also, S5 weapons can bend but don't set, they spring back to their proper shape immediately.

Richard and Antonidas crowded around the man and were soon expressing similar wonder. They were even more impressed when the edge, which had lost some of its cutting ability, proved just about as easy to sharpen as castle-forged steel.

I sat against my worktable with the satisfaction of a job well done. Not the greatest satisfaction I ever felt, it wasn't like we were making maraging steel or anything like that. You needed nickel and cobalt for those, especially for the higher grades, and that was later down on my testing schedule. But it was still an accomplishment.

Speaking of accomplishments.

I looked to my right, where the ugly lump from my personal metalworking project was sitting. The lump that had been beaten and beaten and beaten again and again until it refused to deform at all. Steel alloy, but with 13% manganese. Steel tended to lose hardness the more you worked it, but mangalloy did the opposite, becoming harder instead of brittle the more you tried to shape it. Even with Antonidas' best momentum- and impact-enhancing magic added to my greatest strength.

Any other alloy I'd have put back in the furnace to soften for further shaping, but not this one. There were several reasons.

For one, Aiden Perenolde had put an embargo on all oil-distilled fuels – the same as he had for gunpowder – while the Crown 'assures itself of their safety towards the people and the realm.' The most blatant of his indirect attacks yet, against me and mine. But one that did have a fair bit of support among the merchant class, and the many nobles who made a living from coal mines, being such a disruptive discovery.

For another, Azeroth still lacked industrial-grade foundries, so getting a strong enough flame would have been nigh impossible anyway, in a standard forge. Never mind keeping it constant. That was why we were using Antonidas' magic for that instead.

Most importantly, though, we didn't have a use for fire anyway, for this. Mangalloy couldn't be softened by annealing at all, once it hardened.

A yellow flame let you forge manganese steel to begin with, but not into anything fancy because it was tougher than carbon steel when heated. You could theoretically heat it until it was white hot, but that was more likely to make it crumble under hammer blows than take a desired shape. For all these reasons, mangalloy was considered unworkable even back on Earth, outside a few specific uses. Despite being many times stronger than S5, and even better than titanium, you couldn't shape it into tools or armor, never mind sharp edges.

Here, though, we had magic.

I called the lump into my palm. In terms of arcane magic, minor telekinesis was a training cantrip at best, but very convenient day-to-day. When the lump was in my grasp, I looked into it with sight beyond sight, and called on the Spirit of Alterac to do the same.

~ Compliance, Focus Minute, Query ~

Make it a two-handed sword blade, double-edged, claymore configuration. With my towering, still growing height – which I might, finally, have a way to get under control if my unorthodox commissions from Dalaran pay off – I'll be able to wield even the longest claymore like a long sword, even an arming sword if I wanted.

Granodior's will set itself upon the metal and slowly, slowly stretched and shaped it into the requested shape, tugging and tightening until it had a monomolecular edge. With extreme difficulty.

~ Shock, Affront, Grudging Respect ~

Even the ancient spirit of earth had only barely managed to turn mangalloy into something useful. Supermetals were no joke even to living primordial forces, it seemed.

~ Indignity, Outrage, Promise ~

Granodior insisted that that he only had trouble because he wasn't allowed to use any transmutation during the process. But since he could only exert this power outside himself because I let him work through my spirit – which I'd had to imbue into the sword itself during the entire process – and because all his freshly transmuted mangalloy lacked the acquired toughness from being worked on, I remained sceptical.

~ Offense, Wounded Pride, Determination ~

He insisted that he could figure out how to transmute the finished product, and he didn't need no human or fire elemental's help when he had the magma chambers deep below the ground for all his heat needs. Alas, since we'd been at this for weeks and he still hadn't produced a sample with comparable work hardness, there was just one reply I had for him.

Good luck with that.

The Spirit did not dignify that with a response.

I know you know you can use vibration or literally pummel the thing to harden it, why not just do that? Unless it's just a matter of pride.

Alas, the Ancient Spirit did not rise to the bait.

Damn, thwarted again.

I'd hoped to finally get him worked up enough to slip some of whatever feelings or wants he was still keeping from me after all this time. Or at least enough to let me figure out if it would be a good or bad surprise, when whatever it was caught up with me. No luck though, even now. Ancient spirits the size of the landscape were very good at controlling what they showed you, even when soul-bound. Who knew?

I set the blade into an interim hilt, then I turned around and brought my sword down with all my Light-assisted might.

With a sharp, whistling shriek, the anvil split clean down the middle.

"My word!" "Impressive." "Amazing!"

I ignored the awed exclamations in favour of inspecting the edge. Not a dent, and not the slightest scrape either, which the S5 sword had incurred a couple of, on the side. Also, when I dropped my handkerchief on the impact site, it split clean through. I'd cut an anvil and it hadn't blunted the edge at all.

"Antonidas, what do you think?"

The mage inspected my work with second sight, and told me what I had already confirmed with mine. "Even here, the magic charge is zero. Moreover, the enchanting potential of this dark iron is the greatest I've ever seen in any material."

Dark iron, really? Could it be?

"You advance the craft and doom us who pursue it to despair in the same breath," Keyton grunted. "What use are wonders if we cannot produce them in any real quantities?" Antonidas had been needed to keep the flame strong and constant enough for both the S5 and mangalloy. He'd not had an easy time of it either. "Is this truly all there is? Is castle-forged steel the pinnacle of what we can put to use, while everything above is the domain of magic and providence?"

"Until we can make the foundries I have in mind, I'm afraid so." In other words, until King Perenolde's embargos 'expired,' we were stuck with the same fuels and techniques as everyone else. That said… "But that doesn't mean there aren't other things we can work on." I gave my new sword to Richard to play with, since he was the only one around with anything approaching a good enough height. "Come with me, master Keyton, let me tell you all about seric steelmaking."

S-type steels and magalloy may be a bitch to produce, but I had no doubt that Damascus steel would console the poor man and then some. It didn't quite live up to the legend, but it was still a lot better than the stuff Azeroth had right now.

The super sword's done, now for the knives and polearms. And a warhammer or two, while I'm at it. Maybe even a spiked mace. And a quarterstaff. A sceptre too, maybe? Definitely a full suit of armor. And spares for everything, in several types so I don't have to walk around in full plate all the time. And mail undershirts! Or scale if that proves too finicky. Plus more of everything for my family and friends of course. Hmm, this might take some brainstorming.

Not the guns though. Those were non-negotiable.

I'd revisit the issue when we finally got around to abrasion-resistant steels, at least for the armor.

A shame we haven't seen the same amount of progress with ceramics.

Master Keyton did eventually ask me if I had plans, any plans at all, to deal with this whole mess with the king. He'd made sure to ask me that with Richard there, tossing what he thought was a discreet glance between me and him. Like everyone else in our guild, and in the pilgrim camp and half of Alterac City and who knew where else, the man expected a rebellion or civil war to be declared in my name. Any day now.

Unfortunately, what I planned to do was still something I hadn't shared with anyone, even Richard himself. It definitely wasn't something I was going to share with Keyton, or anyone else subject to surveillance. Which I did tell him.

Somehow, though, the man only looked reassured when he left.

What do these people imagine I'm going to do, exactly?

Whatever these people thought or believed, it couldn't be anywhere near as preposterous as what I was actually planning. Was that a good or bad thing?

"They probably don't," Richard told me after we were alone. "Think about the 'what' and 'how,' I mean. After a point you just don't wonder about these things anymore, you just believe."

Like one believes in a higher power? "Same as the guards then, you think?"

"I would say so."

I had been entirely right to assume option three – the guards were all deserters. From the Crownsguard, which was the worst possible option. It made their situation very sensitive, more so than even the bad blood that existed between some of them and a number of the pilgrims already here, whom some of the former crownsmen had wronged over the years. Mostly on orders, but the leeway from that was always limited once the ones who gave the orders could no longer protect you. Assuming they didn't make you their fall guy to begin with.

On the one hand, desertion was only less contemptible than betraying king and country to the enemy, both of which they'd technically done through this one act.

On the other hand, Richard had soulgazed all of them and found that not only were they all genuine in their repentance, but they'd only deserted because most of the royal favour and promotions were increasingly going to sick monsters now. Monsters who had very little hesitation in acting on their nature, both towards the people and them, their co-workers. Or subordinates, now.

On that last point, at least, everyone else also agreed. It was the same reason why the number of 'pilgrims' coming and literally settling at the foot of my mountain kept getting higher and higher every week.

Yet again Aiden Perenolde is severely overreacting, but what else is new?

I was immensely thankful that Richard had managed to buy the land. As conflicted as I was about my name being on the deed, it was better than the sheer nightmare of charters and ownership that would have erupted later, if we didn't get ahead of the issue. Master Keyton had even assured me, just today before leaving, that the guild would start coming over more often too, to set up proper shop down in 'Saint's Tier.'

"Are the former crownsmen still moping over me 'shunning' them?" Which I hadn't, I just had a lot of more important things to do than play usher all day. Obviously.

"Fit to cry, my lord."

I looked seriously at my first disciple. "Up until now, most who came that weren't driven by mere curiosity have had real healing needs and have supported themselves. If we start giving sanctuary, we'll need to actually start supporting some of these people. And that will only invite more."

"I know," Richard met my eyes resolutely. "I've already sent word to Mercad for a supply train to be assembled."

What would my life be now, if I hadn't been there for that ambush? "Don't be too generous," I warned him. "And don't make it a permanent arrangement. If people want to live under our protection so much, that doesn't mean they can just leech off of other people's hard work. They'll have to earn their livelihood and happiness just like everyone else."

"I understand."

"Alright." I sighed gustily. "I suppose I'll be going down there this afternoon." Before my 'show of contempt' towards the deserters got them run out. Or stoned to death. And everything else Richard had to order his men to take all reasonable measures against, which said everything I needed to know about how the ducal guard viewed their erstwhile peers. Not well, to say the least.

I took my sword back from Richard and gave a few warm-up swings. "Until then, go ahead and start teaching me how to actually use this thing."

I trained with the sword. It went so and so.

Then I went down to 'Saint's Tier' and met the men.

They were ashamed, but desperately hopeful. When I gave them sanctuary, they were just as desperately grateful. So grateful that the one guard I knew and the one who'd brought his family both fell to their knees and wept. If I'd worn a robe or a cloak, I had no doubt they would have clung to the hem and kissed it at my feet.

Any society where men are so easily brought to their knees in tears is fundamentally broken.

Alas, the wheel of time refuses to make a full turn without adding even further complications to my life. The day of Keyton's departure was the same day when the major significance of nebulous nature finally found its way to 'Saint's Tier' as well. In fact, it found its way to the tavern pavilion just as Richard and I were finishing our round of drinks. The round of drinks we'd deliberately gone down there for, to make sure nothing too bad happened once the unfortunate deserters failed to mingle. Peacefully, anyway.

"What the devil is he doing back here?" Richard quietly fumed on seeing Jorach Ravenholdt come in. The Master of Assassins was in a virtually perfect disguise as a ranger, false face and everything, but it turned out you could very easily recognize someone you had soulgazed, just by intuition.

I was, admittedly, mildly surprised at his return as well. I'd long since interrogated him about all the passages and weak points of Alterac Keep. And the city. And the rest of the country. And every other scrap of relevant information he could think of. I'd made him write up a detailed breakdown of everything. I'd even had him follow through on his promise to help us devise ways to contain him and his, before I finally let him take his loyalists and go regain control of Ravenholdt Manor. If he was back now, in person but with no signs of duress, I could only assume things were stable there again.

Unlike Richard, though, I wasn't distracted from Ravenholdt's travel companions.

The cosmic forces of schadenfreude really want a war, don't they? I wryly took in the other two men. Bet they didn't expect the Old Fowl of the Mountain to come down from his nest just to play secret bodyguard, though.

"Richard," I discreetly cast a sound muffling spell as I watched the wandering historian 'Myrnie Wolmet' from the corner of my eye. And his tall, burly, green-eyed redhead 'bodyguard' that was very boisterously embarking on a self-imposed mission to make merry friends with everyone on the wrong side of… what I was very sure would devolve into an epic bar brawl as soon as a drop of spittle landed on his impeccably groomed beard. "I do believe we're hosting foreign royalty."

"What?" the duke hissed, barely managing not to draw the newcomers' attention. "Who – no. No, no, no, surely it can't be…"

I left coins on the table and led Richard out the back entrance of the pavilion. Most casually.

"Your Worship," Richard growled, spitting out my most bothersomely widespread title. The tile he only used in extremely rare cases. Specifically, those extremely rare cases where he wondered if his entire life might not be a fever dream after all. "Please tell me you were joking and that wasn't Prince Thoras Trollbane back there."

"You want a saint to lie?"

"Dammit!"

My sentiments exactly. "Don't soulgaze them for now."

"Oh, I have a whole list of things I really shouldn't want to be doing right now!" Richard growled. "Why are they here? No, what is Ravenholdt thinking bringing them all the way here, the capital is two days away! How did no one recognize them?!"

I, of course, completely ignored my disciple's outburst with all the magnanimity inherent to the most despicable of cult leaders such as myself. "His beard had traces of oil and hair chalk." A rowdy tavern was not the best place to practice super hearing, but eminently lucrative for sight and smell.

"That – he was in disguise too. Of course. But then why take it off on the last stretch? Without ditching their guide too, Ravenholdt must have insinuated himself deep into their confidence, damn him and his forked tongue. But still! Whatever he told them of you or this place, it's still extremely dangerous. We are literally on the king's doorstep, we have people here that were Crownsguard until three days ago, this is madness!"

"Or boldness." Certainly not courage. I considered what I knew of the happenings abroad. "A warrior prince just a few months shy of his scheduled wedding, going on one last heroic adventure that may or may not have been approved by his King-Father, because he hasn't lived long enough to have his enthusiasm smothered by responsibility."

"Well it certainly can't be experience," Richard grunted. "He can't have suffered any true hard knocks or he wouldn't be pulling a stunt like this."

"True. Still though… Averting almost certain war would seem like the most noble of justifications to such a man, I imagine." I gave my Paladin a pointed look. "Especially if the only way you can conceive to avert it is winning it all by yourself."

Emotions played on Richard's face, then settled on resignation. Begrudging and self-conscious, embarrassed resignation. "Curses."

Truly, my first disciple had the most excellent self-awareness.

Still not the best insight into others, though, or he'd have realized I was throwing shade at myself more than him, in this one case.

Finally, Richard set aside the issue of how much he had in common with our newest royal guest and looked at me worriedly. "What do we do?"

"His handler seems fairly competent, and the man himself seems well on his way to making fast friends with at least three of your officers. Just let them know to watch that he doesn't get drugged and carried off in the night. Or go off hunting in the woods by himself. I'll talk to Jorach about the same, I assume he's had at least one of his own men trailing their hapless trio. If they approach us without false pretenses, we'll treat with them. If they don't, we won't."

"Just like that?"

"Yes. Now come, precious paladin mine, let's bless some babies!"

Yes, people had started bringing me their newborn children for benediction as well. I'd not gotten around to asking a cleric if they did anything specific during Lustration, beyond the obvious burst of Holy Light to make sure the infant was as healthy as possible. I made sure to always tell the parents that I wasn't a substitute for the Church, but ultimately chose not to discourage them. Stable long-term investments were the best investments after all, even when nobody else knew about them. Especially then, in this instance.

The Aegishjalmur was too taxing on the spirit to brand on a newborn, but it wasn't the only useful stave I knew.

Granted, my stave against hostile magic probably won't do much either, without them cultivating some manner of mystic abilities of their own. Like every other ward in this world, it needed to charge up somehow. Also, again, no telling what variance in effect might result from different mystical paradigms. Still, there wasn't a single human spirit that didn't have at least some amount of power. By the time they were old enough to be useful targets to mages and warlocks, the stave should have collected enough power for the occasional one-off.

I'll never get to hold my brothers like this.

As I was handing the last child back to their parents, I spotted the Prince of Strom watching me from the back of the gathered crowd. He looked unreasonably pleased with himself, despite his freshly bruised black-eye. I didn't give him the slightest sign of acknowledgment. If he wanted something, he'd have to come forward.

I'll be waiting a while, won't I?

If he ever got word of this, Aiden Perenolde would no longer be overreacting. At all.

But there really was no reason to dwell on any of this anymore.

I am going to solve all the realm's problems.

Thoroughly and permanently.

Just as soon as Antonidas finds me that damned fish.


Chapter 13 is available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with the advance chapters for Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, Reset the Universe, and Master of Wood, Water and Hill (yes, really).
 
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He didn't resurrect them, he reverted them mid-way through the process of dying. The foetuses were already dead for hours, with souls nowhere in sight. Also, they were in a bucket.
Thanks.Poor babies.Well,another reason to kill our beloved King now.

And,about swords and anvils - swords made from toledan steel actually could cut anvil in half,if wielder was strong enough.
Or at least it is what i read.
 
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The Vagaries of the Holy and Just
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Chapter 13 – The Vagaries of the Holy and Just

"-. October 14, Year 580 of the King's Calendar .-"​

In contrast to the world's ever so grandiose problems that I had already found solutions for, my personal problems were proving to be much more stubborn. Chief among them my mother's mental health. She had turned 'pretend until it goes away' and 'fake it till you make it' into something almost approaching an art form. 'Almost' being the key word there. It was like that thing that tries to be art but fails just sideways enough to slip into uncanny valley – you feel uneasy just from exposure. Then the memory of the exposure. Then both. Before, during and after. Every time. Every day.

It was a terrible approach to dealing with trauma, and I made no secret of my expert opinion on the matter as the only person in the room with any real claim to enlightenment.

Mom dared me to soulgaze her.

I'd have done it too, if I didn't think it would break her spirit completely. Mid-way through the all too extended denial stage of traumatic miscarriage was not the best time to learn that the world was due an apocalypse at the claws of aliens and dragons and an infinite army of demons from beyond the stars. And zombies.

She didn't know about any of that, but she did know – well, believed – that I was born in this world with a purpose much bigger than her and dad, never mind what I thought. She was only half-wrong too – if I didn't tell them any of it before, I certainly I wouldn't risk burdening her at such a critical time.

Mother used her 'victory' as further justification to act as if nothing had happened. Took my backing down as a perverse confirmation that I had bigger things to worry about than her.

She wasn't more than half wrong about that either, exactly, my purpose in life was to change the future of the universe for the better. The same could, of course, be said of everyone, but I couldn't pretend that the scale of my potential impact wasn't vastly beyond most others. In fact, my scope was so dramatic that the most important of people would – and did – undergo dramatic and life-altering changes in goals and behaviour, when confronted with it. When they were at their best. Richard was proof of it, and Narett was still politely deferring on being soulgazed for the same reason. So was Antonidas.

I'd still have pushed the matter with mother if I wasn't in a less than ideal place myself, emotionally. Having become a spirit medium, I was now actually conscious of how I interacted with others on a spiritual level. By extension, I had, in fact, gained some ability to sense emotions, instead of relying on 'just' my intuition. And the Light's revelation.

Granodior and Narett assured me I would learn to pick and choose who and what I conveyed and received. Unfortunately, that required exposure training. Like a newborn needs to acclimatise to the air, sound, cold and light before it can even think of paying anything specific attention. Or ignore it.

The alternative was I could withdraw into myself completely. Unfortunately, while that was very good for meditation, it only hindered me everywhere else. Having experienced expanded consciousness, I felt blind without it. Also, people felt uneasy when they had me in front of them but didn't get anything from me on that level. Everyone interacted spiritually, even if they weren't conscious of it.

The worst part? That I could 'see' through walls was well known in our household since before we even moved out of Strahnbrad. This drove mother to go about her 'pretend until it goes away' mental unhealth project even behind closed doors.

Long story short, the only way to prevent her silent distress from being even worse was for me to spend as much time away from the house as possible. And father, damn him, completely agreed with me on that, even if he disagreed as much as I did with mother's approach to 'self-care'.

You'd think they wanted me gone or something.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

Mercifully, the law of averages always has its way eventually, which is why the next major significance of nebulous nature came along with more solutions that problems, for once.

It definitely gave the opposite impression, though, at the start.

"My Lord," Richard called as he found me up on my perch. Not the terrace above the enclave, but the patch of untouched nature atop the mountain ridge, vaguely above my dragon's lair. I'd gone there to completely draw away from the world. I'd pulled inward to get a break, so I hadn't sensed him coming up. I still knew through the Light that the significant development of nebulous nature was very near, but I hadn't needed to look deeper this once. "You have some… visitors you will want to meet in person. At once, I think."

"Of course I do." I couldn't go more than two days without some grand drama demanding my presence. Worse, today seemed to be one of those occasions when the drama didn't even do me the courtesy of happening when I was still down below, lightforging plant life in the herb plot. "What is it this time, did the Order of Assassins implode again? More deserters? The new court sorceress dropped in for a curse, perhaps, or does the king still not have one? Light forbid you tell me it's a tax auditor."

"None of those, Lord Wayland."

… This was the first time Richard didn't call me Ferdinand.

"They're… wandering priests, so called. From somewhat further up North than we usually get around here."

I came out of my deliberately inward-looking meditation and turned to behold Richard, and the three men that had followed him up to my high perch.

The newcomers were familiar. Dressed down so that nobody recognized them, but I knew them.

"Lord Wayland," Richard stepped aside, glancing at me apologetically but nonetheless certain that leading these three up without checking with me first was the right call. "These are Lonso, Alyn and Thure."

It was… shockingly reassuring to be reminded so soundly that I now lived in a world without ubiquitous spying, cameras and microphones. One where a dusty robe and a shortened name was enough to pass yourself off as a different person. "… I suppose I should be glad this is the best the Church of the Holy Light can muster in terms of subterfuge. I'll take it to mean I don't need to worry about some secret order of insidious inquisitors bursting out of the ground at midnight to torture and catechize."

"Is that something I should devise?" asked 'Lonso' in that reassuringly pleasant manner you couldn't forget. "Create my own Inquisition?"

"Seeing as such orders and their methods have echoed throughout the universe so loudly as to create an entire race of fell demons by that name, I'm going to advise a hard 'no'."

"Thank the Light, finally a straight answer," 'Lonso' said as he reached up to pull down his hood. "It has been a while since I could be sure of anything coming out of this land. All the envoys and ambassadors talk in double words and deflections, even for the tritest trifles. The people haven't been much different either, here, more so since when I last came by, barely over a year ago. It has made it rather impossible to get a clear picture of anything, these days. Except the one thing, of course." The short, stocky, bearded man looked at me squarely. "The closer we got to the capital, the more people seem absolutely sure you're some manner of divine prophet."

Don't I know it. "Archbishop Alonsus Faol." I didn't even pretend to make assumptions about why he was here. Or his attendants. "Ser Uther. Clerist Turalyon. Greetings."

"To you as well."

"… Lonso, Alyn and Thure, did those names really fool anyone?"

"Probably not, but who can tell when someone is playing the fool in this land?" Sir Uther said gruffly from behind their short leader, proceeding to pull his robe off over his head as if it was a personal offense. The armor beneath was the same as last year, but clearly not as well kept. Likely on purpose to further sell their 'disguise.' How much did it pain the former knight, to treat his kit so poorly? "I still say the last handful only pretended not to recognize us because they didn't want the trouble."

"And Light willing, it all worked out just fine as always," the Archbishop reassured the other man.

"I hope that's true," Uther harrumphed. "But I still think that ranger was on to us."

Ah, so it was the 'ranger'.

"Peace," Turalyon urged. "He was long enough ago that we'd have been waylaid by some manner of armed force at this point if he chose to report us. Be at ease that he chose silence instead of selling us to any malcontents."

"Or the 'malcontents' are just setting up a different play," Uther huffed, but subsided.

Jorach Ravenholdt is going well out of his way to not make me regret giving him back his autonomy, isn't he? Fair was fair, I won't blow his cover. "A divine prophet," I slowly tasted the words. Each time they felt a tiny bit less ill fitting. "Is that all they're saying about me?"

"Certainly not," Alonsus Faol gave me a deep stare. "But I'll wait to discuss that – and more – until we have four walls and a roof around us."

How very reserved compared to the first time. I stood up. "Will you be accepting guest right, or are you here purely on business?" Just the three of them, despite the danger to the most famous man in the world. Traveling in secret. Not known to even the country's king.

The Archbishop, alarmingly, actually hesitated at my question. Briefly, but it was there. "I will be glad for Guest Right, but only because I trust your ability and willingness to abide by it and discuss business matters both." The man gave me a look that was at once trusting and pointed, and I knew, with my various developments in terms of awareness and empathy, that the nature of what he going to say next had been planned in advance. "Especially if I get it from your father."

So it was like that. "Come with me, then, and he'll be right with you."

I had to pause before setting off, when I felt the feeling of relief from the Archbishop, and the raw surprise from the knight. Uther was… very surprised at my easy compliance. I could tell now that he had been on guard for me reacting poorly at the possible slight. He hadn't expected me to comply so easily, and he especially didn't expect me not to feel insulted at being indirectly told I wasn't fit to grant guest right myself. Uther, it seemed, was surprised that I still allowed myself to be treated as having an inferior status to anyone, even if that 'anyone' was my father, the household's master.

Fair was fair here too, I was a walking insurrection, I owned the entire mountain, and I had one of Alterac's dukes serving me above and beyond even the king. Also, I had a dragon.

Dad still owned the house though, so that was that.

Speaking of my father, he reacted just about the way one might expect at suddenly having the Archbishop of the Church of the Holy Light on his doorstep. Fortunately, the latter was quite practiced at managing the startled and distressed. Mother was also shocked, but actually felt hopeful to my six sense after that, for the first time in months. More so as the evening wore on, even as her spirit felt heavier too. Bread and wine was given, wash basins were provided, and soon we were all ensconced in the dining room, enjoying a small feast from our best stores, which had grown fine and abundant indeed.

Narett wasn't in residence, and Emerentius was off doing a very pointed flyover of the border with Strom, so it was just Richard and Antonidas joining the rest of us at the table. That gave us enough people to fill the silence. That said, a proper host didn't ask anything of guests until they were eased of hunger and weariness, which included not discussing any of the grim questions and news at the table. The conversation stayed instead on light topics, with only the occasional dip into the matters of family, friends, and what news and pursuits we each had that didn't skirt the issues of sedition, treason and tyranny.

Eventually, though, we retired to the den to sit around the fireplace. Mother excused herself to prepare rooms and draw our guests some hot baths, but father stayed as was proper. Then, the Archbishop finally revealed that he was leading a large ceremonial procession to Stormwind for Winterveil, in a bid to revive ties with the far-flung legacy kingdom of Arathor. But he'd taken a detour to come over for a visit first, ahead of the docking date. Secretly.

Since he stopped there, I asked if he'd received my packages, only to find out neither of them had reached their destination. Not the rune primer I'd sent by courier last year, and not the more recent one with the staves either. Antonidas was kind enough to make copies of both notebooks now, which the three clerics were quite appreciative of. Turalyon even began to study them on the spot. But that still left me wondering about the hedge knights I'd hired as couriers. Worried too. The first one in particular was a Strahnbrad native and I'd never heard back from him. I'd need to look him up, or his family to see if he at least made it back.

"I will send a transmission back to Capital," the archbishop promised without me having to ask. "We should at least be able to find out if they made it past the border. It's not impossible the failure was on our end."

"No, just very improbable," Richard grunted, scowling. "It was probably confiscated by customs, but that doesn't account for the man not coming back to let you know." Richard caught my eye, and I shrugged. I'd certainly ask Jorach, but what were the odds he knew every contract ever taken on every random go-between? It was supremely unlikely, and I didn't care to speculate on what records existed or survived even before the shadow war among the murderous spies that had only just simmered down.

Assuming he hadn't been killed by bandits or 'bandits,' which was far more likely.

"Perhaps he was merely unreliable?" Antonidas ventured. "Or unlucky. It's not impossible his bones lie in some yeti's lair."

Then again, I had new means now. The little steamers wouldn't be able to stretch nearly far enough from all the way over here, even if they weren't still sulking in the cauldron. Every day I got closer to wanting to reignite the Aura half of Aura of Vigor just to see what happened, but for now I was still inclined to keep building my inner strength instead, while waiting for them to get over it on their own. 'It' being their shame at the realization that they'd been behaving like parasites. Never mind my opinion on the matter.

The little critters weren't shy of taking cues from Mother at her worst, when it fuelled their existing bias. Very like human grandchildren on their part.

Could I maybe use… whatever the equivalent of far sight was for earth spirits? Granodior had given me that flash of a vision when I asked about the steam elementals, and I occasionally used it to get an overview of things down in the enclave. Could he do the same for other things and people? Even if he wasn't personally familiar with them, he should be able to use my frame of reference to find them. Or check that they were somewhere or other, if their spirits touched the ground at any point. I knew where one courier lived, I'd even been there.

Spying on people in their own homes was a slippery slope I wanted nothing to do with, never mind what it might do to my ability to consistently defend home and hearth. Mine and others. Via the Light at least. The Light works intuitively, so if I no longer considered private property to be inherently, intuitively sacred, my ability to ward places like my and Orsur's home would suffer, wouldn't it? I certainly wouldn't be able to do it spontaneously anymore, by just walking around a place and thinking about the Havamal really hard.

I would still find a way, there was always a way, but not without exhaustive rune work and time-consuming effort, and certainly not with such broad parameters as 'safeguard this home and its denizens against everyone the owner might consider undesirable on any given day, but not against his conscious choice or otherwise to his own detriment as understood by himself and also common sense just in case'. Which did, indeed, potentially include myself if the owner and I were to have a falling out.

If I fell to the point where the letter of the spell was all I could muster, I may as well just switch entirely to arcane magic. Whose warding disciplines, incidentally, I didn't know my way around yet. They were not a priority in Antonidas' lessons, at my own request, since I had the Light-based variety well enough mastered for things like that.

Perhaps… Maybe check to see if someone was taking a walk down the public street closest to their house? It wasn't perfect, but it was within the rights of anyone capable of walking down that same street.

"No," I dimly heard my dad murmuring, right as the Spirit of Alterac decided to do me the kindness I'd just conceived of without waiting to be asked. "Don't interrupt him. He's got his 'I'm changing the world and don't think I won't' scowl on."

I shook my head clear and straightened from my slouch, noticing that Richard had a hand raised for silence as well. "He's gone. The first courier, I mean, from last year." The specifics of Granodior's vision settled and I had to amend. "Well, unaccounted for at least. He hasn't set foot anywhere near his home in months." I paused when Granodior finished supplying me what qualified as short-term memory for an entity that lived forever and whose body was the literal country. Or a huge chunk of it anyway. "At least not since July." In other words, since the day that Granodior woke up.

"Definitely the border guards," Richard decided. "Then after they intercepted the package, the delivery man would have vanished mysteriously to make it look like the work of bandits or wild animals. I wouldn't be shocked if they did it on the Lordaeron side of the border too."

The three 'pilgrims' exchanged looks, but they didn't comment on the casual evil we were attributing to Alterac's monarchy.

Instead, the Archibishop levied me with a most intense gaze. "You did not use the Light to divine that. I would have known."

"No, I didn't."

I waited for the others to give up on waiting for an explanation I wasn't going to give them. Other than Narett, who figured it out on his own from how 'vast' I felt for a little while there, when alchemy began giving me results other than complete failure, the only one who knew about Granodior was the dragon. Well, other than Odyn and the Valkyries and whoever else they shared it with, if anyone. Let everyone assume it was the steam elementals, or whatever else. Antonidas surely suspected something, but he hadn't brought it up so neither would I. He'd been much more concerned with geriatric molluscs and void entities.

At Granodior's own request, I was not advertising his existence. "Why have you come here, Archbishop?"

"The Alteraci diplomats in Lordaeron decry you as a heretic." That was news to me, but not at all surprising. "The people here believe you are a genuine prophet so exalted that the Light blessed you with the eternal service of a giant fire-breathing dragon."

"Emerentius, yes. The Light didn't give him to me, I used it to free him from the forces of evil. He's not around right now, but he should return at some point tonight. I'll be happy to introduce you tomorrow morning."

Alonsus Faol, Light bless him, gaped. Not as widely or for as long a time as Uther, or even Turalyon, but he still did it. "Not just a wild rumor then," he coughed, rushing to recompose himself. "But if that flight of fancy is true, then how much of the rest...?" The bearded man levied me with a look more intense than anyone had ever given me, save the very dragon we'd just discussed. "The people here also swear that you can and have brought back the dead."

"Only the very recently dead, just the once," I admitted, because that was nowhere near secret either. "And all the real work was done by a Valkyrie."

"… Yes, a great angel born forth on feathered wings, sent down from heaven by a patron no scripture ever names, even all the apocryphal ones."

"Tyr fell in battle before he could pass down anything to our vrykul ancestors, and all the scriptures were written much time after by Lordain's people, or later still. I happened upon other sources, and they have since been verified. I have some reading material for that as well, if you wish. Incidentally, if a raven starts stalking you, talk to it because it might just start talking back."

"Young man, I expect better than glibness from the one I so enjoyed talking the evening away with last time."

Everyone expects better. "Your holiness, I sympathise with the idea of a probing interview, but it really is unnecessary. You came here at great personal expense and danger, in secrecy not shared with even the king of the nation, just to talk to me. You can get right to the heart of the matter and I will return the favor with all due respect and lack of pretense."

Alonsus Faol sat back. He looked at me. Everyone looked at him. And me too. And back. I wondered if he was weighing the good and bad of sending his bodyguard away to talk to me in private, and if he wanted or expected me to do the same with everyone on my side of the room. I couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling, even with my new spiritual awareness. The Light in him was so bright that it eclipsed everything else.

"Alright," the man finally decided. "Then I will ask upfront – are you aiming to found a new church?"

"No."

The archbishop sagged.

In disappointment and fear. I still couldn't feel them, but they were drawn plainly on his face, "Then I fervently hope you have some truly extenuating circumstances to present to me, because the only other explanation for the full sum of your actions is that you are arranging the ugliest and bloodiest war in the history of humanity."

"That is too far!" Richard erupted, standing up suddenly.

Uther did the same, a stern warning in his veteran eyes. "Your Grace, let us keep our calm."

Richard glanced at Uther and dismissed him in the same move. Not as a threat, but as a danger. However offended he was on my behalf, Richard didn't expect any of them to break guest right. "You claim to expect better of your hosts, but do not give half the same courtesy. I will say that I expected much better from the paragon of my faith."

"Am I really?" Alonsus asked grimly, not rising or tensing even as some heavy woe came upon him. "Your Paragon, truly? You will make such a claim here, now, oh Duke?"

In other words, how could he claim that when he obviously followed me first and foremost?

"You assume a conflict of loyalties where there is none," Richard scoffed. "You claim you talked to the people, will you claim that the farce in the throne room somehow did not reach your ears amidst all that?"

"I will not, but as wielders of the Light we are expected to act according to the highest purpose, not react on impulse to given offense."

"Impulse – offense!" Duke Lionheart snarled, even as Uther tensed.

But Richard then closed his eyes, took a deep breath and released it slowly. "Oh. Oh, I see. Never mind then, my apologies for my outburst. It seems I have nothing to be upset about after all." Richard then, to Uther's complete befuddlement, sat back down in his chair and waited expectantly for our talk to resume.

"… That did not go like I expected," Uther muttered, sitting back down as well.

"Don't worry about it," I told the man. "You just lack context, that's all."

"I truly hope that's not all it is," Alonsus said in a voice thick with dread and dismay. "The nearer I came to this place, the more I've felt like the future is set to drown in blood and hellfire. I want to believe the best of you, Wayland, I really do. I even did, up until I heard about you unleashing the secret of dwarven black powder. What were you thinking? What you did, unveiling the secret so brazenly, it has all nations rushing to make it now, in ever greater and greater quantities, all the while thinking up louder and uglier weapons. Even Lordaeron, home of the Holy and Just, is recruiting every alchemist it can find to verify and apply the recipe you tossed out like wolf bait, just so it won't be left behind. What drove you to such madness? I do not want to believe it was just pettiness towards an even pettier king."

Sitting there, under the pleading gaze of that man and the judgmental stares of two strangers, Richard's quiet confidence in me was more than outweighed by Antonidas' blank-faced neutrality. And my father's sudden and distressed indecision about what to believe, even if it only lasted a moment. Perhaps I should have felt misjudged and cornered.

I didn't. I sensed a fulcrum in the Light, and for once it was unneeded, even though I still appreciated it.

The archbishop hadn't asked for a private word, never mind for me to meet him alone while he got to keep his companions. Alonsus Faol had come already resolved to not do anything to me, no matter what turns our conversation took. Moreso, his assessment of my actions was entirely correct. The only thing he got wrong was the nuance. I wasn't out to start the ugliest and bloodiest war in the history of humanity.

I was preparing for it. "I'm willing to submit to the Rite of Judgment Unmerciful right now, if it helps."

Alonsus Faol froze.

A frightful silence followed then, deep and… resentful.

I discreetly sought the source of the intruding feeling and did not find it in any of the people present. Aiming my attention outwards, I failed to find any observers or loiterers. Since Antonidas had also long since warded the house against scrying, on top of my own workings towards the same – which had been tested and improved until he himself couldn't breach the defenses anymore – I could probably rule that out as well. What did that leave?

What is that?

The answer, surprisingly, came from Granodior.

~ Reverse Echo, Spite for Lost Chance for Malice Aforethought, Foretelling of Woe ~

Back on the day of my past life awakening, I'd idly mused that meeting Alonsus Faol, Uther the Lightbringer and Turalyon in the same day, was an atemporal echo from whatever I would end up doing in the future. A ripple of synchronicity backwards in time. Now, Granodior was telling me I was experiencing the… evil version of that. Based on his own experience from far back, when Fahrad subdued him. The feeling had been just as cloying and alien then too.

Knowing what we both knew, we could… probably speculate that it had been an echo of the mollusks' anger over Fahrad fooling them into sparing the spirit. Whenever they finally realized it. Or will. Which, for here and now, meant… oh no.

Who will feel extremely angry at this in the future, that will impact said future to the extent that I can feel an echo here, now?

And for that matter…

Who did I just set up to become the target of old gods or demons or orcs or what have you?

"Do you mean the words you just uttered?"

Did I just doom this man to suffering and death? "Yes."

"Please repeat that," the archbishop requested, slowly getting up from his chair even as I and everyone else did the same. "I want to make sure there is absolutely no confusion here."

"Yes, I am completely serious."

For the first time, the Rite of Judgment Unmerciful descended upon me not at my own bidding.

I felt a sting inside my head, but I was still ready to catch the other man if he staggered.

He didn't. He didn't sway, didn't flinch, didn't even twitch.

Alonsus Faol just stood there, looking up at me in abject confusion. "Nothing," he breathed in total disbelief. "There is… nothing? The Light found fault with nothing. How can there be nothing?"

I sighed. "There was quite a bit actually. I skipped what could otherwise have been an amiable and insightful group talk, just now. I misjudged your intentions. You hadn't been stalling or beating around any bush, you'd hoped to re-establish the rapport of before." For himself and also Uther and Turalyon. He'd come in still hoping and assuming the best of me. Between the two of us, it had been Alonsus Faol who went more out of his way for my benefit, rather than the reverse. And not just out of respect for our host, my father. "Insofar as respecting guest right, I am the one who fell behind."

"Don't dazzle me with technicalities," the archbishop grunted, still with that raw confusion. "How can there be nothing? The Rite judged me no less thoroughly than you, and all I understood was that my misgivings were all true also! Your discovery – the blasting powder – what you've unleashed upon the world, thousands of people, tens of thousands – more! – are going to die choking and screaming if things keep proceeding as they have, I…" The man drew away and fell back into his chair. When he spoke again, his voice was blank. "I do not understand."

Richard tried and failed not to look vindicated. Everyone else looked between me and the high priest with varying degrees of confusion.

"There was always a guarantee of war between Alterac and Strom," the Archbishop murmured, almost entirely to himself now. "But now it is looking as though all nations of man will become embroiled during our time, in the greatest bloodbath that ever was. You have set mankind on the path to a war that will end all wars, one way or another, and yet the Light sees fit to deem it…"

"… Just?" Richard dared.

"… No," the archbishop replied at length. "Not just… Not just in the least, but… good and right." The man hesitated. "Necessary."

I could only hope that meant that 'the war to end all wars' would be against aliens and demons instead of each other, and that it would actually live up to its name here, instead of setting up an even bigger and worse one to follow in ten or twenty years.

The silence stretched on, and no one seemed to want or know how to break it. After a while, Richard looked at me with something like cautious expectation. Soulgaze him, his gaze told me. Asked. Asked why not.

I was considering it. Considered making the offer at least. There was no way in hell I was inflicting it on any of these men without informed consent.

Before I could decide one way or another, my father beat me to it. "Your Holiness."

Alonsus Faol gave a start, then a look of apology. "Forgive me, good man, I was… adrift."

Dad gave me a quelling look that was entirely unnecessary, but I couldn't hold it against him, considering things. "Would it be presumptuous of me to think we've all had enough for one evening?"

"… I would be grateful for a respite to contemplate matters."

"Please follow me then, a hot bath should calm everything down and your rooms should be ready for you."

Perhaps it really was enough for one evening. The whole thing felt… unfinished, but since the only wrong call in that whole talk had been my own, I could live with the consequences for a night.

So that's what I did.

Alonsus Faol had more than regained his composure by morning, but he didn't go out of his way to resume the discussion of the prior evening, for which I was glad. It gave me some time to do what had become my usual sit-down on the terrace.

I'd spent much of the night in Reflection, but the source of the echo of malice of the prior eve hadn't become any clearer to me during the night, even after coming up with my most creative parameters during Light meditation.

The rest of what I pondered turned out even worse. Very informative, but the tidings were most ill on the whole. No matter how I turned the idea of just telling the Archbishop about, well, anything, I got very loud and glaring warnings that I'd be inviting disaster just by mentioning the orcs aloud in his presence, never mind more critical factors.

It was enough to make me worry that I'd made a huge mistake telling Emerentius about Rheastrasza's future, if just mentioning future events aloud was so risky. I was at my worst then, it was very possible I might have missed a warning.

Thankfully, Reflection on that particular matter didn't indicate I had anything to worry about on that front. Of course, that just meant Alonsus Faol came with altogether new caveats.

Given his upcoming itinerary, it was easy to guess that he'll run into a certain someone that… might not necessarily be a danger now, but would very likely become extremely so if he divined anything I told the archbishop. Through whatever means, of which this world had many.

I was regretting the lack of proper telepathy. Mind magic was another non-priority in my Arcane studies, which had barely begun as it was. Worse, it wasn't really much of an option regardless. Antonidas himself could only speak in words mind to mind, and he couldn't grant that ability to other people. For now anyway. According to him, Dalaran regulated invasive mind magics most tightly, at least for the purpose of delving people still alive. Considering that arcane magic worked by disrupting natural order – in this case the other guy's brain – I had to approve of the caution. Still, it was unfortunate to find out that true telepathy was the realm of demons and warlocks. For now.

But then… that would only lead to the same problem by a different path, wouldn't it? A man as righteous and brave as Alonsus Faol would probably confront the relevant unworthies outright, wouldn't he? Even if it killed him. Deathwing was probably still hibernating, otherwise I can't imagine he wouldn't have descended on this place to avenge himself on me and mine for the insult that Emerentius represented. That left Medivh.

Alonsus Faol was going to be in the same room as Sargeras.

Arguably, that went without saying, Medivh was the closest friend of King Llane Wrynn, after Anduin Lothar. Of course they were going to meet.

The risks I was being warned away from indicated a bit more than superficial interaction though.

Medivh was one of very few I was sure did have true telepathic powers, though the Light should be too bright in Faol for him to get anything. Alas, as I'd experienced for myself, there were ways to weaken and drain it.

Medivh should have just begun his 'hold banquets and feasts to relieve the boredom' phase of his life, will he invite the archbishop and company? Does he dose the food with truth potions? Something else?


I wasn't sure how powerful Alonsus Faol was, but I was sure it was not enough to survive that monster, especially at this early stage before he approved the more militant applications of Light magic. The Light agreed with me.

I spent the rest of the night trying to come up with some manner of equalizer or workaround using staves of protection. Good news, I didn't get any notion that even Sargeras could nullify all of them. Not discreetly, anyway, and not without the bearer dying from the strain in the case of my more creative ideas, which themselves still needed work.

Unfortunately, even if I did somehow convince Alonsus Faol to let me brand him six ways to Sunday – without me being able to speak a word of why – it would invite enemy attention, towards the archbishop and me both. There were staves to hide things, and even staves to make you forget that you hid things, but a notice-me-not field would just make it impossible for the most public figure on the planet to do his job, even if it somehow did work against the 'Guardian'. Never mind who else would be present, like King Llane Wrynn and Anduin Lothar. Also, sufficiently strong willpower could no doubt overcome it.

More targeted solutions were theoretically possible, but they required a more personal touch. Like how the Dragon Soul would need one of Deathwing's scales to make vulnerable to destruction.

Guess I'm keeping my mouth shut, I thought morosely. Maybe the man will study the staves on the journey over and apply his own protections. He'll be at sea for a good bit of it, right?

If nothing else, I would make sure he knew the true divine shield before he left, if he didn't already.

I was on the perch over the valley when the archbishop finally sought me out, and he didn't speak even then, for a while. I practiced dual sensory augmentation while he got his thoughts in order.

"I would like to meet this dragon."

"Alright." I rose and stretched while waiting for my hearing and sight to return to normal. "Will Turalyon and Uther be joining us?"

"Not for now."

"Then I won't get anyone on my end either. Follow me."

Emerentius moped less than he used to, but he still brooded in his underground lair a lot of the time when I didn't have him doing something. This was in spite of how much he enjoyed sunning himself. He had this persistent problem with wanting to curl up under a rock and die of shame.

Literally.

When we finally reached the dragon, Emerentius uncurled from where he was sleeping, pinned me with his big eye as he always did to reassure himself that I was still there to expect him not to waste his life anymore, before finally addressing my guest. "Ah. You. The leader of the brave and just, who is good and valorous in truth, even though you don't know."

Visibly taken aback, Alonsus Faol nonetheless mastered himself well. "I don't know what, precisely?"

That alien barbarians are going to invade Azeroth just to soften it for the infinite army of demons from beyond the stars that's coming to destroy the world.

The dragon looked to me and back at the man. "That is not for me to say."

Alonsus paused, but decided not to press. He instead proceeded to ask questions of the dragon, some simple, some not, some private, some rebuffed with varying levels of firmness. I whiled away the time communing with Granodior and double checking what we'd found about that one courier. Still no trace of his spiritual aura anywhere around his home.

Didn't speak about any coercion his family may or may not be under either, friendly or otherwise.

"Wayland," the archbishop finally addressed me again, though he hesitated to face me now. "Your writings. They don't cover all you've come up with, do they?"

"Only the basics of healing and defensive applications," I admitted. "We've already confirmed that the Light isn't the only mystical force that can power and use the symbols. But we don't know enough to tell how different mystical paradigms will change outcomes, yet. It's possible to extrapolate other uses, but whoever stole those books will have to do that without help from me."

"… And yet something drove you to abandon that prudence?" The man asked, half to himself. "What you did in the throne room… What could make it the right decision? What do you know that we don't? What could be so – so terrible as to forgive – offset… no, it's even worse, isn't it? Somehow, I don't know how or why, you felt it necessary to change the face of war forever." The man's words went so much quieter then. "And the Light… didn't highlight any argument to the contrary."

Seems I wasn't the only one who spent much of the night immersed in the Light to seek Revelation.

"Wayland," Alonsus eventually broke the silence again. "There is one more thing the people claim about you."

Just one? "What's that?"

"They say you only need to gaze into a man's eyes to know his deepest nature." He eyed me sideways. "They say you can do the inverse of that just as easily."

"It's not easy," I replied. "It's truthful and straightforward, but there's nothing easy about it. And I don't get to choose, it's always both ways."

"But you can do it," Alonsus concluded. "If you were to do it with me, would it enable me to understand?"

We don't have to, I wanted to say, but didn't risk. "This is a fairly large leap from wanting to take things slow and steady yesterday."

"Words are ripples in the wind, they are as empty as they are easy to divine by the base and nefarious."

I'm not the only one who spent the night Reflecting over how good an idea it would be to discuss matters. In words.

It didn't matter how secure our home was from divination if the person I shared secret plans with left its protection. Looked like my plans for the King and his cronies weren't the only ones I'd keep my silence on. "The more people know something, the likelier it is that someone is going to dream up the same information just from being part of the zeitgeist." I looked at the other man seriously. "Or, as a completely random example, get a sudden feeling that their disguise has just been blown."

Not to mention, some people were prone to muttering, like our farmhands. And Dad. Also, though the steamers and Granodior were now exceptions, the elements, on average, were not our friends. Especially in a land without an entrenched shamanic tradition. Who knows who binds spirits of air and makes them bring gossip from far-off places? Maybe not Deathwing, but I wouldn't bet against Dalaran or its renegades.

Never mind Medivh.

And what about the Emerald Dream? Dreamwalking was a thing too, and I knew for a fact that the green dragonflight wasn't in full control there anymore.

"I don't imagine you have much proof for any of… whatever it is," the archbishop said with a casualness that all three of us could tell was completely forced. "Or you wouldn't be acting so circumspect."

"Not the sort that would pass muster with lords and kings."

"But it does with dragons?"

I said nothing, because I didn't know how to reply. All the while, Emerentius beheld us silently.

"Well then." The Archbishop of the Church of the Holy Light turned and met my eyes squarely. "It's a good thing I am none of those things, now isn't it?"

The people of this world really were something else. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Do it before I change my mind," Alonsus demanded, the grimaced. "Please."

I considered the man, weighing matters of orcs, dragons, undead monsters, and his upcoming itinerary down south among lords, kings, commoners, and body-snatching demonic titans possessing a misbegotten son.

I concluded that I couldn't decide what I should tell him and what not. I couldn't even decide if I should pick and choose. Not just generally, but with this man specifically. The problems on my old Earth always got out of control because the good people with any amount of power were never informed enough. Also, strategy and a top-down chain of command were always the way to go when you're already at war, but when you're still at peace…

Well, if you want to make the best of peace, the better bet is always decentralization. Not of power, necessarily, but of executive authority.

Clarity finally dawned on me then. It wasn't secrecy that was more important than anything here, this man was. The brightest future – as I aspired to it – needed him to be around for some time still, alive and free. More than it needed Sargeras exposed. Which, having thought long on it, would probably lead to the very war Alonsus was afraid of. Medivh's attention was aimed outwards right now, at other worlds. If Sargeras was exposed, what were the odds he'd take a new disguise and start poisoning wells more actively here, at home? Unacceptable, that's what.

When every possible outcome is a bad one, chaos theory becomes your only friend.

Ultimately, I decided not to decide for him at all.

I met the eyes of Alonsus Faol and let his Light guide the Soulgaze every bit as much as my own.

I beheld the world lit bright and hale by a good and just man.

The Soulgaze ended to the ever-distant promise of vast malignance roaring in outrage far into the future. Several times over.

"Light preserve us…" Alonsus breathed out, shaken and pale. "We will never again have peace in our time, will we?"

He didn't tell me what he got from the experience, and I didn't ask.



"-. October 16, Year 580 of the King's Calendar .-"

The clerics stayed for another two days, during which time we exchanged notes and teachings on everything we could without touching on matters of potential sedition. Uther trained Richard in combat, having proven considerably ahead in skill. Alonsus achieved the true Divine Shield before anyone else, something neither Richard nor Emerentius had managed yet. And Turalyon figured out my diagnostic ability, even though most of his time was given to reading and writing down everything I – and through me Geirrvif the valkyrie – knew about the lore of Tyr, Odyn, Helya, Loken and the other Titans.

They were not mere constructs, it turned out. As Geirrvif explained it, the bodies were constructs, but they were also just vessels for their cosmic selves, same as our bodies were four our souls and spirits. The Titan-Keepers were themselves Titans, just not of the hatched-from-a-world-egg variety.

Odyn and Tyr in particular were divine twins, their souls born of the spiritual joining between Aman'Thul and Eonar, long ago.

Then something happened that put me firmly in the Archbishop's debt – Alonsus Faol got through to mother.

I always had a poor opinion of confession, the churches of Earth only used it as espionage and their vows of confidentiality weren't worth the blood they trampled. Also, some churches had you kneel at the priest's feet to spill all your secrets, which was one humiliation too many to bear for me. But there was a reason therapy and counselling became such a big thing despite the biggest names in the field being complete scams.

I wasn't there when it happened, and I deliberately went as far from the house as possible when mother led the Archbishop to a different room to confess her 'sin.' But when she finally stopped repressing… I felt the flood of tears from two hundred yards away. The emotional spillover lasted for over an hour. It was like a great block of rot was dislodged from our life, to be carried away and dissolve in the ether.

That evening, the Archbishop held a belated funeral service for my unborn brothers, which everyone in the family including mother attended. She stayed engulfed in father's arms, weeping quietly but feeling lighter than she had in months.

I experienced a bone-deep, bittersweet relief.

Some weaknesses you just don't show your children.

On the morning of our guests' departure, father's eyes were almost as misty as mother's when they came with me to see our guests off. Mother had a shepherd's pie packed for the road, and father gave the three each a pair of boots. They were the best he'd ever made, and he only managed it because he badgered Antonidas and I to magically sustain him and his deftness of hands all through the night. The man would surely crash into bed the moment we were gone.

On the way down, I asked to walk with the Archbishop alone and passed him a scroll with my parting gift.

The man wasted no time reading it, and he became more and more astonished with each word. Astonished and near petrified at what he had just learned. The world seemed to hold its breath.

"Telomeres are just one part of a dozen when it comes to ageing," I murmured. These words, at least, came with no blaring warnings. "They won't solve everything, degenerative illnesses are mostly unrelated, and we've many symbiotic life forms living within us. If they die, so will we, no matter how youthful we may otherwise be. But they are not beyond the Light's reach, and even then… you should at least be able to get a good chunk of extra lifespan. In your prime."

Alonsus Faol wasn't exactly old, but he was getting there, and the fact that only the mages of Dalaran enjoyed an extended lifespan right now rather offended my sensibilities.

"Wayland," Alonsus murmured, so astounded that he couldn't lift his eyes from the paper. "If you believe there is some manner of debt to repay between us, I think you've severely unbalanced the scales in the other direction."

"Actually, this is sort of my backup gift. Turalyon ruined the other one. If the church manages to disseminate the capability to cure chronic diseases, it might well free up 80% of your time, but I was hoping you'd say that."

"I suppose that's also true – wait, what did you say?"

"Follow me. See the man over there? Don't look at him directly if you can."

Learning that Prince Thoras Trollbane of Strom happened to be in residence down in the enclave put quite the interesting expression on Alonsus Faol's most holy visage. Learning that the man had been there for a month but was waiting for me to approach him as if I owed him something, never mind 'proof of my prophetic abilities', well…

I wasn't present for that talk either, but only because I didn't want to make a liar of myself. I'd told Richard we wouldn't treat with those two unless they came forward without pretenses, and I kept my word.

In a not entirely surprising show of competence, Yernim Melton – the caretaker of the Trollbane family artefacts, at least when he wasn't forced to go by an anagram while babysitting princes on their ill-advised adventures behind enemy lines – managed to find a way past not just the Archbishop but also Uther, Turalyon and Richard to find me. He apologized on the prince's behalf and assured me that they had lacked all malice. I believed him, but that didn't mean I was going to forgive without amends first.

Infiltrating an enemy kingdom was their right, but they'd spent the entire past month infiltrating my land under false pretenses, even though they'd ostensibly come here seeking me as an ally. Weltom was rapidly rising to something like a quartermaster even. It spoke well of his competence, but poorly of the rest.

Thoras Trollbane couldn't stop glaring at me after he was drafted to play armed escort to the three, an hour later. It was the most angry and sullen emotional display I'd ever induced in anyone, but I pretended not to notice as easily as I pretended not to know who he was all those weeks.

"I'll make sure he's well recognized, once back in Lordaeron," Alonsus promised me. "If everyone knows he's there, there will be one less reason for Alterac and Strom to go to war."

"This year."

"Yes," His Holiness reluctantly agreed with me. "This year."

I thought that was the end, but the archbishop lingered. I waited. The more time passed, the more I could feel the various onlookers wonder who these three were, to earn my personal hospitality and send-off.

"I will not ask what plans you have for the near future," Alonsus finally said.

"I appreciate that."

"That said, as proof that the Church is not deaf to the entreaties of certain Alteraci honourables, it would behove for a cleric to come here and… assess whether the cries of heresy have any substance."

I became suddenly conscious of the fact that Uther and Turalyon had been particularly quiet and solemn all morning. What was more, though Uther had taken to Richard like a mentor, he was conflicted over the latter's crisis of loyalties. The dynamic was complicated further when, to all of our surprise, the Light proved stronger in Richard than Uther, despite the latter having come into it almost a year earlier, when he finally accepted the archbishop's mentorship.

Most significant of all, Uther's reservations about Richard's loyalties had now vanished practically overnight.

Like a Revelation.

I looked at Uther, then at Turalyon, then back at the archbishop. "You figured out the Soulgaze, didn't you?"

This time, it was the Archbishop who didn't need to say anything.

"What if I say no?" If even this man tried to put a leash on me-

"Out of respect, I am leaving the decision to you."

That was no small thing, was it? "When are you coming back from Stormwind?"

"After New Year's Festivities."

"Then if you happen to pass by his way again, I'll be ready to give an answer then." I looked at him seriously. "And my confession."

Faol went still. "I dread to think what you will do in the meantime."

I didn't say anything.

"Let me amend – I dearly hope you will not do anything rash in the meanwhile. King Perenolde is preparing a very special event this Winterveil, and in fact I was very strongly entreated to attend myself. I declined, due to prior engagements, but the Grand Cathedral has nonetheless sent an official envoy to preside over the king's impending engagement."

Oh, I'll do something and it won't be rash. Though the rest of that was news to me. "King Aiden is getting engaged?" Finally? "To who?"

"I believe he has invited a number of prospective ladies from several nations, from whom he plans to choose one on New Year's night."

So an engagement party and power play. That sounded more like him. "Any from Lordaeron?"

His holiness very pointedly took time to consider whether giving me further answers would do more harm than good. "There are two I know of."

"Is any of them named Prestor?"

"… I will not ask how you know that."

I sensed… not a disturbance in the Light, but the certainty that there would be one, if I pushed that line of questioning any further. "Who's the other one?"

"Actually, I believe I will stop here. You clearly have your own means of finding information, if you truly must meddle in the affairs of royalty."

I'll do more than meddle. "What if the affairs of royalty meddle with me?" I thought of tyranny, death and deserters. "What if I'm dealing with the consequences of that right now?"

"What do you mean?"

I explained to him the 'little' issue of the crownsguard deserters.

Alonsus Faol all but demanded to meet them, which I had no issue complying with. I caught the attention of one of Richard's soldiers and had him lead us to where the group currently was. For all that I'd gone out of my way to affirm their right to be there, they were still shunned by everyone else. Quietly, but consistently.

The more I explained their plight, the darker Faol's face grew. When we reached the tent, he spared no time asking them questions and more questions and then, to my astonishment, he proceeded to soulgaze every last one of them too, right there on the spot. By the end, his face was so thunderous that he all but stomped back outside, heedless of the tearful reverence in the faces of the men who now knew exactly who was among them.

"That," Alonsus Fol pointed harshly at the tent. "Is a disgrace."

Yes it was.

"What kind of nation is Aiden Perenolde even running here?" Alonsus seethed, pacing angrily back and forth. "This. Is. Unacceptable."

Not for the first time, I was gratifyingly amazed by the fact it was true. The archbishop wasn't being naïve or idealistic, he was being completely truthful. This all really was unacceptable by humanity's standards, on this world.

It was why I was willing to go out of my way for this place to begin with.

"I'm taking them with me," Alonsus declared, daring me to object. "I trust that won't be a problem?"

To Lordaeron, or all the way to Stormwind? I decided it didn't matter. Good or bad, easy or hard, it was the future these men had earned through their moral weakness. "I'll get some supplies and a couple of wagons ready for the families."

"Even their families are–? Unbelievable."

Somehow, my failure to come up with salvation for the poor men on my own, so that they instead had to be saved by outside serendipity, only made people more convinced I was blessed and favored by higher powers. The thanks and tears were even worse this time than when I gave them sanctuary.

The Archbishop and company left on the morning of October 16, Year 580 of the King's Calendar, taking all but one of my problems with him.

Maybe it was how raw and grateful the whole thing left me by the end, but I ended up changing my mind about Alonsus' oblique request. For Richard's sake, I asked Uther to stay. I made it clear to the man too, that my friend was my one and only reason.

"One might wonder why you would not want me around," Uther said, though the joke fell flat. "Unless you plan to do something you know I won't approve of."

"For better or worse, I am in mortal conflict with the king."

Uther froze.

"This cannot be redressed because he made the choice not to." I turned to cooly meet the man's eyes. "I won't let it come to war, but that is the best I can promise. Will that be a problem?"

Uther hesitated, but when he replied he was just as sure of his words as I was. "Quite possibly, but it will not be up to me to judge."

"On that, at least, we agree."

"… It is still a most lofty promise, I hope you realize." Uther beheld me seriously. "Can you really keep it?"

"Yes." I turned to led the way back home. "Yes, I dare say I can."

"Do you need to? You're secure enough now, especially with that… dragon of yours. If even that isn't enough, why not just leave? Any country will be glad to take you."

"For the same reason you didn't seek your fortunes out of Lordaeron."

"Don't try to sell me bridges, that's completely different and you know it."

"How do you feel about a soulgaze?"

For a while, the only sound came from our footsteps.

Finally, though, Uther had his answer. "Teach me how and I'll do it myself."

Well, I suppose I couldn't fault his caution, and I especially wasn't going to look down on someone prioritising their autonomy and sanctity of self.

Uther wasn't quite finished though. "Have you ever considered that you're not even a man full grown and perhaps shouldn't be taking any further grand burdens upon yourself?"

"I may be young now, but by the time real evil comes I'll be in my prime."

Uther didn't have a ready reply for that.

How appropriate that it doesn't feel like a victory.

Fortunately, it didn't feel like loss either. Despite everything that was coming.

Alonsus Faol and Medivh would soon be in the same room together, Aiden Perenolde might be aiming to tangle mankind in the sort of web of alliances that caused the first world war, and I was getting the eerie feeling that I already knew why Narett held the mages of Dalaran in contempt.

But my mother was healing, Thoras Trollbane was out of my hair, alchemy was finally working properly, even the deserters were out of my misery, and Antonidas had finally found me that damned fish.

Cry me a river, Sargeras, the universe is unfolding exactly as it should.


The next chapter is available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with the advance chapters for Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, Reset the Universe, and Master of Wood, Water and Hill.
 
Well,King need to die without war.Not big problem for our MC.
And real Confession really work like that.We catholics ,at least real ones,do not need pay to some fraud freuds thanks to that.

P.S Inquisition in RL must be created,becouse otherwise kings and other rulers simply order their pet bishops to burn their personal enemies as heretics.Or,burned real heretics,but with many innocents.
So,when it was not good idea,it still prevented worst things from coming.
 
P.S Inquisition in RL must be created,becouse otherwise kings and other rulers simply order their pet bishops to burn their personal enemies as heretics.Or,burned real heretics,but with many innocents.
So,when it was not good idea,it still prevented worst things from coming.
Most inquisitions have severe structural problems, often coming from being designed as explicitly temporary organizations. If I remember correctly, the Spanish Inquisition was allowed to seize the properties of those they found guilty, incentivising them to always find the "guilty." That system could be minimally corrupt for a few years, under the extremely moral, but it evidently wasn't, and was kept around for generations.

Inquisitions simply combine too much religious and political power to remain uncurrupt, and tend to corrupt the whole religious edifice that they where born from in their moral failures.
 
Most inquisitions have severe structural problems, often coming from being designed as explicitly temporary organizations. If I remember correctly, the Spanish Inquisition was allowed to seize the properties of those they found guilty, incentivising them to always find the "guilty." That system could be minimally corrupt for a few years, under the extremely moral, but it evidently wasn't, and was kept around for generations.

Inquisitions simply combine too much religious and political power to remain uncurrupt, and tend to corrupt the whole religious edifice that they where born from in their moral failures.
Spanish Inquisition was tool of spanish Kings,not pope.
Either you have catholic -like Inquisition and some problems,or secret police serving some King,and more problems.
There was no good answer to heretic problems - becouse they were real dead cults,like cathars.
 
The Strategic Cost of Prenotion
A/N: Azeroth technology is a tricksy business.


Troll-Wars-End.png

Chapter 14 – The Strategic Cost of Prenotion

"-. December 20, Year 580 of the King's Calendar .-"

There was no Christmas on Azeroth, because the one and only organized church here hadn't gone around genociding everyone who kept to the old 'devilries', only to realize they'd run out of steam well before they ran out of infidels and should therefore just settle for co-opting what they could of the old ways. In fact, such an atrocity probably wouldn't have happened even if the trolls hadn't done the job for them.

Which is to say, the Zandalari Trolls strategically eradicated all of humanity's shamans and druids and other seers and wise folk ahead of the Troll Wars, as proof of power and good faith to their local Amani cousins. It was why Thoradin accepted so easily Lordain's condition of total conversion when the Troll Wars broke, and why no one else complained either. If anything, with the spiritual malaise everyone fell into after the old ways 'failed', the visions and power the Naaru sent the Tirisfal tribe became the saving grace of the beleaguered leftovers of humanity at the time of the War of Founding.

I had a very strong suspicion that the end result was only the least of what the Naaru were hoping to achieve, with those visions. Contrary to what a certain self-contradicting Chronicle back on Terra said, Lordain's sister Mereldar was never a warrior. Not just because the humans here weren't so insane as to bring their women and children onto the battlefield so their whole tribe could be eradicated at once, but because she had always been an oracle. In fact, she received the visions from the Naaru – like everyone else who did – before Thoradin came to treat with them, not after the War of Founding was all over.

This was just my speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Naaru had intended for the Light to buttress and enhance existing traditions. To spark the same sort of mystical revolution that I've found myself stumbling my way through piecemeal. In a single year I became more powerful than anyone else I ever shared air with – yes, even Antonidas as he currently was – just because I had both the Light and the elements on my side. With both Alchemy and Arcane magic added to the mix now, I was having serious trouble imagining a limit to my future development.

There wasn't any inherent incompatibility between divine, arcane and spiritual mystical paradigms, beyond the different mind-expanding methods and mindsets required of each. Humans had a lot of trouble living long enough to master even one path, so I couldn't blame anyone for specialization. But I was now living proof that dabbling in all three could have a positive compounding effect on both power and skill acquisition.

I doubted my results would have been so good without mastering the Light first – especially its oracular aspects – and I couldn't entirely rule out that I was a unique exception thanks to being a reincarnation with an eternity of introspection under my belt… but Richard and Emerentius were going to get an elemental of their own as soon as they had their breakthrough with Aura of Vigor.

Uther too, why not? He wasn't a friend yet, never mind a close confidant, but I knew him to be good. It was the perfect occasion. Though Christmas didn't exist, we did have Winter's Veil.

Winter's Veil was the traditional New Year's commemoration. It lasted from the Winter Solstice – which had been on the night of December 19 this year, so last night – until the Day of the First Moon, which was the equivalent of New Year's Day. This, I'd found out, involved some rather complex celestial measurements and calculations to decide when the next year actually began.

Observances and festivals were all tied to astronomy, and everyone still used a Lunar calendar here, which may or may not be Elune's hidden influence. The oddities stemmed not from the fact that Azeroth didn't have any more perfect rotation around its sun than the next planet, but also from having two moons, not just one. Moreover, while the bigger moon – the White Lady – had a practically identical cycle of phases as Terra's Luna, the smaller of the two – the Blue Child – alternatively took just under or just over a standard year to reach its Full Moon phase.

This measurement, in turn, was relative because Azeroth's revolution around the sun didn't equate to a perfect twelve-moon Lunar cycle either. I did not envy astronomers or Kul Tiran tidesages. This didn't even account for the counter-gravity exerted by the moons on each other, or on the world by the moons and vice versa depending on how close or far they were from the planet. Especially when they were close to each other and aligned, during the celestial event known as the Embrace.

As a consequence, the Day of the First Moon was not necessarily the next New Moon after the December Solstice, but the first New Moon phase of the White Lady after the Blue Child has had its Full Moon phase of the year. Thus, where the people of Terra could get away with using either leap years or the occasional 13-month lunar year to bring things back in order, Azeroth semi-regularly had something called the 'Interregnum,' which this year would last for eleven days. That is to say, everything between the last day of December and the Day of the First Moon was considered to not be part of any year.

This was intrinsic to how the people on this world kept the calendar year synchronised to the seasonal and astronomical cycles, but the name Interregnum was not chosen at random. The period between the end of December and the Day of the First Moon was considered – not just by us humans – to be symbolically outside time, and thus outside the authority of any powers, mortal and divine alike. Needless to say, this came with certain implications as well as risks and opportunities, from lack of taxation to certain mystical phenomena that weren't purely the result of placebo and make-believe.

The idea that we'd have to wait for Muradin Bronzebeard to introduce the Winter Veil holiday to the alliance wasn't any truer than the rest of Loken's mistranslated propaganda. The dwarves' only contribution would be in their more festive and optimistic approach to the event. Chiefly in terms of gift-giving, though I'd already pre-empted that as well, last year. Which was good because doing it this year would only make me look like a hypocrite, once I did everything else I planned to do.

For humanity specifically, the end-of-year occasion was more solemn, with feasting and celebration reserved for the last two days. Besides sermons and wakes for the spirits of the departed – and Tyr of course – the people used the Interregnum to introduce children to the community – those that only came of age after the summer solstice – officiate marriages, annul marriages – given sufficient proof of infidelity or harm – make peace, swear oaths, break oaths by mutual agreement, sign contracts, nullify contracts prematurely – by mutual agreement even in defiance of royal seal – and various other milestones big and small.

Jorach Ravenholdt had given me to understand that even the assassins generally abided by these customs, and those that decided not to be part of the 'generally' soon stopped being part of anything at all.

He'd also given me to understand that everyone down below hoped – and expected – that I'd oversee or judge over all the formalities aforementioned. Richard and everyone else with an opinion told me the same, despite that my business associates had managed to wrangle a scrivener to come settle down in 'Saint's Tier', and we even had an actual ordained priest down there now, in Uther. Somehow, ten times as many people as usual had decided that Saint's Tier was absolutely the place to bring their business and their families during the holidays.

You'd think that more people would look askance at the fact that I never attended any church service of any kind since the day I Remembered, but apparently not.

Of bigger concern for me personally was that folk rites still retained some animistic flavor, which Granodior generously looked upon with only the slanted eye of a landlord patiently indulging illiterate squatters. It was such a vexing feeling to experience, even by proxy, that I'd made him teach me what qualified as proper rite for communing with spirits, just so I could go around telling it to the relevant people.

I had to do it without even hinting at Granodior's existence, as he continued to want nothing to do with anyone but me. But for once I was willing to lean on everyone's willingness to do as I said without explanation, just so I didn't have to suffer through the spirit's grumpy exasperation more than once.

Interestingly, Granodior wasn't entirely annoyed just for himself. According to him, Greatfather Winter was something different from an elemental spirit, but nonetheless a very real entity that sometimes actually manifested out of the winter blizzard.

Yes, really.

Finally, and most important by far in the short term for me, was that the Night of the First Moon was when King Aiden Perenolde was going to hold his engagement ball. Naturally, this carried certain implications for my high-impact winter cleaning, which I had scheduled for the same date. It was a thoroughly effacing scenario that I was preparing, and without the Light I would surely have been sad and possibly depressed leading up to it. I still didn't feel particularly merry, and certainly not happy, but I was very much committed because the alternative was World War I Azeroth Edition, complete with guns and cannons and chlorine gas to the face. Just in time for hordes of aliens, dragons and demons to rape and kill us all right after.

I was not going to take the blame for Aiden Perenolde's choices, or the choices of any others. But as the lone change in initial conditions as defined by chaos theory, I was going to take responsibility.

Alas, clear commitment didn't translate into clear strategy, even if the tactical scenario was vaguely well defined. While my assets for the occasion were finally all secured, the majority of them were of the intangible sort, and thus being regularly swapped and upturned as new options appeared, or old ones became impractical. For example, I might have to completely re-think everything depending on what success – or failure – I achieved in finally dealing with my stubbornly depressed steam elementals that were still completely ignoring me.

Mostly out of shame. It was still stronger than their growing hunger. Somehow.

Thankfully, the tangible assets, at least, were no longer a concern. Granodior had long since prepared the item I asked for in the bowels of the earth, and Antonidas had finally procured the very particular fish and spices I needed. Not without a comedy of errors, admittedly. While the spices had been easy enough to source from the more whimsical bakeries around the Violet Hold, my magic teacher ended up slumming with the black marketeers, and spelunking through the Dalaran sewers when even that went nowhere. To no more avail than everything else he tried, alas. All of it drove him to just give up and resort to his very special approach to improvising abstract spell formulas to summon the things across space and time. Both times. Completely blind.

One of the fish I wanted was from a continent nobody had explored since our vrykul ancestors fled it. The other one was from a different continent that nobody on ours knew existed, except the elves. I had been completely wrong to assume some variation of the creatures would also be found here.

Antonidas, ironically, minded it all less than I did, as he was able to do the summoning from his new accommodations on our mountain. I'd hired my business associates to raise an entire separate workshop for him. He said it spared him having to dodge everyone who had something to tell or ask him about his continued estrangement from the City of Wizards. But it was still an imposition on my part, and while I was paying him for all the trouble he kept going through for me, his agreement to help without making it conditional on me sharing my plans was more than money could buy.

Speaking of fish though, only one of them was going to be useful as is. The other one I only needed for the fat.

I entered my workshop and stood near the wall while Narett finished refining the last pygmy pufferfish oil. It wasn't distillation, but his process did require broiling it in a mixture with a number of concentrating compounds. Here, too, I had someone going out of their way to exceed my request. The oil in its base form should be good enough for what I needed, but Narett had offered to develop a refinement process, 'if only to sate his own curiosity about this heretofore unknown reagent.' I would have refused, but Antonidas did summon an excess of the things 'to have a comfortable margin of error so he didn't need to go through everything again' so it wasn't like Narett would deprive me of critical resources. Also, I had another reason for wanting Narett to stick around longer than usual this time.

Which is to say, I'd intended to come up with a softer approach to discussing my very strong suspicion about his – and Alchemists' in general – tension with Dalaran. Ultimately, though, I decided the direct approach would work best after all. Narett knew me well enough by now to notice when I was being circumspect, and I had too much respect for him to skirt and waffle. Most importantly, even after a whole night of Reflection on the notion of just telling Narett anything, I got none of the premonitions of tragedy that I did for Alonsus Faol.

The man finally straightened up from the glass flask simmering on the alembic. "This batch isn't finished yet, but I do have nine other vials filled and stoppered over there. I'd love to know what you mean to do that requires the power to make yourself one foot shorter, but somehow I will endure. Dare I hope you changed your mind about selling me a couple?"

"Not until next year, no, assuming there's any left. You'll have to talk to Antonidas if you just can't wait until then."

"Hmph."

Yeah, that was the answer I expected.

I ambled over to inspect the vials of pygmy oil, lifting each up to my eyes in the sunlight coming through the windows. The vials looked exactly like I recalled from my last life, art style notwithstanding. I was really just killing time until Narett was finished. The next topic would require his complete engagement.

I wasn't really worried about efficacy, the liquid showed the same mystical weave to my second sight, and felt potent and consistent when I overlapped my spirit with it, no matter the vial. Tere wasn't an overabundance of them, so I couldn't be completely confident that I would learn how to replicate the effects by the time I ran out. That didn't really matter to the success of the operation though.

I was confident in my chances otherwise. Even if I failed to add their magical effects to my repertoire of at-will abilities, the one-off effect should last me long enough to make sure my 'solution' to Aiden Perenolde's enmity was as discriminating as it was definitive.

Granodior had already promised his help, but Alterac Keep was warded against mystical intrusion thanks to wards built into its very foundation. Also, below a certain scale Granodior needed my senses and perspective for detail work. And there would be quite a bit of detail work, if I was going to successfully share my most diagram-shifting 'blessing' with so many people of a mind so different and even diametrically opposed to my own.

Being discriminative was very important, considering all the guests that were going to be in Alterac Keep on New Year's Eve. Especially the foreign ones. The ball was going to be attended by everyone in the kingdom who still wanted to maintain a pretense of loyalty, as well as a fair few foreign guests.

Not just the prospective ladies and their retinues, but also other foreign delegations, among which would be numbered the ailing King Archibald Greymane of Gilneas. That was another man with progressively worsening mental problems, though rumors on the why were confused at best. I could only hope insanity wouldn't become a trend with human kings.

I wondered if this was the point where the groundwork was laid for Isiden Perenolde's later backing by Gilneas. The boy existed, according to Richard, but was only a toddler right now. Isiden was even heir to the throne until Aiden had his own children, so he was unlikely to be fostered out. But I wouldn't be surprised if Gilneas' ambitious king didn't see all the future possibilities that I was going to destroy, despite his other issues. Whatever they were.

All in all, it was very much a high-tension, low-action lead-up that I couldn't share with anyone because of my commitment to operational security of the 'don't tell anyone at all just in case' variety. The silver lining was that I'd only need human help in the aftermath, to manage the fallout, so at least everyone else's hands could remain clean.

Relatively, anyway.

Eventually, the alchemist of still undisclosed age stoppered the last phial. I waited next to the tube rack for him to deposit it in its place. Sensing that I had something to talk about, and possibly the privacy weaves I'd been casting and enforcing around the workshop the whole time I waited, Narett turned to me expectantly. "Alright. What's going on in that overactive head of yours this time?"

"This thing between you and Antonidas."

"Gods, this again?"

"Yes, this whole thing between the Alchemists and Dalaran…"

"Yes, what about it?"

"It's thorium, isn't it?"

There was a moment of raw, bewildered disbelief.

Then Narett went white as milk.

I was right. "History would have gone a lot differently if the feat that ended the Troll Wars could be repeated. But it hasn't, and the fact that not just Dalaran but even the elves haven't figured out how to do it again leads me to believe that-"

"Do not!" Narett lunged at me and put a hand over my mouth, not caring that I was so much bigger than him now. "Do not speak of it! You mustn't speak of, you can't even mention th-" His tongue seemed to twist in his mouth - a geas? – then his pallor went completely ashen. "You cannot tell them! You cannot tell anyone, you cannot even speak of it aloud lest – if you have any respect for me at all, as an alchemist, as a teacher, as a fellow man, you will not utter the slightest word of this ever again!"

The idea that Narett and his not-a-society of Alchemists knew the secret of atomics, and in fact were even doing their moral best to keep that secret, might seem like a logic leap even with the Light lighting my way… but I was from Earth.

I knew my 1970s high school science. I knew about the Brahmastra. I'd read about occultists and alchemists. Some of my own professors had also been alchemists in their off-time, yes, the vocation continued even in the modern day, though in my youthful arrogance I'd secretly looked down on them for it back then. Most importantly, the internet made sure I found out about Fulcanelli.

I'd originally dismissed his story as an urban legend because of the whole 'divine hermaphrodite' nonsense that took over the narrative at the end. Now, though, with my alchemy teacher holding my mouth shut in literal, visceral panic, I was willing to allow the possibility that only the last third of that story was hogwash. Probably tacked on by someone way late in the telephone game, who clearly had an agenda and wouldn't know reality from alchemical allegory even if it hit him in the face.

I slowly reached up, gently grabbed Narett's wrist and removed his hand from my face. "I'd have hoped to have convinced at least you by now that I'm not foolish. Or callous."

Narett's face twisted into something dark, then chagrin, then shame for the briefest of moments, before he withdrew and reached blindly behind him until he found my rickety chair and fell in it. He hunched forward with his face in his hands. "… There is no secret so terrible that you'll leave it well enough buried, is there?"

I said nothing. What was there to say? When your enemy's an infinite army of demons from beyond the stars, and you can't take the slow and steady way even if you tried because it summons literal eldritch gods-enslaved monsters, could you actually afford to pretend atomics don't exist? Also, if gnomes didn't have nuclear power by now, they would soon.

"How did you even figure it out? How do you even know about – how do you know so many things from so many disparate – oh, why do I even bother? You will never give a straight answer."

Because I'm a reincarnation with knowledge of the future. "Because it's a secret every bit as sensitive as this one, and you said no to the only way I have to seal our otherwise blind trust. Precisely so you wouldn't risk slipping this secret, I'm guessing, along with everything else you want me to discover on my own step by step."

Narett didn't dispute it, and he didn't suddenly change his mind about the soulgaze either.

Should I tell him I don't need Alchemy to be immortal?

No. This was already a monumental topic, tossing another in would just make things worse.

Back on Earth, when I'd read the supposed canon about the Troll Wars and how they concluded, several things struck me immediately.

One, the notion that nobody tried combined casting before could clearly be nothing else than pure dogshit.

Two, if it only took a handful of arcanists backed by a few scores of barely educated apprentices to create a cataclysm so big and mighty as to produce a literal pyroclastic flow – as that's the least outrageous explanation for what killed not just Jintha but the loa, the trolls' literal gods before they could react, so it had to have been in a literal instant – there was no way the spell wouldn't have been used as a deterrent or intimidation, if not deployed outright in literally every other mass conflict since.

And yet it never happened, and in fact the matter didn't cross anyone's minds ever. Not in history, not during Orcs and Humans, not during Tides of Darkness, not during Reign of Chaos, not by Dalaran against Arthas or Archimonde during Frozen Throne, not during Wrath of the Lich King, not by anyone during the Cataclysm, not during Kairozdormu's little time war, not when the Burning Legion finally invaded, not for anything ever. They didn't even try it on Argus when the good guys had a spaceship capable of literal orbital bombardment.

Comparatively, the Scourge were able to zombie swarm the high elves in a conventional campaign across an entire country without such a spell even being brought up, just so they could go and use the entire power of the Sunwell to create a single lich. The same Sunwell which, if the official narrative of the Troll Wars was to make the slightest bit of sense, should have been able to fuel at least ten of those 'columns' of 'fire' at the same time.

Per minute.

Long story short, I call bullshit.

However, if it wasn't purely a feat of magic, say if there were to be some veins near enough to the surface, of a certain primordial element that becomes fissile when exposed to processes that induce neutron capture, which turns out to be one of several inevitable and necessary mechanics in literally every Arcane transmutation, conjuration and energy-state related spell out there…

You wouldn't notice it at all, normally. Splitting one atom didn't do anything, no more than fusing a couple did. It took thousands of atoms fusing at once on your skin just to make you feel a little warm. Moreover, only the bigger and flashier elemental spells were noticeably exothermic, and there were other explanations for that than nuclear physics, especially in a world where people didn't know about atoms at all. Not even the gnomes knew about it back then, I was pretty sure.

Until I brought up the topic even Antonidas had only 'agreed with prior speculative papers' that something smaller than 'particles' must exist, and even then only through deduction based on the fact that his oh so special cutting spell severed things too neatly. Considering that there are and almost always have been gnomes in the Kirin Tor, this lack of knowledge was a big deal. It told me that either Gnomeragan haven't cracked atomics yet either, or they have a healthy respect for state secrets despite all the other known gnomish foibles.

But if a single gram of hydrogen could produce 616 billion joules, or the equivalent of 145 tons of TNT, then a surface vein of thorium suddenly turning into Uranium 233 while the forces of physics are being instructed to 'blow this entire area the fuck up' by means of exotic wave-form patterns converging upon the same spot from every direction…

Back on Earth, lore nuts used to go on about how elements and ores from Azeroth couldn't be the same as those from Earth, even if their names and appearances were identical. Thorium even came up in that discussion specifically. An old quest called it 'the strongest of metals,' so strong that a lockbox made of the stuff would be impossible for a full-grown yeti to break open. Naturally, that would be nothing at all like the Terran version of Thorium, which was barely better than iron in terms of hardness, and often worse depending on the isothope.

Since reincarnating though, I'd found that to not be the case at all. Even without accounting for the language differences, all the elements had the same properties I remembered. I could only conclude that the differences were down to lore writers not knowing what they were talking about – par for the course in 95% of everything ever written – and having to subordinate the overly simplistic crafting system to character and zone levels.

Neither cobalt nor iron exposed to inherently destabilizing chaos matter would be harder than abrasion-resistant steels or mangalloy, which in turn were stronger than titanium. In a sane world, Dark Iron would have remained the endgame material through all the expansions.

Of course, in a sane world retcons would be made only to fill up plot holes, not make bigger and worse ones. Point the last – the art. Setting aside how the concept art for the firestorm back on Terra looked only a little bit different from a mushroom cloud, all the art here was speculative and post-dated the battle. As well it should, as none of those present for it could have seen it clearly. Why? Because looking at something hot enough to carbonize gods from the inside out would be so bright as to be literally blinding – kind of like, oh, a nuclear explosion.

I pulled my spare fold-out chair from under the worktable and took a seat next to the man. "If I told you," I said lowly, "that there is a menace coming to this world so terrible as to make even this worth delving into, what would you say?"

"I'd call you a liar," Narett said hollowly. "And then immediately call myself a coward for making accusations based only on emotion."

"That's not an answer."

I waited. I waited a good while.

"You cannot tell them," Narett breathed finally. "Any of them. You mustn't. The entire basis of arcanism is to go against common sense, they will not, they cannot help themselves, they will use it, and then they will abuse it even if just to see how far they can go."

"Probably." I agreed. The warnings and disturbances I felt in the Light from my own ideas had more than doubled since I began to learn Arcane spells. "But my question stands."

It stood. It stood for quite a while with no answer.

I had plenty of patience, but this was not the time for it. "I'm not going to wait for anyone's permission," I warned him. "There is a menace coming for this world, and it's one so terrible that we will be facing literal extinction if it's not denied every foothold."

Naret lurched from his chair and stepped away from me, looking blankly at the wall with his fists clenched. I wondered how much he'd already deduced before, of what I'd just revealed about the future. That I knew any of what would come in the future, however it happened. His entire body was rigid, and his face was stuck with tension. When he spoke, his voice was rough but his words final. "If ever a time comes when absolute catastrophe is the least of terrible options, then we will take responsibility."

No you won't because I'll have already done it myself, I thought grimly, acutely conscious of what longevity and immortality could do to one's perspective of time. The time is much closer than you think. "I apologise in advance for the disappointment I'll cause you."

Narett's head snapped around to look at me in pure anguish.

"I won't involve the mages," I said, standing up as well. "I'll make as certain as possible of the trustworthiness and discretion of anyone else involved, and I'll make sure collateral damage is as minimal as I can make it. But that's the best promise I can make."

Emotions flew over Narett's face, and he made to speak several times, before a dreaded resignation and disappointment was all that was left. "Do what you will." His tone was bleak. "You've discovered the secret all on your own, however you've done it. I've no claim on anything you do next."

That's as good as saying you won't teach me anything else from now on.

No claim means no responsibility either, and some might argue that further involvement with me of any kind would qualify as endorsement.

I didn't drag that issue out into the open, and neither did he.

Narett rode out the same day. That had always been the plan, he was in high demand back in the city around this time. But I still couldn't help but wonder if this would be the last time he associated with me. Where before I only worried about Aiden Perenolde's thugs coming for him in the night…

Now I found myself experiencing an all too different sort of unease.


"-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 10 .-"

The day just before First Moon's Eve was the last and biggest day of carousing, when the solemnity of the Interregnum was a distant dream and everyone goes out feasting, visiting, singing, and generally having a good time. Or causing drunken mischief with or without – and to – everyone else. It allowed for the actual First Moon's Eve to be dedicated to sleeping off your hangover, after which the afternoon and night could be dedicated to welcoming – or cursing – the new year's arrival in private with family and friends.

That Aiden Perenolde chose First Moon for his ball could only be a deliberate provocation. I didn't know what went on in his head, but I wouldn't be surprised if he chose that day specifically so he'd have a higher chance of no-shows, and thus a higher chance of having someone to judge a 'traitor' for propagandistic reasons.

He could even spin it as a slight against the foreign delegations on the part of the absentees – like Richard – even if no one really believed him. The dignitaries obviously had to be there for at least one or two uninterrupted weeks to justify the effort and expense of the trip to begin with. It would be a flimsy fiction, but not the worst he'd done.

Regardless, that was going to be tomorrow's problem. Which was good because today was shaping up to be… I didn't even know. I could feel in the Light that there was a major significance of nebulous origin almost on top of us, but I couldn't puzzle out its nature even after four consecutive nights of turning it over in the Light. Not because it wasn't clear, but because there were a whole bunch of other things converging at the same time, which would define… how the main one unfolded? Or how I took it? We? Us? Us who, exactly?

The most bizarre part was that none of the approaching somethings felt in any way related to what I was going to do tomorrow. Or, well, some did, but they didn't feel like they would in any way affect my resolve to go through with it.

At the same time, the major significance of nebulous origin felt more important than tomorrow, plus everything that had happened to me and mine all year. Combined. But not more important than some of the stuff I myself had done, like arguing with a Valkyrie over whether or not Odyn had earned himself getting strangled. Or getting his raven familiar strangled, the degree of separation there was still unclear.

Then, too, there was a second biggest major significance of nebulous origin that the first one seemed to be dragging along like a lackwit on a sled, except it wouldn't have anything to do with me specifically for at least a few years. Probably, anyway.

Bloody confusing. And worrying. And frustrating. Probably why other psychics and oracles just leave it at 'I sense a disturbance' after the first couple of years.

Absurdly, all this bizarrely non-alarming tension had for once made me seek escape in the mores of day-to-day life. The timing arguably couldn't have been better too. Which is to say, I'd been down in 'Saint's Tier' just after dawn to 'bless the start of the festivities,' again in spite of the fact that we had Uther there to officiate such things now.

I'd still expected it to be more of a bother than anything, but the authentic merriment proved beyond contagious. I even surprised myself by not immediately absconding back to my lofty perch. I was instead so completely entranced by the sight of my parents getting completely swept up in the holiday spirit – my mother smiling – that I lingered with them as long as I could before the people started to crowd us.

I then turned the Aegishjalmur upon the busybodies that didn't know how to mind their own business, with a very clear admonishment about their unseemly behaviour. Just because it was the holidays didn't mean I was suddenly going to tolerate mobbing. I made sure that was very well understood before I made my climb back up the mountain.

I spent a while watching from my terrace just to be sure, but everyone seemed to take chasing me away from the festivities exactly as hard as I hoped. They were now giving my parents their space to enjoy the day as freely as they did themselves, which was nice.

Glad that I wouldn't need to waste my time running surveillance, I turned away from the cliff and set off for the house. I'd just seen Orsur Kelsier drive in on his wagon down below, so that was the first of a bunch of surprise developments identified. I'd have to get a guest room ready for the man myself. Since we continued to be the best employers, we'd given our farmhands the Interregnum and next week off.

Hopefully no one else in our guild came over. None of them lived closer to this place than Alterac City, which was two days away, so anyone who was here today wouldn't make it home in time to be with their loved ones. It would have bad implications all around depending on how much coercion was involved in the decision.

We still had the pavilion set up outside if the need arose, as Richard had made it a permanent donation, but the thought of that ridiculous man only had me rolling my eyes. I hadn't had to outright order him off to spend the holidays with his wife and sister in yon different country across the sea, thankfully. But he'd been so awkward and regretful about 'abandoning me' at such a 'critical time' and could he still not persuade me to let him help with whatever it was I was planning after all?

Honestly.

Suddenly, I stopped. There was a light in Antonidas' workshop. Even though he'd left days ago.

The packed snow crunched under my feet as I detoured over. When I knocked on the door, the 'come in' was as startled as it was absentminded. I went through the door, only to be met by the sight of the mage rummaging almost chaotically through several different folders while floating books were turning their own pages all around him as he wrote something down at carpal tunnel speeds.

"Shouldn't you be in Dalaran with your family that I made pine after you by keeping you on retainer, for which my mother took it on my behalf to apologize in the form of pies?"

"Just a few more minutes," the mage grunted, pointedly leaning over the desk so his voluminous sleeves hid what he was writing. "I had a sudden idea that couldn't wait – well, that I thought couldn't wait but is shaping up to be more time-consuming than I hoped, even if it works – but I'd left some of the reference materials here."

"Dare I ask?"

"You will do as you will, as always, but I will not answer this once. It might still be nothing."

My eyebrows climbed up. Some of the titles on the floating books were from my assigned reading on enchantment, and others weren't familiar at all. Was this one of the more pleasant surprises in store for me perhaps? Or was I just tempting fate? My precognition was so overloaded today that I couldn't tell either way. "Well, alright then."

"As always, I appreciate your forbearance." Antonidas stepped back from the table – still blocking my view – and cast a spell that packed every book, note and paper he'd been rummaging through in his bag of holding. Only when everything was squirreled away did he turn to face me, looking almost furtive. "Well. That's all I came back here for. Let me wish you the best tidings again, for the New Year. I'll see myself off."

"I'll walk you to the spot."

Antonidas didn't need any pre-prepared teleportation circle, and in fact his abstract approach to spellweaving allowed him to draw on the energies at both departure and destination points to teleport. It was why he could do it from anywhere to anywhere, something which only a handful of the oldest Kirin Tor mages could accomplish over long distances. Everyone else had to use leyline intersections of power, or multi-line roundabouts if they wanted to make an actual portal.

Suddenly disappearing still caused a fairly strong air implosion though, which left a mess behind, so mages avoided doing it indoors unless it was a room specifically set aside for it. They especially didn't do it around important research and paperwork if they could.

Once Antonidas vanished, I checked in on the ever-steaming cauldron – still sulking, wait just a few more hours little ones – and then visited Emerentius' lair to make sure he hadn't lied when he took my advice to shapeshift into an unknown face to enjoy the day. I was always very careful not to give him any explicit commands unless he was being particularly obstinate about self-flagellating himself into an early grave, so it was always possible he might choose the wrong sort of agency to exert.

Fortunately, today was not that kind of day. Well, unless he'd gone somewhere else entirely, but that was entirely up to him. Hopefully nobody would get too badly on his nerves down there.

It was around dusk, while I was laying out the freshly aired bedding and was considering a second trip down to get my guest and parents, because a massive blizzard had just come out of nowhere, that utter misery barrelled into my sixth sense. It was shocking, a comet of gloom and wretchedness borne down from the sky on dragon wings, dreadful and woebegone grief from a wound freshly reopened. The dragon landed, the woe spilled forth, and my father all but carried it to our door.

I snapped out of my shock and made it to the entry hallway just in time to watch the door all but slam open from the force of the snowstorm. I could barely see the dragon's outline in the blizzard, but I didn't care. My mind was fully on the sight of my parents stumbling over the threshold, my father holding my mother up while she tried in vain to stem her tears with hands covering her face. I was stupefied.

Then my father let go of mother just for a moment, scrambling to close the door behind him, and she saw me. She promptly lost the battle with whatever dregs of restraint she'd managed to hang onto. She burst into wretched, heaving sobs, stumbled away from dad, beat me away with a pained cry when I tried to meet her, and fled deep into the house, down the hall and down the stairs, out of sight and hearing behind the loud, harsh slam of the storm cellar door.

I stood there in the hallway, gaping. I was absolutely dumbfounded. I was even, for the first time in either life, dangerously close to feeling betrayed by the Light. None of my premonitions had hinted at anything like this. Just what the hell else was going to happen today that this would be completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things? And even the not so grand scheme of things, what the fuck?

Behind me, the door final snapped shut.

"Dad." I turned, my voice as harsh as the snowstorm outside. "What the hell?"

Domar Hywel leaned his head on the door for several long, strained breaths. When he turned around, his face was grim and tight and he conspicuously looked in mother's wake instead of meeting my gaze. "They called her Holy Mother."



I suddenly realized, with that oracular acuity that had made the bliss of ignorance into a sad and distant memory, that the storm cellar was the part of the house farthest from the master bedroom. The master bedroom that was now my bedroom, because Master Zidar could be very clever and efficient when it came to putting his best effort into a building project, so he'd decided mid-way through the renovation that an all-new nursery would be a good 'surprise.'

"Fuck."

"Yeah," Dad said bleakly, rubbing his face wearily. "That's pretty much it."

I… This…

What could I even say? "… I'm going to check on Emerentius," I decided completely unnecessarily. Because I didn't know what else to do. What even could you say when something bad happened and it wasn't anyone's fault? "If you can get things laid out, I'll make some tea ahead of dinner." I turned and passed Dad on the way to the door.

Only to stop with my hand on the handle when Dad held out an arm to bar my way.

"You do that, son." He still wasn't looking at me. Where our spirits touched, I felt nothing in him other than shame. Why? This made no sense. "But after that, I think it's time we talked."

"… Yes," I agreed, not looking his way either. "I think so too."

Looking inward, I tried and failed to find any genuine surprise at all of this happening now. Of course something would rear its head on the personal front too. That's just how it goes.

But at the same time, I didn't find any resentment either.

What I felt from outside was a different matter entirely.

I opened the door and stepped into the storm. The blizzard was oddly painless on my skin, and it didn't steal my breath even as I stepped further and further away from shelter. I ignored all of it in favour of what I could sense beyond the physical.

"There is something in the wind," Emerentius grunted when I finally reached him, enveloping me under the shelter of his wings. "And old power but… strange. Fogged, but not literally. Vague?"

"Befuddled," I supplied, because I sensed the same. "And there's something else too, or an echo of something. Like it only came because it was… Lured? Enticed?"

"Solicitude," the dragon found the right word this time. "Yes, that feeling I know well."

The blizzard was here by its own choice, but not at its own behest. Someone had cajoled it to come here. "Quite the combination," I huffed. "Makes you wonder about who's behind it. Was anything special happening down there when the storm broke?"

"Nothing particularly grand or public yet," the dragon said, though he gave me a meaningful look despite that. "But it did send everyone running for shelter just in time to miss your lady mother breaking down."

Well.

Wasn't that something?

Granodior, I thought. Is anyone dying or in pain? Stranded?

Other than those instances that had nothing to do with this because someone is always dying or in pain somewhere, the answer was a definitive no.

Both here and elsewhere. Apparently, the blizzard was so widespread as to cover all of Alterac's heartland, but the very strong winds were also unnaturally gentle on the living, and the downfall failed to trap or bury anyone despite the sheer volume of snow it was putting down everywhere.

Someone is either making a point or has no sense of scale.

Greatfather Winter was it?

Granodior, alas, had nothing more to say.

I let Emerentius retire to his den and took my time walking back to the house. I cast my senses as wide and intently as I could. The blizzard felt like a muddleheaded old fogy upon my spirit, but didn't make it hard to breathe despite the wind being so strong as to fell trees and build giant snowbanks in their wake. I didn't hurt.

This is fine, I thought wryly, to that old mental image of a dog wearing a hat while sitting on a chair in the middle of a burning building. Despite how appropriate that memory felt to my current situation, I found that I wasn't any more worried than before.

Even with this newest development, it still wasn't my building that I was seeing come down in flames in my mind's eye.

The mages who founded Dalaran had once deployed nukes without knowing what the hell they were doing. The Alchemists could deploy nukes at any time because they did know what the hell they were doing. Someone or other had summoned a huge winter storm by means of an entity at least as vast as my Earth Spirit partner, but it wasn't doing any harm. All of this was apparently just the start of what was to be in store for me tonight. And I'd deliberately held back until the grandest and most public international event that Alterac had seen in over a century, all the while planning and replanning my strategy until history's most flagrant regicide was reduced to a mere secondary goal.

But sure, Mom and Dad.

We can talk.

The next chapter is available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with the advance chapters for Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, Reset the Universe, and Master of Wood, Water and Hill (which should go back to regular monthly updates in a couple of weeks).
 
Because it's not every day you get to commit regicide. Be a waste to do it without catching as many other snakes as possible in the same net.
Good idea,remove all,or at least most problems at once,and show world how powerpuff you are.
Jokes aside - from political point of viev,your MC need important waifu.Who would you choose ?
 
Jokes aside - from political point of viev,your MC need important waifu.Who would you choose ?
I thought about it for quite a while, and brought the matter up for discussion elsewhere on more than one occasion, but I've finally settled on someone. The only one of mmmmaybe two canonical options that are both available and old enough during this time period.
 
I thought about it for quite a while, and brought the matter up for discussion elsewhere on more than one occasion, but I've finally settled on someone. The only one of mmmmaybe two canonical options that are both available and old enough during this time period.
Good,i hope that you choose option with more dakka !
Jokes aside - good,that you do not try harem.It would be stupid in this settling.
 
The Life and Opinions of Greatfather Winter
A/N: The last happy thing that will happen for a long while.



Fireworks.png


Chapter 15 - The Life and Opinions of Greatfather Winter

"-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 10 .-"

Emerentius promised to keep a proverbial eye on the blizzard, so I went back inside. I found Dad in the kitchen, standing with his arms crossed near the pantry and staring unblinkingly at the table. Since he didn't look up when I entered but this was his conversation, I set about making tea while he sorted his thoughts out.

No words were spoken while I filled the tea pot, while I waited for it to boil, while I laid out some cookies – mother stress baked a lot more than she used to – and not even while I finally poured tea for both of us. Dad just stared at the table, and then the tea and snacks I set on it. On the inside, he was a rattling whirl of too many emotions to bother picking apart. Ugly ones.

I finished pouring the tea and waited. Nothing happened, so I decided to take the tea pot back to the stove to keep it hot.

Dad pushed away from the wall, grabbed his mug and hurled it at the wall with a scream of rage.

The glass shattered to pieces in a spray of steam and hot water.

Silence returned again, with just the whistling of the blizzard cutting into the speechlessness now filling the room to bursting.

So much for that birthday present.

I glanced at my father. He was staring at the mess on the floor, completely blank.

I walked by him into the pantry and brought out the broom and dustpan.

Dad slumped where he stood with a look of shame.

I said nothing and began to clean up. The shards were everywhere, I should have used the wooden mugs instead. The tea was everywhere too, I'd have to get the mop out after this and then-

"I hate that we're such a burden to you."

My hands stilled. Even with everything Mom had gone through this year, I'd never heard Dad sound so bitter.

Then I continued sweeping.

Dad laughed even more bitterly at the sight of me. Almost madly. "Oh, what a sight I must be. The world's great walking miracle and here I have you sweeping floors – how have you not washed your hands of us in disgust?"

"Dad, has it ever occurred to you or Mother that you've already done all the work needed to earn your happiness?"

"Don't give me platitudes when the only reason we have what we have is all you."

"A case could be made for me being the cause of all the bad too."

"Hahaha!" Dad's laughter this time was like a frenzy. "Oh, we all know why all this ill is really coming down on us. Wealth we did nothing to gain, honors we never earned, worshipful eyes we sure as hell don't deserve, your mother – your brothers…" Dad pulled the nearest cupboard open, grabbed the first bottle in reach and took a long swig of firewine. When he spoke again, it was in a hoarse rasp. "This is heaven's punishment for keeping you from your holy path."

"I'm sorry, who's the enlightened saint in this house?"

"YOU SHOULDN'T EVEN BE IN THIS HOUSE!" Dad roared.

Then he slumped with a face full of pain. He hauled the bottle to the table and finally collapsed in his chair. "You shouldn't be here. You should – you should be out there."

"Doing what?"

"Blessing, smiting, healing, founding your own kingdom, I don't fucking know! What am I next to kings and princes and assassins and the fucking Archbishop coming on a literal pilgrimage to see you, I don't know shit, I'm a fucking cobbler!" This time it was the bottle that flew across the room and smashed to pieces against the pan rack. The dripping liquid splattered over the palls and kettles like dripping blood, even over my face despite the distance.

Dad stared at the new mess, at me, then dropped his face in his hands. They were rough and callused from work, but not spotted. His physical health, at least, wasn't backsliding.

My own kingdom, huh?

I wiped my face clean with a kitchen towel, finished sweeping the mug shards, swept what I could of the bottle too, and emptied the dustpan in the bin. Then I went into the pantry and back to get the mop.

When Dad spoke again, his voice was a hoarse rasp. "You can't languish here, son." He didn't dare speak louder than a whisper as if his own words damned him. "You have to leave the nest. I thought we could – you're still not sixteen but – we're not kicking you out! We don't want to – you're our son but – you can't waste your life here! Not because… You can't waste your life and your blessings, son, not… not because the two of us can't get our shit together!"

"Mhm, as opposed to what?"

"Damn you, it doesn't matter if we're worse off without you! Everyone is worse off without you, the hell are we so special? You've already – we already have – we don't matter, fuck, it shouldn't even matter if we die. The Light, the Gods, the ancestors all damn me, I should've spoken up when the Archbishop was here, we should've – we could've left with them to Lordaeron and then you wouldn't-" Dad was all but pulling at his hair now. "Sometimes I wonder if the world wouldn't be better off if you'd been born to literally anyone else."

"Then Falric and Marwin would grow up to become undead zombies."

Dad twitched, then he looked up to me in confused grief.

"Were I not part of the picture, Falric and Marwyn would have been born only to be separated before they were old enough to remember each other's faces. I don't know if one or both of you died, or you went properly blind and what else, or just gave them up. But Falric grew up on a farm only to run away and join some foreign military. And Marwyn grew up an orphan street urchin before running off to also join the same foreign military."

I found a few loose shards, so I switched back to the broom for those before I switched back to the mop to wipe up the last stains.

"They reconnected many years later, as captains under the same leader, just in time for said leader to fall to the manipulations of a demon triumvirate and become the slave of an evil undead abomination of near godlike power. Falric and Marwyn then got killed by their sworn commander, only for said commander to immediately raise them as undead too. Falric and Marwyn then proceeded to lead a nigh-endless horde of walking corpses to overrun the continent in the name of their undead master."

I squeezed the mop in the bucket and wiped up the last spots.

"They never knew each other for siblings, they never had the joy of family, they never got to form their own legacy, and their stories ended at the sharp end of a blade both times."

I finished cleaning and returned the mop, broom and dustpan to the pantry. I returned to the kitchen and washed my hands. As I wiped them, I looked at the unfamiliar bar of scented soap and my mind drew a blank. I didn't know what 'tribute' this came with. Or when. I must not have been there for it, we had an entire system for it now. Good god.

When I turned around, Dad was looking at me with glittering eyes. "You… really do know the future, don't you?"

"Some parts, and they're all obsolete now." Except for those that weren't. It was on the tip of my tongue to say 'don't presume to tell me what my path is again', but I decided it wasn't the right time. "Drop any notions of heaven's judgment or self-flagellation, unless you're willing to apply it equally to me too. If we're just going to judge everyone by different standards, then you could just as easily say I'm most at fault for provoking the king into coming down on our heads. In that vein I'm more guilty for Falric and Marwyn than anyone."

"That's horseshit!"

"Yes it is, I'm glad you agree." I nodded. "There is no deeper explanation for this than the fact that the king is an asshole." And the molluscs of yore were even bigger assholes because they started out as the biggest assholes and only got more petty from being thrown in prison.

"… I had-" Dad's voice wavered, thick with emotion. He coughed to clear his throat, but it didn't help. "I wasn't supposed to start blubbering all sorry for myself, I had this-this whole speech..."

I snorted and walked over to put a hand on his shoulder, because now was the right time. "Never underestimate the worth of a good man's life. And don't presume to tell me what my path is aga-"

Dad lurched from his chair and hugged me tight around the middle. He sniffled in my chest. I could sense his tears now, feel them soaking my shirt. "You're such a good son." I felt his whole body tense from struggling not to let any more out. "I-I don't know that w-we deserve it b-but… i-if you say so, I won't question it anymore."

I hugged him back. "I do say so."

Dad wrestled with a sob, lost, then lost again and barely won after two more. His whole frame coiled to the point of snapping with his effort to regain his self-control. I held him until he finally did.

When I let go, though, he didn't. He clung to me, as if trying to pull strength from me for… for what?

"No, no, son, wait, I…" Reluctantly, he pulled away, wiping his eyes as he did. He blew his nose in his handkerchief. When his eyes met mine again, they were red but surer than I'd seen them in months. "That eye thing you do… do it on me."

I felt like I should have felt a glimmer or disturbance or something in the Light, but nothing came. "… Are you sure? It's-"

"I know what it means!" Dad snapped, then cringed at his own outburst, averting his eyes and forcing them back to mine the same moment. "I know what it means, what it does but – I…"

I waited for him to find words, because I didn't know what he wanted to say either.

"I can't believe son," Dad admitted as if it was some horrid shame. "I tried, I keep trying but I just can't. This – if you – at least then I'll believe something, right?"

Believe what? That he's – that they're not a burden? Worthless? "I can't control what you see," I warned him. "I'm told it's a lot."

"I don't care," Dad said bravely. It was a lie. "Please." That wasn't.

I complied.

I experienced the most honest humility, remembered the sour distaste of self-deprecation I'd left behind an eon and a lifetime back, and then a yawning, wretched hollowness swallowed everything and nearly overwhelmed me completely.

I staggered, shocked and dizzy from the sheer amount of self-loathing my father somehow managed to function under. To hide all this time. Hide from me. "The… s-strength of mankind-" I groaned, cradling my head as I stumbled back. "M-manifests in the most troublesome ways."

"Ohhhh," Dad moaned in a daze. A chair toppled out of his path before the caught himself on the table. I didn't have the presence of mind to catch myself, never mind him. "Oh… oh… What – a heady feeling." There was a shiver in his tone that was… exultant, and his eyes on catching mine again were the same. "To know you brought forth the most important thing in the world... how empowering this is."

Dad's eyes. They glowed.

"The Light… It feels…it's… is this what it's like for you? Is this… how you feel all the time? How you live?" Dad's wonder somehow rose above even that all-abiding self-contempt. It sunk back far too quickly, but I had the oddest feeling it had filled more than gotten lost in the dark void beneath. "It's… Rapture…" Suddenly, Dad snapped out of it and gave me a look of borderline alarming intensity. "Son, explain this Soulgaze thing to me right now."

"Well-"

"How does it work? What's the process? Tell me how it's done!"

I watched my father, and the Light that now abided in him but… also didn't. It was there, but it didn't come from him. It had gone from me to him. It was like one, single sunbeam had settled within him for a singular purpose still pending, but nothing more. Not growing. Or replenishing. Just…

Waiting instead of fading. "You remember how I explained it to Richard?"

"Perfectly."

"Alright, then you should get it easily."

I explained in the best terms I thought he'd understand. As I did, the Light began to glow more and more out through Dad's eyes, and his skin too.

"The Light – I never understood what you meant whenever you said…" Dad mumbled in a tone that made me worry I'd have to stop him from falling again, but it didn't come to that. His eyes seemingly had trouble staying locked on any single thing, but his thoughts shone clear. "It really is all Revelation, isn't it?"

Dad straightened where he stood, turned around, marched downstairs to the basement, ripped the locked door to the storm cellar right off its hinges, stomped in and hauled mom up from where she'd huddled down in a corner to cry. "Look at me, woman."

Mom looked.

Before my eyes, my father soulgazed my mother.

And as I stood in the door, leaning against the frame, I watched in amazement as all the Light in my father went into this one, single miracle. A debate of the mind and an embrace of the spirit lasting years condensed down to a single moment.

"Oh Domar…"

Mother embraced Father. It was a tight, fervent thing but not… desperate. Somehow, all the wounds on her soul were now healing over, the entirety of her own self-loathing completely scoured clean, leaving just raw but clean grief behind.

I turned away and gave them their privacy. Left behind the place where I'd just watched my father use all of his Light to carry my mother through the equivalent of a lifetime's worth of couple's therapy. In a literal blink of an eye.

I guess the rest of Father's commitments don't need the Light's help to achieve.

That was fine. That was the sort of future I wanted to create, wasn't it?

I eventually stopped in the den. Looked out the window at the late winter night. The Blizzard had stopped. The Soulgaze…

It was the best idea I ever stole.

A streak of light cut through the night.

Wait, meteorites fall down, not up.

There was a boom. A crackling. Sparkling lights in the sky bloomed like a giant star.

I gaped.

A second flew up and erupted in a glow, red instead of green. Then a third, colored gold. The fourth was blue.

I stood rooted to my spot and stared in wide-eyed astonishment as I looked out the window to behold fireworks.

What the hell?

I stared, dumbstruck. I ran outside. I stared some more. The fireworks continued. The first fireworks that ever existed on Azeroth, fireworks which I'd had absolutely no hand in, were exploding in the night sky right outside my window.

Oh Holy Light, can you bring Common Sense back from the grave or not?

I only realized just how long I – and Emerentius over there – had been standing and staring at the exploding lights when my parents tromped out to join me.

"What the devil?" Dad balked. He looked normal again, no golden glow in sight, inside or out. "What the hell is that? Are we under attack again?"

"… No." I finally found my voice.

I rushed to pull my boots on.

"You're going – of course you are, what am I-? Should we come too? Stay? Bunker down?"

My first impulse was to say 'damn right you're not going anywhere' but… It was not that kind of occasion. While I'd not say that 'not acting on my first impulse' has been my greatest strength, it was still been pretty high up there. I calmed myself and gave Dad's question the Reflection it deserved.

The Light had precisely nothing to say. It shone extremely brightly from the source of the disturbance though. About as bright as me.

"… I sense no danger, so do as you like." I finished pulling my shoes on. "Do pardon me for not waiting though. I'll send word either way."

Just as soon as I got answers to my many questions, like what, how, why, when, why here, and how the hell this still wasn't important enough to register in the Light as more than an afterthought next to everything else that hadn't happened yet today.


"-. .-"


Because I didn't want to cause a panic, and there was nothing but cheers being heard from below, I chose not to swoop down on dragon back. Instead, I made my way to the base of the mountain at the fastest sprint I'd ever run in my life. Either life. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were left behind in the first ten seconds. Emerentius himself could barely keep up with me, even with his human form practically peak human.

When I finally cleared the last bend, I had only enough time to scan the crowd for the spot where the fireworks were shooting from. Even that I only managed thanks to my superior height. Then Orsur Kelsier, of all people, the man I'd brought back to life in the middle of the public square in Alterac City, shoved his way into my path.

To grovel.

"Lord Wayland, I am so, so sorry about this! I didn't know he'd followed me, I don't even know how he did it with that entire cart of devilries ricketing every which way, I certainly don't know where he got those… whatever they are! I didn't think – never imagined he'd – I didn't know he was here! If I did, I swear I'd have done something, told someone – I'd have gone to you first thing!"

I rubbed my face. "Slow down and use proper sentences please."

Orsur opened his mouth -

"And that's all you're getting!" A voice I must have heard at least once before boisterously bellowed from beyond the now quiet fireworks cart over yonder, at the middle of the gathered throng. "Empty lights for empty hearts!"

What's this now?

"Don't give me those looks, you brats! And don't you go fake-crying to your parents neither, it's not gonna work! What's that, boy, you think that poor sod that calls himself your father can do anything to Greatfather Winter?! Isn't it you who always tells your friends he's so big and fat he'll be lucky if he doesn't trip over his own navel? Isn't that why you're such an ungrateful little hellion and always making his life a living hell?! Don't you glare at me neither, old boy, it's the truth!"

There was much laughter and jeering from the throng of humans, and even the mini-humans before they belatedly realized they couldn't tell if it was the fat man or them that were now the target of the unexpected flyting. I didn't hear the comeback over the ruckus, but the first voice only got louder and more rumbustious.

"Don't you get it, Fred? They don't care! You're not important to them! You never were! You're just something to poke at! Something for Brat, Scrat and Hooligan here to bounce off of for a while until something else comes along! They could easily find other ways to amuse themselves, but they don't want to! Children are devils, 'specially these ones! That's why I've not brought them any presents this year!"

"NO!" Came the cries of dismay from waist-high. Well, my waist-height.

"You see, they cry in pain as they attack you! Devils, all of'em!"

There was a cacophony of childish outrage at that, then an even bigger one when the little ones realized the adults were all laughing at them, or pretending not to. Or scowling. It was a miracle that I was still able to make out the 'but that's what all you grownups do!' amidst the chaos.

"What kind of reason is that?!" Balked the man in red. I could see his sleeve above his overloaded cart as he shook his fist in the air. His coat was a deep crimson with white fur at the wrist. "Those are all bad people! Don't pretend you don't know that, you can't fool the Snowfather! Devils like you aren't devils just because you're naughty, you're also smart!"

"Not smart enough, clearly," grumbled the man I assumed was Fred, I was finally close enough to make out his words too. Wonder of wonders, despite how everyone got out of my way the moment they realized who was tugging them aside, they didn't cry out or give me a wide berth like they usually did. Instead of drawing attention to me, they went back to crowding the spectacle.

As was so often the case, the sacred had clashed with the entertaining and lost terribly.

"You can't just keep your sack for yourself!" Some kid or other was shouting. "Why even bring it then?!"

"To make your lives a living hell in return for all the people whose lives you make a living hell, why else?"

I practically felt the long-term change in the children's morality and critical thinking, it was breathtaking.

"Honestly!" Not-Santa-Claus was still talking. "Poking and prodding and laughing at this poor creature, why, the sheer nonsense! Having so much fun at the fat man's expense and then holding him in contempt at the same time, that doesn't make any sense! Either you like that he's fat or you don't!"

"STOP CALLING ME FAT, YOU – You -" Fred exploded, then tried to un-explode himself when he realized he was about to curse Greatfather Winter in public, and call him all manner of names in front of the children and everyone else. "Like you're one to talk!"

"What's that got to do with anything?!" Greatfather Winter hollered shamelessly. "How's that an argument?! Just because I'm also a fat fuck doesn't mean you're any less of a fat fuck!"

But he barely has a beer belly in comparison-

"Light save us," Orsur pinched his nose as the cries of dismay turned from general mayhem into distinctly more womanly outrage at the foul language. "Bad enough the nobles keep foisting him on us every year, he just had to decide this was the year when he goes off-script instead of being his regular nuisance back in the city, Tyr damn you, Blindi!

But didn't the nobles say it was actually the guilds who always-?

My hand snapped out to seize Orsur tight by the scarf. "What did you just call him?"

"Oh, don't you start with me woman!" 'Blindi' scoffed from the eye of the storm of motherly outrage. "I just told you how devious these brats are, you think they don't know better than to say such foul things?! Oy, you imps, listen up! If you dare use such dirty words where anyone can hear you, you won't get any presents next year either!"

"Nooo!" The children cried in dismay, falling over each other to swear sideways and noways that they've definitely been good and not naughty, honest!

"How'm I supposed to believe any o' that?"

I sent Geirrvif a mental prod. That was when I realized my Valkyrie minder was conspicuously just far enough away that she had deniability if she claimed not to have noticed me try to communicate with her.

I covered my mouth to smother my sudden urge to laugh.

Nobody realized what was happening here, did they? The strength in his every movement, the authority in his voice that no one moved to silence or do violence on him for, the way the blizzard itself seemed to have halted just to hang from his every word, the two ravens that came down from the sky to land on the eaves of the longhouse. As I came to a stop where I could see him fully, it looked like they were on his shoulders instead of the roof across the square. There was something meaningful in the birds' eyes, every bit as much as his, and there was a glimmer in their crops before the glint passed.

They didn't know. None of them knew. They didn't realize, didn't know, didn't see.

Nobody had a clue who this was.

"Beg pardon, good sir," Uther's voice came from somewhere – oh, there he was, I was wondering where he was in all this. "But surely you can't mean to punish all the children for the crimes of this handful. That wouldn't be justice!"

"Well," Greatfather Winter harrumphed sceptically. "I suppose I might potentially imagine my cold, iced-over heart thawing a little bit if they apologize to this poor man. And they'd better mean it! And no more cursing unless it's for a good cause!"

"How bout no more cursing period?" A gimlet-eyed matron was saying with a glare to one of the bigger boys. "I've a mind to bring out my soap."

"Good luck with that!" 'Blindi' scoffed. "No, really, I mean it! Every time they lie to your face that they promise not to do it again, that's one less present I have to lug over!"

"This is a conspiracy!" One of the scrappiest little lads caterwauled. "A conspiracy! Conspiracy!"

"No duh," Blindi said. "You made a gang so the people you're tormenting are making a gang. What did you think would happen?"

"But – but that's not fair, you're…"

Greatfather Winter waited patiently for the boy to dig himself a deeper grave. In fact, his patience was only less heavy than everyone else's judgment. "…Yes?"

"You're – we're just kids! You're grownups! You can't do that!"

Change a couple of words around and you've got what the King and his thugs liked to say to every Alterac citizen of they tried to revolt.

"Bah, it's the only thing in your little lives that is fair right now! Madam, you hear that, the little devil thinks you dames and men are supposed to be all helpless and hopeless, the cheek!"

"Yes, I heard him, unfortunately."

"Well, that just won't do! Bad enough he doesn't realize that means he'll be just as hopeless when he grows up, to hear such an insult to your good name – at least I assume it's a good name, what's your name? What's her name, young miss?"

The positively plain daughter of the seething matron blushed as Greatfather Winter swooped down on her and clasped her hand between his large ones with a beaming smile. For all that his eyes were blank with cataracts, his teeth were perfect and his white beard was the most finely groomed object in a hundred leagues. And real. "I-I'm Glinda, sir – I mean Mira! My mum's name's Mira."

"Mira? No, it can't be, not Mira Deniau! I swear I know that name from somewhere – oh!" The old man let go, turned away, clambered up on his cart, kicked a bunch of dangerously crooked rockets out of the way and hauled a huge red sack from beneath the rest of the pile of fire hazards. He then untied the top and reached into the sack all the way to the elbow, then the shoulder, then he stuffed his head inside before - "A-HA!"

I had not the slightest urge to facepalm when 'Blindi' pulled himself out of his bag, cursed his own beard to high hells for tangling with the sack rope, and finally produced a gift box on top of a smaller gift box on top of two bigger giftboxes and a giant wool sock filled with candied fruit hanging from his thumb.

"I was right, but it makes no sense!" The bushy beard seemed to complain, because you couldn't see anything above it from behind the gift pile. "I've got gifts here for the two of you, and even your man daydreaming over there about brutally murdering me IF ONLY HE WEREN'T SO FAT!"

"SCREW YOU!"

"But I have no idea why these other boxes are here, read the labels for me will you, miss, I'm blind don't you know!" Greatfather Winter stumbled and lurched to the edge of his cart and wobbled one of the boxes at the younger woman. "Look at these name cards, what's that they say miss? I knew it! Those are devils' names they are, I ain't giving gifts to no devils!"

I'd have called it a fair act back on Earth, but…

This wasn't an act at all, was it? He'd really meant it that he hadn't brought presents for the bad children. And that he wasn't going to give gifts himself to the bad children. The sack was full of gifts, but over half of the ones he'd just pulled out hadn't been there until just now. Those boxes had only just appeared in his sack from somewhere.

The woman and girl had to scramble a bit to catch the boxes and stocking, and the mother made a long show of reading the labels in a snit too. "You're right, Snowfather, these are the names of complete hellions. Why don't I hang onto these boxes, and when I find whatever children share these names, I'll maybe pass them on. If they aren't devils of course."

"Do as you like!" Greatfather Winter shrugged. "I sure ain't gonna lug them back all the way, it takes energy to get all over the place at my age you know! Give them, keep them, use them as kindling, it's all the same to me."

I watched in wonder as the dark fate of three children, and many others besides, shifted Light-wards right before my eyes.

I kept watching as, one after another, one gift after another, one merciless roasting after another, Greatfather Winter lightened the fates of almost every single one of the people, big and small, for whom he pulled a gift from his huge sack. Every time, their expectations were shattered, their darkest beliefs fractured, and their self-interest became that tiny bit more enlightened.

I can't bring myself to wish I was more gregarious, I thought privately. But I'm glad there are those who are.

Hopefully it wouldn't always take a literal god to achieve.

For the rest of the time it took the old motor-mouth to dispense gifts, I just watched and stood there. First with Orsur. Then alone when he volunteered to collect my parents so I didn't need to double back, when they appeared on the path. Then I stood with him and my parents together, when they finally caught up in confusion.

For that entire time, the children who hadn't been singled out swore up, down and sideways they'll be totally good, just like they'd been totally good this year too, they were nothing like those guys, honest, so please won't you give us our presents now pretty please with milk and cookies on top?

"And where's this milk and cookies, or are you lot just lying to the Snowfather too?" Blindi demanded, scouring the area with his blank eyes as if he could actually see.

Blindi. The drunkard who infuriated everyone in the throne room before tearing the mask off that entire farce at the end. Blindi, a name I knew from Earth.

The Blind One.

A name of Odin.

"YOU!"

Who, me?

Greatfather Winter pointed a finger at me and crowed happily. "THE PARTY POOPER!"

Eh?

The old man jumped out of his cart with his ever-full sack over his shoulder, sunk up to his shins in the snow to crack the earth beneath without breaking his legs, then stomped over with his aforementioned sac digging a groove in the snow in his wake. "Your Saintliness!" He beamed joyously when he finally reached me. "Your creation is most merry!"

You don't say, I thought vaguely with a pointed glance at the distressing pile of explosions waiting to happen. It teetered. "Some might also say very dangerous."

"Dangerous, traitorous, warlike, pah! Just now it put more smiles on people's faces than it'll make graves for the next ten years. It's a shame I can't say the same about you!"

"… I must be quite the bad man if you say it twice." Did he figure out what I was going to do tomo-?

"Bad, pah! Feh! Fie, even! You're not the slightest bit, that's the whole damned problem! How's a man supposed to make a good flyting if he doesn't have anything to complain about? You're not arrogant, you're not close-minded, you insist on not controlling anyone, you play the elusive sage so much that I can't even accuse you of fostering a bad atmosphere! You even came here in the middle of my performance and didn't interrupt me like some joyless tyrant! You have the sheer gall to not have any of the usual faults for me to lampoon, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"Good job to me?"

"Good job? GOOD JOB?! How am I supposed to rag on you not fostering the right atmosphere when you don't provide any atmosphere at all?! You don't even inspire these people to go out of their way for you, they just do it on their own, the sad saps! They've got themselves wound up so tight, it's a wonder there's any joy in anything! How can you live with yourself?! Oh hello Orsur old boy, I didn't see you there." The old blind man suddenly turned to my business partner. "Is your significance sense tingling yet, or are you going to miss the gods' omens for the entirety of this new life too?"

Orsur Kelsier gaped at the old man. His eyes widened in confusion, then shock, and then they outright bulged in disbelief. "You – how do you – are you saying – it can't be! Not you! There's no way-" The ravens on the roof gave a couple of very loud caws. "… I must be dreaming. This is a nightmare!"

I'm missing something here.

"You're not and it's not, be glad for it! The only ones you'd be sharing that dream with are mud squids." As quick as he ambushed my business associate, 'Blindi' turned to my parents. "And who do we have here? If it mustn't be the Saint's parents! My, that's quite the bewilderment you've got there, old chap. Shame you got it all figured out already, guess you don't need any of my more paltry gifts. But my lady, what weepy eyes you have, I shan't countenance it! Here, have a dragon." Blindi reached into his sack and dumped a gigantic, larger-than-an-ostrich egg into my mother's arms.

She almost fell over from the sudden weight.

"Legend has it this egg is the most special egg to ever come down from the heavenly fortress of Odyn himself! Granted, the legend is just a couple of days old because the Lord of Hosts only just made the breakthrough, reproduction is really complicated! If this thing hatches, it'll be an omen that you've earned the grace of his greatest milestone of the last thousand years and-"

CRACK.

The egg split down the middle and shattered into a hundred shards, leaving my mother scrambling not to drop two very confused cat-sized dragons. Mini-dragons.

They croaked.

The reactions of all the bystanders defied all attempts at description.

"HA!" Blindi crowed in delight, then turned to point up at me gleefully. "Look at that, you're not special!"

It was impossible to tell if the silence of all and sundry was more awestruck or mortified.

Then it didn't matter, because it was pierced by a sharp, whistling sound like a boiling teapot, which promptly broke into the loudest, deepest, most heartfelt laughter than I had ever seen or heard from my mother in my whole life.

Agnes Hywel erupted into literal guffaws, laughed herself to tears within seconds, and continued to laugh while hugging the poor, confused baby storm drakes with no thought left to anything else. Not even to keep standing upright. Dad had to scramble to hold her up and barely manged to prevent her from falling down along with her all-new clingy attachments.

"I suppose this means you'll be needing the dragon-rearing guide as well, here you go old boy." Blindi promptly reached in and out of his sack and shoved a positively gigantic tome at my father where his hold on mother was weakest, no by your leave no nothing. Weighed down as he already was with mother, he damn well nearly fell over too.

Dad's mouth worked soundlessly for a while, then he looked between the man and me, shut his mouth, gave a very strained 'Thank you' and turned back to my laughing mother just so he had an excuse not to deal with either of us anymore.

I turned to the man next to me. Greatfather Winter was a full head shorter than me, not even as tall as Uther. But he stood proudly with his hands on his hips, looking eminently self-satisfied. I looked from my laughing mother to him.

"All-Father."

"Yes?"

"You are the God of Joy."

Blindi blinked hard, then his blank eyes turned up at me in astonishment. I suddenly knew they were every bit as blind as they seemed. He opened his mouth and actually closed it without knowing what to say. Once. Twice. Three times. "… It's been over fifteen thousand years since titles and crowns have carried any real power, but I actually felt something just now."

I ignored the many whispers and stares around us while I thought of several replies to that, but none of them were better than nothing. Fifteen thousand years, that time frame sounded important, but the why eluded me. It felt close at hand, but I would need to think about it.

"Alright, I'm done," Orsur suddenly said flatly. "By your leave, Master Wayland, I'm going to get blackout drunk. Pease excuse me." The man promptly turned and left without waiting for leave.

I looked at him until he shoved his way out of sight behind the crowd line. Then I looked at Blindi again. There was something I could do here that I didn't need to think twice about.

He noticed of course. "What's that look now?"

I wondered why Odyn would use such a faulty body, but I was content not waiting for the answer. "Since my 'saintliness' has caused you such a bother, I hope you'll appreciate this small infringement on your autonomy."

"Eh?"

I put my hand over his face and gave sight to the blind.

Blindi staggered back from me, groaning with – I didn't precisely know what it must have felt like, but I could imagine quite a bit. When he came back to himself and blinked owlishly at his surroundings, he wasn't filled with the same emotion of 'par for the course' that now radiated from the awestruck crowd around us. He marvelled at me.

For a second, but still.

"Drat," the now clear-sighted man huffed. His eyes were the most unremarkable brown. "There goes most of my act."

"In all fairness, it would be more suspicious if I didn't heal you."

"Don't I know it," the god in man's clothing groused, instead of smiting me for caring about the opinions of mortals without even asking for his. "I suppose I can't complain about getting exactly what I asked for, just don't expect me to thank you! Now come, you will appreciate receiving your own gift in a more private setting. I've set aside that tent over there. Let's get your lady mother inside before she really shames everyone into never laughing again on account of them having not a hope of matching her quality. Or lung capacity for that matter."

This was a rather sudden turn, but leadership was like that. It was obviously going somewhere so I nodded and asked him to lead the way. He hoisted his sack over his shoulder and went first.

I let him and my parents go on ahead while I stopped for a few moments to talk to Uther, who'd clearly caught on to a lot more than everyone else in the crowd.

"I don't know who or what that man is," Uther quietly told me after I assured myself he had things covered. The former knight looked more at ease in priestly garb than he used to, though I suspected it was partly owed to the winter drafts making it less torture to wear armor under all that cotton and wool. "But the Light walks step in step with him. Him and those birds, there's something about them, the only thing here that's as well defined in the Light is you. I don't know what they bode, but then, they're not here for me."

"Make sure nobody touches the stuff in the cart."

"Normally I'd say the guards have it in hand, but on this I share your concerns."

By now, people were back to giving me a properly wide berth, so I was not hindered on my way to catch up to the others, nor was our path barred to the tent. Which was also conspicuously free of any loiterers. Nobody seemed to get within five meters of it actually. Scanning it with my second sight, I noticed some manner of magical weave making it nobody else's concern besides the caster's. And ours, now.

Emerentius had overcome the someone else's problem field as well, and was waiting for us at the tent flap. He was looking strangely at the baby dragons, who scowled back in suspicion up until he held the back of his hand for them to sniff. He also frowned when I asked him to stand guard outside, giving Blindi a particularly untrusting stare, but didn't gainsay me.

"Oh, a self-appointed guard for little old me, how auspicious! Since you're just going to stand here doing nothing, why don't you watch my sack so you don't get bored, there's a nice lad! Oh, before I forget." Blindi rummaged through his bag and handed me an all-new package. "A Merry Winterveil to you too!"

It was a book. Not as big as the one Dad got but still big enough, bound in whalebone carved in the likeness of a corvid. The runes on the cover read ᛏᚺᛖ ᚲᚨᚱᛁᚾᚷ, ᚱᛖᚨᚱᛁᚾᚷ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛒᚨᚾᛁᛋᚺᛁᚾᚷ ᛟᚠ ᛖᚡᛖᚱᚤᛟᚾᛖ'ᛋ ᚠᚨᛗᛁᛚᛁᚨᚱᛋ ᛒᚢᛏ ᚤᛟᚢᚱᛋ. 'The Caring, Rearing and Banishing of Everyone's Familiars but Yours' by Aerylia Gildedrein, illustrated by Skovald the Ill-Fated.

Skovald, isn't that-?

Emerentius grunted at the old fogy act, but didn't move to kick or do any other violence on the bag of gifts. Perhaps it would have been a different matter if there were any hints that the interior of the tent was subject to any space-time anomalies, but it wasn't.

When we were inside, I was met by the sight of shelves, crates and boxes, and sacks and bags and hanging braids of garlic, onions and various other herbs. I realized that when Blindi said he's 'set aside' a tent, he'd meant no more than that. Seems the local quartermaster had made this into a dedicated long-term storage pavilion, specifically the one where people collected all my 'tribute.'

I hummed. "I suppose being a place which people already tended to leave alone made it easier to shroud."

Blindi nodded sagely. "And no Arcane was harmed in the making of this spell!"

Mom's laughter had finally wound down, which gave me mixed feelings. Much more mixed than the crooning pleasure of the two whelps now enjoying her petting and scratches. One the one hand, laughing until she dropped wouldn't have been entirely healthy. On the other hand, she'd been operating on a severe shortage of joy for too long, and she hadn't sounded crazy or anything. I would have been happy listening to her continue for a while yet.

Dad hovered over her, wringing his hands and unsure if he should help her with the unexpected additions to our household or not. Or our stable? No, storm dragons were as sapient and intelligent as any other dragons, weren't they? "Can they speak?" I asked Blindi.

"Mannish, Draconic, Titan, Earthen, Dwarven, Darnassian, Thalassian, Zandali, Drust, Drogbar, Taur-ahe, Pandaren, Mogu, Kalimag, they even picked up the language of Death from Eyr and I." Blindi crossed his arms and watched the two baby dragons. "They know a fair amount of the basics of living and honest work too. There's never any shortage of old sages and warriors with nothing to do around Valholl. Finding the right people to talk within the egg's hearing distance has never been a difficulty."

Eventually, the dragons finally began to pay attention to their wider surroundings. They sniffed and peered at my dad critically. They playfully spat crackling bursts of ozone in Blindi's direction. Finally, they deigned to look at me, only to promptly hide behind Mom's coat and squint from under her shawl.

"You're a bit bright for their fresh eyes, such Light as yours they only saw through their shell before this," Blindi told me. "They will get used to it in a day or three."

Well, as far as openings went, it wasn't the worst. "Would you be willing to accept our hospitality, at least until then?"

To my surprise, Blindi shook his head. "For myself I'd be glad to, but I am not alone here, and my companion is not the sort you can house under a roof. He doesn't have the best notion of scale as he currently is."

"The blizzard."

Blindi's grin became thinner. "If you know so much of me, then you should know of my kin as well."

I quickly ran through the list of names and found the only on it could be. "The blizzard… It's Hodir?"

Blindi turned half vindicated, half something else. "Regardless of what Loken or his masters like to delude themselves into believing, one's nature can only be changed by one's self. Even tormented and mind-addled, Hodir is still the winter wind. I do my best to provoke him into a chase around the world every year, just so he can see how far you've all come and enjoy at least a few day's worth of sanity. But that's also why I can't afford to stay too long in one place. The moment he loses interest is the moment he wakes up from this dream back to the nightmare that is now his life."

"You're not Greatfather Winter, it's Hodir." The grim mood that had taken Blindi was the only reason I could contain my sudden urge to laugh. "It's… That – th-ha! Hahahahahaha!"

I stand corrected. I couldn't, in fact, contain my laughter after all.

"Yes, go ahead,' Blindi said coolly. And surprised. Confused even, perhaps. "Do indulge yourself."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, really! I'm not laughing at you or him, it's just…" Greatfather Winter was unavailable on account of being locked up in his own personal hell. Greatfather Winter was as good as dead, yet here is Death playing pretend while the Hogfather's gone! And I couldn't even begin to explain any of it, which only made me want to laugh harder, what could I say instead that would – no, actually, now that I thought about it there was something. "Why the hell would you bring him to Alterac?"

Blindi's irritation vanished, but instead of the clarity I'd expected to see on him, his face instead turned sad. Sympathetic.

"I mean it, why?" I pressed, because now that I'd asked I really wanted to know. "The only way you could do worse is if you went to the Dark Irons or the Trolls. Why would you be in Alterac to begin with, even? To hear everyone else, you've practically been living here, barging into everyone's business and driving bars to ruin for over fifty years, I can't make sense of it. This is the last place you'd want to bring anyone, never mind live an entire second life. Not if you want to foster sanity."

Then again, with the scene I'd just witnessed, I wouldn't be surprised if he chose this place for the entertainment value he was so clearly practiced in deriving. No matter the medium, that was often a theme with godlike beings-

"Because I found no other place in the world that needed laughter more."

… Oh.

"Is it so hard to fathom?" His tone changed. His words already had. "That is why you are still here as well, no? Perhaps that is why you were born in this land to begin with, when all others would have treated you much more kindly. You have certainly set aside any designs to leave, despite everything."

The Tribunal of Ages was even more full of bollocks than I thought, if it still made even me misjudge people after so long.

"I will answer one more question, then I have to go set off the rest of the fireworks," Blindi abruptly told me. "We would not want yonder blizzard to lose interest and wander off unsupervised, I am sure you agree."

For the first time since I realized what and who I had before me, I felt suspicious of the sudden turn in the conversation. I didn't need the Light to confirm to me that he was looking for me to ask something specific. Now what could it be?

For all his professed urgency, Blindi didn't prod or nag me into being quick about it. He patiently waited for me to speak. That only confirmed my suspicion, so I decided to be very thorough in turning over every possible topic I could think of in my mind. Finally, after not too long a time in the grand scheme of things, but certainly more than it might have taken him to steer the conversation himself, I finally found something that made the Light chime in my mind.

Loudly.

It was something I'd wondered about earlier, before deciding to let it be until I could read Dad's new manual, because surely a mention of it must be in there. "These storm dragons of yours… are twin hatchlings common?"

Blindi smiled and nodded in approval, though the feeling that I'd just passed some test didn't materialize. If anything, I got the sense that he'd have done what he was about to do anyway. I could feel in the Light how something majorly significant was swooping down on-

"These are the first. It took much care and work, but you have to squeeze the sympathetic principle for all it's worth when anchoring such an important spell."

A sudden gust of wind blew the tent flap open, making way for Huginn and Muninn to swoop into the tent and land on Blindi's arm. He held it out.

I held out mine. The ravens croaked, cawed and hopped over from him to me. Their dark eyes stared into mine. Odyn's intent conveyed loud and clear to me through theirs. The Light cast many-sided shades upon my spirit. I levied its Revelation fully upon the world so that I and everyone else with me could see.

My eyes shone. So did the rest of me. Everything inside the tent took a golden sheen. The ravens turned almost transparent, except for the contents of their crops.

The Light. The ravens each had inside them a golden sphere, thrumming in rhythm with the heartbeats of the two dragons in the arms of my mother. And within those orbs of Light, two small souls shone like twin stars inside tiny curled up bodies made of lightning and golden dust.

I wasn't the first whose breath hitched. But, for once, I didn't find any words to say either.

"I'm afraid we could not entirely eliminate the proximity factor, or I would keep the dragons safely in Skyhold."

Souls. Two of them. Barely formed. I knew them.

"Just in case the worst happens again, however, I have assigned Geirrvif to you on an indefinite basis. She will let no more harm come to the little ones."

"Falric," I breathed, thunderstruck. "Marwyn."

My little brothers – their souls – were they really here? I brushed their spirits with my own, as lightly as I could. They – they were real.

I'd asked myself how life might have been. I'd been asked if it had occurred to me to do to my lost brothers what I'd done with the elementals… The only reason why I didn't torture myself over it was because it wouldn't have worked. They weren't there anymore when I finally reached home that night, not even a haunting.

There was no pregnant womb to put them back in either, even if I'd figured something out. Manipulating flesh like that was well beyond anything I'd ever done, even before I ran into the other limitations of working the Light in other people. Improvising one miracle would have been a tall order, never mind twice over and a third one besides.

All of which were moot points regardless, because no hint of their souls had been left to my sharpest sight, they'd been dead and gone for hours in a bucket.

"How-?" But I made the connection the moment I asked. "Valkyries."

"When Eyr swooped down from the sky to aid you in your great battle, it was the second time that day she had been to that place."

I wanted to reply something. I didn't. I found nothing to say.

"Is," mother's voice faltered out, her hands over her mouth. "I-is this real? This – this isn't a dream?"

"Madam, no offense meant but you do not have the imagination to make me up."

My throat was every bit as clogged as my mother's. I wanted to ask… say… but what?

"I dared not say anything before, for I was not sure if it could be done," Odyn said quietly. "This is Freya's domain, not mine. My valkyries certainly weren't trained for this, and the boys were so small. Unfinished. We weren't even sure we'd caught everything of them, for a little while there." Odyn looked fondly at the two lights in the shape of yet unborn children. "They are still unfinished. But now, at least, they can continue. Take all the time you need to be ready, and however long you wish to conceive them new flesh. The only deadline on my grace is my death."

I brought the ravens closer to my face, closer so I could see… I had a million questions and a million more words to say, ask, shout at hell and heaven alike, but I couldn't say any of them. My heart was in my throat.

"I'll let you talk."

Odyn left us to talk.

We didn't talk.

We didn't talk for a long time.

The next chapter is available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with advance chapters on Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, Reset the Universe, and Master of Wood, Water and Hill. Strangely, the latter got a shockingly low response everywhere I posted it – I blame Amazon - so I guess I'll be sticking to Reset after all.
 
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Thanks for great chapter ! and,i found another argument to lift his parents spirit - they must be healthy to take care not only of their children,but also grandchildren - becouse MC harem would certainly deliver a lot of them.
 
The Long Night of the Soul
A/N: The plot winds back for a backhand.


Greatfather-Winter.png


Chapter 16 – The Long Night of the Soul

"-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 10, Evening .-"​


There was something in the air. Disbelief and hope, and more disbelief and more hope. But there was also something else, a numb, shivering tension I could feel was just about to break.

"Nobody needs to say anything," I spoke before the wrong thing could be said again. "There's no hurry, no time limit. And it doesn't matter who does it either."

The tension stalled just before it could burst.

"If you two don't feel up for it anymore, I'll just have them myself." My promise settled over us. It didn't feel like a burden. "Baby sons or baby brothers, there really won't be much of a difference."

It would probably cut down on my marriage prospects, but all my current ones were about to be completely voided anyway. Worst came to worst, I could always work out a deal where I first give miss other half an heir that's all ours, before having the twins. Surely it wouldn't be impossible to find someone reasonable enough for that, right?

"You two had better be grateful," I told the spectral foetuses inside Huginn and Muninn's glowing, see-through craws. "Many people wouldn't bother with such high maintenance scrubs."

Falric and Marwyn did not reply.

The tension released, giving way to a wordless, guilty relief. I didn't comment on it and neither did anyone else. I didn't look at my mother and neither did Dad, even as he held her in his arms. And the dragons too.

The ravens stopped being see-through. Huginn tottered around on my wrist and peered at my parents, ignoring the dragons in her arms completely. Muninn ruffled his feathers and opened his beak at me to say: "G-wah."

"G-wah to you too," I said dryly. "Are you coming with me, or staying?"

"Tk-tk-tk-tk g-wah," said the raven.

Both birds then hopped off me and flew over to one of the tallest crates where they started grooming themselves.

I looked at my father, who looked between me and mother, and between the ravens and the dragons, then sent me a confounded but meaningful gaze back. Leaving mother to him, I stepped out of the tent. There, I quietly asked Emerentius to keep guarding the entrance, to which he nodded gravely.

I myself took advantage of the lingering notice-me-not spell to take in the crowds and events in the 'square.' The tent behind me was on one of the higher points in Saint's Tier, so I was well positioned to look over the crowd, even without my great height.

No one was looking in my direction. Instead, all eyes were riveted on the rising, whistling rockets that suddenly burst into multicolored, cascading flashes and crackles in the sky. The earlier fireworks show had, it seemed, been just a taste of things to come.

Down in the middle of the carnival, in the small circle of free space where the fireworks cart was, Blindi was putting on a wonderful act of being amazed and euphoric and bombastic at being able to see again.

I sat down on a bench nearby, which seemed to have fallen within the bounds of the someone else's problem field. I watched the fireworks. I watched the people. Smiling faces, awe and laughter, happy cheers everywhere. I thought of what I had planned for tomorrow and felt both less and more conflicted.

"And now, let us welcome the new year with a toast!" Blindi's voice rose above the din of everyone and everything else, once the echoes of the last firework had completely faded. "First of all, a toast to me! Because the father always comes first!"

I pointedly didn't facepalm even as everyone jeered and groaned at the terrible pun.

"Second, to the winter wind, who was kind enough to constantly blow the smoke away so all the fireworks could be seen clearly! Also for joining us tonight without the blizzard unduly inconveniencing anyone, trust me, I know what I'm talking about."

"Trust a stool pigeon!" Someone or others hollered. "As if!"

"To his saintliness!" Blindi bellowed with a wide, challenging grin as he pointed his glass straight at me. "Without whose sheer gall we wouldn't have such bright and merry lights in this darkness!"

When everyone and their grandchild turned towards me, I became aware that the subtle magic I'd been taking advantage of no longer reached past the tent's stakes. Everyone could see me now just fine. I rose to my feet and bemusedly accepted the glass of sparkling wine that a woman I didn't know by name briskly strode over to offer on a tray.

I looked at it. It was an actual glass, almost perfectly transparent. As I looked around, everyone had a cup or a mug made of wood, clay or pewter. But Blindi, Uther, Richard's officers, and a couple more people besides myself, we had glassware from a set like the sort that only the nobles could normally afford.

Odyn had a good appreciation for pageantry, didn't he?

Why did I feel uneasy?

"And finally, far and above all…" Blindi's tone took a sudden, distinctly daring cant. He raised his glass high. "To the Titans, by whose will and hand was done the shaping of the world!"

The happy atmosphere veered off into confusion, and my stomach dropped.

"To Aggrammar the Warrior. To Khaz'goroth the World Forger. To Golganneth, the Lord of Skies and Roaring Oceans. To Norgannon, Keeper of Celestial Magic and Lore. To Eonar, the Gentle Caretaker of All Living Things. And to Aman'Thul, the Highfather, by whose will was order first brought into the cosmos at the dawn of time!"

Oh.

Oh no.

"To the Pantheon! The Great Lords of the Seven Constellar Currents, by whose hands was the world of Azeroth ordered in eons past!"

I heard the words in abject dismay. I looked down at my glass. I felt faint and wooden all at once.

"Hail to those who came first! They, who came forward and set to work on forging Order out of Chaos! Hail to Them, who took the very matter of the universe, ground it down to the finest powder and sieved it through the finest sieve, only to find not a molecule of mercy, not a single atom of justice. They beheld the universe, then, and saw that it was not good. And so they set to work on the worlds they encountered. They shaped the planets by raising mighty mountains, they dredged out vast seas and breathed skies and raging atmospheres into being."

I looked up in surprise. Those words, how did he know them? Did I broadcast more than I realized, earlier when I broke into laughter at the memory of the Hogfather? Or were they mere coincidence?

From the other side of the gathered throng, Odyn's eyes dared me to interrupt. Deflect. Deny.

To lie.

"And then, to finally instil the notion of some ideal in the cosmos, some rightness in the universe by which it may find worth, they moulded the smaller races. They exalted us, that we may live and shape and judge all their great works."

That… was not from any of the words or chronicles about Azeroth that I remembered. Also, 'mould' didn't mean 'create.' Was his wording on purpose? What was I saying, of course it was.

I looked down at my glass again. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies, Death's words came to me. And the words of his granddaughter. So we can believe the big ones. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.

I'd agreed with those words in spirit, but never entirely in letter because I didn't agree that they were lies. At worst, they were dreams. It was dreams, not lies, that could 'become.'

"May their names be worshipped and their works praised with great praise, for this night and all the nights and days to come!"

I looked up. The crowd was dead silent. Even the wind had stopped almost completely, as if the looming clouds themselves were waiting to see what I would do. Say. Reply. Damn myself, perhaps. And with me, everyone who believed in me too. There were some looks of annoyance, a few of chagrin, more looks of mistrust, and many, many of bewilderment and confusion. Some were outright aghast. One or two were even outraged to the point of fanaticism.

But none of those feelings were aimed at me. Only at him. They didn't understand, didn't know.

I met Odyn's gaze.

Here I am not compromising either, his eyes told me. Put your honour where your life is, the gaze I'd just healed dared me.

The Pantheon was dead, and Odyn didn't know. He didn't know, his siblings didn't know, the dragons didn't know, the elves didn't know, the trolls didn't know, the loa didn't know, the nature gods didn't know, nobody did. None of them knew. The only one who knew, who understood what happened back then, was Ra. And he'd wallowed in crippling depression well before he was dispossessed of Aman'Thul's power and imprisoned by Lei Shen.

Fifteen thousand years, the realization struck me. This is why the number felt important. That's when the Pantheon were murdered.

There was no justice to be had here, was there? There was no room for mercy either, because either I'd be wronged by a lie or Odyn would be, so it wouldn't be anyone's mercy at all, just a trade of grief for mistrust.

That leaves duty, doesn't it?

I looked up at the clouds. What did the blizzard, the winter wind, see? Hear? What awareness did Hodir have in this form? How much did he understand? If I gave Greatfather Winter the worst news he'll ever receive in his entire existence, would he turn into a real calamity this time? And whatever I said… would he take the knowledge back to Ulduar, and from there to Loken and Yogg'Saron?

Would it make a difference?

For a moment, just for the sake of argument, I actually did consider dissembling. If I were before Odyn on his throne, he'd probably be able to see through me instantly. No matter how bright I made my Light, at the end of the day he was an entity that also had the Light, for much longer than me at that. Moreover, he collected and worked with souls. Being able to dissect the spirit at a glance would be literally required for that, I imagined.

But I wasn't there, I was here. Blindi was a remote vessel that brought forth just a fraction of Odyn's true self, no matter how much – or little – of his mind was present in it. At this moment. If I called on the Light to burn in the unseen world brightly enough, even he would have trouble sensing falsehood. At this distance at least.

But suspicion wouldn't be much better, and either way…

Would it be better to lie? I Reflected. By my standards. Would it be more help to the future, as I conceived it and committed to it?

The Light, unusually, had nothing to say. A very bright and intense and vast nothing.

The second of the Nine Noble Virtues is Truth.

I straightened my back. I raised my glass. I pleaded to Odyn with my own eyes to understand how very, very sorry I was.

And I did my duty. "To their memory."

There was a long, breathless moment when no one understood anything at all.

Then the cloud cover quaked so violently that everyone's attention was drawn up and away. Everyone's but mine.

It was like watching all the stages of spiritual death unfold right before my eyes. Odyn stared at me in utter incomprehension, blinked several times, made to speak only for his voice to fail him, tried again to the same result, then his brow furrowed as thoughts and memories rushed through his head between one breath and the next. I was endued with eyes that witnessed it unfold with sight beyond sight. For the first time, it felt less like a blessing than a curse.

Then his face slackened and his eyes widened so very, very slowly that I didn't need magic to read his every emotion off his face. Confusion, denial, a belated realization so shocking that I didn't need to wonder what it was… and then disbelief, denial, denial, denial, denial, denial, before a woe so pure and wretched overcame him that nothing else could coexist.

"Hail to their heirs," I said in the muteness that had overcome everything, trying and hoping to salvage… I didn't even know. "Whose promised ascension may yet set right what once went wrong."

Even before I finished I knew it wasn't enough. Odyn just… slumped where he stood and then…

The snow was soft, so his glass didn't break. Watching it fall, though I noted distantly that the drink inside wasn't the same one I had in mine, or anything at all fancy. Just normal red wine that spilled out on the white.

It looked like blood.

"-. .-"


The door almost slammed open from the force of the snowstorm, even with Dad holding a firm grip on the handle as he opened it ahead of the rest of us. I could barely spare any thought for it, my mind was fully on the task of steering Blindi inside without him stumbling on the last step.

"I cannot linger!" Uther shouted over the furor of the wind as he shielded the rest of us on the way in. "Dragon or not, I must go back to ensure everyone reaches shelter! But there will be questions and I have no answers, what should I tell them?"

"Greatfather Winter got some really bad news and will be much colder company for the next decade!" I shouted back as I steered Blindi's feet over the threshold with my own. "His substitute too!"

Uther had many questions, but asked none of them and went back out into the blizzard after one last, hard-pressed look at me and my new drop-in.

I finally got Blindi inside. The ravens flew out of Dad's cloak to watch from atop the furniture. Mother came in right after us, the dragons hanging off her skirt and bodice while leading Orsur in our wake. The man had wanted to decline our hospitality too, since he'd found a place down below and didn't want to be an imposition. Thankfully, he changed his mind when I said I needed someone with a strong horse and cart to transport us up the mountain. Us and the other important guest who'd initially refused our hospitality.

"Let's get him to the den, quickly now!" Dad fretted unnecessarily, though I didn't begrudge him his need to fill the disquiet with something. "There should still be embers in the hearth."

Warm or cold probably wouldn't make difference, but putting Blindi down in a chair should finally free enough of my attention to do something other than reacting.

I'd have had Emerentius fly the two of us up, but then the Light blared loudly in my mind for once. The sentient sky shroud would react extremely poorly to a helpless Odyn being carried off by a black dragon, the separation between Blindi and the Titan would make no difference to Hodir in his current state. As it was, the blizzard had resumed regardless, and the only reason it wasn't killing anyone – yet – was because it was as confused as it was wild.

Granodior was limited to ground-level and below, so he couldn't save anyone if the storm became truly horrendous. I'd also have to dedicate all my awareness to him in order for him to operate at anything approaching our small scale. Needless to say, I couldn't do that right now.

But I'd greatly nourished my spirit with the Light all these months, without having to feed it to anyone else, so I was much more than before. My own mystical senses reached far enough that I could perceive some of what was going on. The winds were blowing in all directions at random, which included against each other. It was keeping the gale forces from being as bad as they could be, so far.

Only so far.

I settled Blindi in Dad's armchair and stepped back while mother fussed over him. She'd get no reaction, but while she got convinced of that it left Orsur at loose ends. I caught his attention and led him to the room I'd prepared for him earlier. Once he knew where everything was, I made my excuses and went back out to stand on the porch, despite the gale and spraying snow.

The blizzard was verging on the truly dangerous this time. I didn't know what I'd do if it got worse, but while I waited for an idea, I could think about other things. Wonder. Figure out why the Light had blared in my mind so loudly, finally. It had been so clear just now compared to the rest of the day, even the whole month. Based on past experience, the immediate answer was that the impact of unfolding events was too vast in scope to judge one way or another. At least by my standards.

But as I stood in the blizzard and let my blood cool, I began to ponder a different possibility. One that the Light didn't immediately cast shade on.

I'm not the only one who's been Reflecting on how to go about things today.

I was strong in the Light, but so was Odyn, and he worked on even longer time frames than me, no doubt. Of course he'd use Reflection to evaluate the impact of his choices ahead of time too. If our foresight happened to focus on the same thing, closely enough, for long enough… Wouldn't we end up running face-first into each other's observer effect? All I did sense before, leading up to this, was that whatever was going to happen would be significant, and little else.

Free will was powerful indeed, even when misused.

Add another piece to the puzzle of how the Void can get around the Light.

I never imagined the answer to be 'too many cooks in the kitchen.'

The knee-jerk response would be for us foretellers to have as little to do with each other as possible, but that was by itself a reactionary, shallow non-answer. Coordination about who and what we happen to be working towards made much more sense. Odyn probably recognized what was happening immediately, and went ahead anyway, which made perfect sense too. Whether as a lesson to me – or not – if the average Joe could do what he had to do without any future sight at all, what excuse did we have?

Delegation was the ultimate superpower for a good reason.

Or maybe the opposite was just as true, and prophets could get even more reliable insight if they looked into the future at the same time. Together. I'd already used the Soulgaze as a medium for something fairly groundbreaking with Emerentius, why not this too? The details would need to be figured out in the future, but for right now…

I went back inside, to the den where only Dad was still keeping guard. Mom had given up on trying to coax a reaction out of our catatonic guest and went to see the other one instead.

I marched in front of the chair, turned Blindi's face up and Soulgazed an avatar.

The experience was literally psychedelic, but the hallmark feature of the mystical process, one I had taken for granted before but noticed being absent now, was the sense of the interconnectedness of all things. It was missing – no, not missing, incomplete. Like some part of the experience… wasn't.

The sights, sounds, smells, emotions, the dimensional breaks and curves that buoyed them and were buoyed by them… They unraveled around me, and in me and through me. It was like traveling through a multi-directional tunnel made of thought waves and light beams, while at the same time I also was the tunnel. But despite rising to that state of scale, to that immanence with the cosmos that I'd only surpassed when I was happily dead, the being I found at the other end didn't acknowledge me. He didn't look at me, didn't communicate with me, he wasn't even aware of me.

Just a large, massive man made of soul and mineral, slumped on his throne.

I pulled back.

Odyn's body is encased in pink marble and white jade, I thought dimly as I caught myself before I fell. I was dazed. So why is he turning blue?

No, I knew the answer, didn't I? Either Helya and Old God magic was to blame, or it just came naturally with being a psychopomp. Considering that all his Valkyries shone golden, the second was very unlikely.

I stood in my living room and loomed over my guest while I got my mind back in order. Blindi was blank, Odyn had completely withdrawn to his greater self in the Halls of Valor and left his vessel empty.

He'd done it none too gently either. I comprehended Blindi's nature now. The body before me had once belonged to a man with the aspirations and talent to become a brave and mighty warrior, if not for an incident that made him a lackwit. So Odyn sent a Valkyrie to offer to raise him to Valholl, where he could fulfil his potential instead of being locked in a body that didn't let him string two thoughts together, until he finally died choking on his own spit.

The man accepted. In exchange, Odyn gained a body he could possess at a whim. He'd been using it to work his will in the lands of man ever since.

But when pulling back from it this time, he hadn't shut the door behind him. I could see the ways, the spiritual structures in place for it, the mechanisms, the traps, the safeguards. They were all as dull and comatose as he was. He didn't just lack the presence of mind to re-engage them when he pulled out, he broke and ruined all of them with how suddenly and harshly he withdrew. He probably didn't realize he pulled out at all. Back. Away. If his reaction was even a fraction of Ra's, then Odyn had completely shut down. Odyn…

Odyn was vulnerable.

In all the worst ways.

"Dad," I called, ignoring the alarming ideas about Loken and Helya that I was thinking up as fast as the blizzard was getting worse outside. "That thing you did, the Soulgaze with mother, what exactly did you give?"

"Everything?" he asked more than answered. "You can control-? What am I saying, of course you can, but I didn't – it didn't even occur to me. I guess… I just offered everything I could?"

"Everything, huh?"

I Reflected on my situation. I Reflected on it very deeply. Even now, I still didn't get anything but the same sense of major significance. I pondered the implications of that. And my options. Especially the options that didn't involve killing Blindi right now and burning him to ash to scatter in the wind. The very distraught and soon-to-be unfriendly wind if I made the wrong decision here.

Above on the chandelier, Huginn and Muninn watched me. From up atop the mantlepiece, the dragons watched me just as intensely. This would be a formative experience for them too, then.

I steadily felt myself relax.

The Light works atemporally.

If I still couldn't sense anything specific, that could just as easily mean Odyn would Reflect on what I was about to do too. Himself. In the future. More so, distance was merely a suggestion where the Light was concerned, if you know what you're doing. Especially if you have auxiliary means of getting what you want.

Or, in this case, where you want.

I got myself a chair of my own, pulled it in front of Blindi, sat down and Soulgazed him second time.

It was a testament to the wrongness of the entire situation that the experience unfolded almost exactly the same, despite that this was one mystical undertaking that should never be less than unique. The end result was the same too, which worked just fine for what I meant to do. The vision settled once more, on the sight of the large, massive man made of soul and mineral, slumped on his throne.

I left my body entirely and astrally projected through Blindi's empty shell all the way there. Just flew my spirit over, straight through the open door.

Between one thought and the next, I appeared at the foot of Odyn's throne in the Hall of Glory.

Immediately, I heard a double-take behind me. Just one, female, familiar. Eyir. In front of me, Odyn didn't react at all, despite that his glowing eye wasn't closed. It told me just how bad and time-sensitive the situation was. He hadn't had the presence of mind to even dismiss anyone to think and grieve in peace, Eyir had no doubt had to do it for him. That was why I didn't sense or hear any of the valarjar that should have been on sentry.

I wasted no time on turning or talking, on vain attempts to explain anything to anyone, and instead used all of my Light to cast the Divine Shield. Around both of us.

Then I flew up as all ghosts could, kicked off the arm of the throne for speed, grabbed tight onto that ghastly magma beard of his, and Soulgazed a deity.

It was like plunging face-first into the sun with my eyes open. It didn't burn, but that was my only reprieve. His thoughts and emotions were variegated geometry turning in on itself, and their every tug and turn pulled at my edges, stretching my spirit and revealing seams I didn't know it still had. He was so vast, he saw and considered so much, so quickly, so many things at the same time that it threatened to dissolve my sense of identity. Had I not had a plan coming in, I might have felt alarmed.

But the human spirit is no mere trifle either, especially one who'd lived after death for as long as mine had.

I focused very hard on the distant memories of this world from another life and offered them up. Them and everything else I had to give.

The golden radiance took them, harshly, almost unwittingly, carelessly. Ripped them out of me along with a chunk of spiritual mass that was none too small. I didn't resist. It was needed to contain them, to keep them in one piece, a single unified record, however scrambled. Even if it didn't work, the pain would be good practice in case my plans for tomorrow fell through and I had to go with my more painful options. And because it was a part of me, I could sense its path and its transformation even if I couldn't follow in its wake.

Inevitably, Odyn's circular thoughts forced mine into his focus, because he barely had the mind to decide what should be in focus, and the chaos shuddered to a halt.

I tried to pull out. To give him back his privacy.

He didn't allow me. I hadn't even sensed him turn his attention to me, but he had me in his grip.

I didn't struggle.

He… didn't punish my transgression.

He beheld me. Everything about me. Finally, he acknowledge me, or at least the fact that I was there.

He dissected every memory I had of Azeroth from Earth, though they didn't induce any paradigm-shifting conclusions. Variations of all of them had played out in his own war games and visions, so they were nothing new. All except the last one. The last memory, and the foremost among them. The campaign of Argus. He followed it all the way to its conclusion, when the Pantheon came back to life despite all odds against them.

He watched it, riveted.

Then, very slowly, carefully, mournfully, he set it apart from the rest. Separately.

To be completely disregarded with the rest of the wishful thinking.

I gave my sympathy freely, and I hoped Odyn would forgive me for giving him this spot of hope someday. I'd only pushed that memory to the forefront to shock him out of his downward spiral. I didn't trust a hope that it would come true either, and I made no pretense to the contrary. Those who first envisioned Azeroth on Earth were culled early on. All the ones telling the stories by the end were petty fabricators with an axe to grind.

With a mighty effort that was still just barely enough, Odyn finally witnessed me, and through me further back, through memory and time until he reached the calm, self-fulfilling solitude of the afterlife that I'll never truly leave behind. Only there, in that eon of life beyond death, in the proof to the contrary of how horrible he had witnessed the hereafter to be, he finally found a speck of comfort.

The Soulgaze ended without my say so.

I found myself in the palm of Odyn's hand. The Light – his Light – was flowing through me, soothing the searing pain where my spirit had been scorched by his beard of stonefire. Around us, a Divine Shield turned ever so steadily, but it wasn't mine. That had lapsed at some point, only for Odyn to cast a new one himself. He wasn't in any more of a mood to explain anything to anyone either.

"Go home, Prophet," Odyn said wearily, his one eye shut. "Go home."

I went back home.

"Get another bed ready," I ordered once back in my body. My spirit felt raw, like skin scalded by boiling oil, but I'd suffered worse with Emerentius. "I don't know how long we'll be hosting this shell, but let's make him comfortable at least."

Thankfully, no one asked any questions.

Eventually, I was alone with just the sentient beasts to judge me.

I comforted them as best I could, then went to the kitchen, took the trash bin outside and upended it all on the snow. I overlayed my spirit over the glass shards. I used the Light to scry the Arcane patterns that they used to be arranged in, backwards in time like I'd done for the steam elementals, and cast Holy Light at just the one.

Glass came back together into the shape of Dad's birthday pint, whole and unbroken.

I picked it up and examined it. There was a wisp of spirit still in it, but it was rapidly dissipating. The object itself was better than new. Prettier too.

You could, it turned out, use the Holy Light to fix inanimate objects. In fact, it had gone from a nice cup to a masterwork, at least within the material limitations.

Not as simple as just casting the Mending cantrip, but not as limited either.

Best of all, it didn't undermine the Arcane at all. In fact, it repaired it. It didn't mess with time either. It was healing transformation, not entropy reversal. You just had to be able to target the Arcane substrate, not the object itself. Not the crude matter.

The Arcane itself can be healed.

It was unfortunate that I wasn't in the state of heart to enjoy my breakthrough.

I looked up, ignoring the snow beating at my face. The clouds were positively corrugated, and the wind and snowfall could charitably qualify as a squall. I tired communicating with the presence in the sky, spirit to spirit, but got no response or reaction.

I cleaned up my mess, took the trash bin and cup back inside, and went back out and down the slope to where the ever-burning cauldron was. Since none of the little sprites had come swarming me in distress, I assumed the magical flame was still there and burning, so the canopy and snow fenders were doing something right. Regardless, I had business with them, because they were the last loose end left to tie up.

I also hoped they might be willing to talk to the blizzard on my behalf, after I was done. And that Hodir would listen to them. Sympathy for the grieving was all well and good, but not when it caused mass casualties across half the country. I didn't know how I'd go about matching the Light against a force of nature, never mind an entity that could override it by being just plain better at the job.

My workshop was near enough that it stymied the wind from one direction, but there was a big layer of snow under the canopy anyway. In fact, it had built up almost high enough around it to reach the cauldron's rim. The snow fenders had worked, so the snow just built up around them. I was honestly surprised the magical flame still worked under all that. Even if the heat maintained an air pocket, the oxygen should be running low by now.

I looked at the cauldron and the steam elementals pretending not to realize I was here. Pretending they didn't want to crowd me and hug me until they were sated on my spiritual energy. If I opened my spirit to them, it would carry everything I feel, everything weighing me down right now. Could I really inflict this burden on them? That would just make everything even worse, wouldn't it? I was rather upset right now.

I chose instead to walk back a distance and sit down on the farthest makeshift log bench that still put them in my line of sight, well outside the canopy. Then I just… watched the steam go up for a while. I considered going ahead with the procedure I'd devised over the past few months, but I was still a little rattled. I did need at least one of the spirits tomorrow, if I was to do all I planned to do, so I couldn't afford to leave them be anymore, but… one more hour wouldn't cut things that closely, surely?

The unintended guests in my home did not figure into my decision. Given how long it took Ra to acknowledge Lei Shen, I'd not have been surprised if it took days or even weeks before Odyn did the same for me, assuming he didn't just get the blizzard to carry his avatar someplace else on wings of wind.

So it was to my very genuine surprise when, not half an hour later, I was proven entirely incorrect when Blindi came down from the house and took a seat next to me on the rough log. He didn't say anything.

I did. "I am sorry."

"… I can feel that you mean it. It is appreciated."

It was not the same as thanking me, for which I didn't blame him. I wouldn't be able to thank someone for such horrible news either. Not without it being a complete lie.

When Odyn spoke again almost five minutes later, his voice was outright vacant. "I am an imitation."

"You're a legacy."

A legacy of a shaman who rose to deific status for carving some manner of order during the Bronze Age collapse. Not that anyone was in a hurry to acknowledge that, or its implications. They were more interested in painting Odin as a cowardly degenerate.

That did raise the question of coincidence, though, because at the level the Pantheon operated at, the names and assignments of the Keepers had to be beyond mere happenstance. It made me seriously wonder if the Titans hadn't known about Earth. Maybe even visited.

… Wait a second.

My assumption about crossing realities was based on vague recollections of what it looked and felt like to leave the Sol System's rebirth wheel. But I didn't actually have a frame of reference for any of it, so what really happened there?

I'd not thought too much of the processes involved in me coming to this 'reality,' but I'd never believed in an 'all choices happen' multiverse to begin with. While I didn't dismiss the idea that other realities might exist somehow – no more than I could dismiss anything else completely unverifiable – I now had to wonder if I had left my home reality at all.

I wondered if the Warcraft games came to be because someone reincarnated, or because I had. Will. In the future. Backwards in time.

Probably not, I had no plans to go back.

… But an anti-magic blood ward, cast around a Titan's corpse and fuelled by the blood sacrifice of that self-same World-Soul, would be the ideal place for a soul to flee to. Through means beyond the Twisting Nether. To a place where the nathrezim wouldn't find, never mind enter. If they even thought to look.

Come to think of it, my vague memories of being dead and eventually reincarnating on Azeroth were remarkably similar to Odyn's experience existing in and out of the realms beyond the Grey at the same time, in that brief time when he was still one with his other eye. In that light, it was possible that Earth and Azeroth were in the same Great Dark. Same universe.

Here.

If that was true, then the oldest of Earth's creation myth gained a whole new meaning. The conspicuous dearth of mystical feats by my time also took on a whole new meaning. Even with the wildest psychedelics and occult practices, there was a distinct lack of magic worth a damn on Terra, in the modern age. By this world's scale, at least.

So… When one thought about what the story of the Divine Twins might mean, when one looked at the story of Ymir, Yemo, Yama, Pangu, whatever you wanted to call him. Our Titan…

Our titan was dead.

Our World-Soul had offered himself to be sacrificed.

The myth said it was so Manu and all whatever other beings would have a place to live, but now I could guess the real reason, and it had everything to do with the lack of spiritual powers. In killing himself, Earth became a dead zone. And thus, it became useless to eldritch tentacle horrors, and very hard – maybe even impossible – to find or assail through the Legion's means, thanks to the anti-magic protection spell. Maybe it even looked like any other lifeless rock from outside.

The sky was made from the cold giant's skull, the myth said. But that was the oral tradition of people who considered gods to be the constellations measured and tracked by shamans and astronomers in a reflective pool at night. 'Father Sky' wasn't a mere thunder god starting out, he was the firmament. The solar system's heliosheath.

If the wheel of rebirth didn't care about time any more than the Light did, assuming they weren't one and the same… Or part of the same…

The Sol System was a time capsule.

And, because it had practically no other stake on the broader universe, it had the least observer effect at the quantum level. Thus, any 'visions' of the outer universe would come across more clearly there than anywhere else. A place where the past and future cast their shades equally, via the only vectors available: souls that reincarnated into the system, on Earth, from outside.

I just happened to have done the reverse.

"The internal combustion engine is locked out by design."

My loose speculations were completely blown away by what Odyn had just told me. "Excuse me?"

"The technological path that begins with steam power and internal combustion was deliberately tied up with the interplanar mechanics, specifically to prevent its proliferation. The technological advantage of the Burning Legion is insurmountable by conventional paths, the only way to even the odds is by making technology past a certain point so ruinously self-sabotaging as to be useless. That is why the Legion only spreads and invades through mystical vectors. Otherwise they would all travel around in starships enslaving or eradicating everything through orbital bombardment."

"… That makes a large amount of sense."

"The Pantheon certainly thought so." Blindi didn't nod or gesture anything else, just talking seemed to be taking every scrap of will he could muster. "The alteration to the nature of civilization here also adds to Azeroth's natural qualities as the key to counter-attacking the Burning Legion. Though if you plan to put your hopes in the World-Soul, I wouldn't hold my breath."

… I wasn't planning to, but now that he mentioned it-

"I cannot see the sense in some of the things in your memory, much seems taken right out of Loken's Tribunal of Ages. But the little you know about the planet's early eons is correct. The world-soul did not produce an abundance of spiritual energy. In fact, it devoured more than it made. This precipitated the mass starvation of the elements, which in turn caused them to descend into predation and cannibalism. The world was a hellscape long before the tentacle horrors came."

That… sounded accurate to some of the lore, and also like the complete opposite of Draenor's problem.

"The Pantheon gave their personal touch to this planet specifically so enough life might emerge to produce enough spiritual energy to sate that hunger. They never shared their thoughts on the matter with me, but I personally will never lay all my hopes for the future upon a creature of such high-maintenance."

That sounded truly harsh, but my own steam elementals would have sucked my spirit dry if I'd let them, which wasn't much different. "So why did they put so much work into this world? Or is this the standard?"

"One part was the environmental pressure producing some of the strongest native life forms in the Great Dark. But the greater part is Azeroth's peculiar celestial cycle, especially the two moons. Also, the Pantheons deliberately created many different and unique biomes, complete with sapient life forms, so that the planet will always qualify as a less adequate target for locator or targeting spells. To that, of course, are added the defenses around the world and system proper."

"The planet's not part of any galaxy, so you can't navigate here via conventional interstellar technology. And mystically…" I snapped my fingers. "The interregnum!"

"Yes. There are other world souls, some that could hatch into bigger and stronger beings than this one, but Azeroth is special because, in cosmic terms, it fits the similarity principle very poorly. You have all the elements to aim an outgoing teleportation or portal to practically any kind of world out there, even pick and choose details until you narrow down a specific one. But the reverse is not true – the only way to get into this place is if it's given a foothold by internal traitors."

Deathwing. Medivh. Sargeras.

If he sensed my thoughts, Odyn didn't give a sign. "Azeroth is special because it is the perfect staging point: you can attack anywhere, but it is practically impossible for it to become the enemy's beachhead in return."

"Almost," I said.

"Yes," Blindi said wearily. "Almost."

We both fell silent, me because there was something coming together in my mind, and Odyn because he couldn't bring himself to do anything after that exertion. That was how he felt to me, at least. Depression was a frightful thing, I didn't even want to relate to what it might be like, at his scale.

Finally, I realized what was nagging at me. "Wait – why didn't the Titans exclude atomics then? Is it because your bodies need it to function?"

"Because the demons cannot use it."

That… was not any answer I even imagined.

"The point is not to stop technological development, the point is to deny the enemy the benefits of industrial automation they will always be able to co-opt and turn against native societies. Enchantment, at least, needs effort to subvert, and never the exact same kind."

"And fusion can't be? Fission, elemental enrichment, it only takes-" But then I realized what he was telling me. "Fel magic."

He gestured vaguely in confirmation.

"By its very nature, Fel is unstable and degenerative," I realized. "Not enough to alter the make of a bomb on immediate exposure, maybe, but more than sufficient to do ill upon element fertility and radiation decay over the time it would take to, say, put that bomb together to begin with." What would it do to the more fiddly and long-term applications, like a power reactor? "The most essential element in harnessing the power of fissile material is precision. Control."

"And so, all attempts by the Burning Legion to harness nuclear power have ended in ruin for them."

That was… incredible news. It still left the issue of sabotage, especially by shapeshifters like dreadlords, but that wasn't really an argument because it could be said of literally anything. Actually, a nuclear power plant would have the best protections and surveillance imaginable, in many layers normal and magical alike. Such facilities wouldn't even need to be above ground, on a world like this.

For fel powers to be such a terrible idea even without them, it would mean that any use of them would cause anomalies in the reactor, even from a fair distance. That would trip alarms immediately, even if the dreadlord manages to fool all other modes of detection. The kind of skill set needed to cause a Cernobyl in those conditions… Even if they succeeded, the demons wouldn't get a foothold anyway.

It would make more sense to send such an agent after the leadership instead.

I thought about Outland, and the battalion of giant mechs that the Legion might start to build there at some point in the future. Their low combat capabilities, the lack of interstellar logistics and assets being brought in from elsewhere, it all made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

Meanwhile, on Azeroth, the pinnacle of atomic technology and all military applications already existed in the Titan facilities, including mass automation and everything else that a more conventional industrial revolution would barely manage a fraction of.

Really, I was only surprised that electricity generation wasn't somehow locked too, since you could achieve mass production that way as well. When I asked Odyn about it, he said that was too fundamental a mechanic to mess with if you wanted any technology beyond campfires.

Or an atmosphere.

I hummed. "You said the technology advantage of the Burning legion would be insurmountable by 'conventional' paths."

Odyn looked up at the clouds.

"What if we do find the workaround?"

"Then it will be noted and you will be encouraged to explore the technology as fully as possible, insofar as it does not actually cause irreparable harm to the Arcane or the planet, so that we are as informed as we can be of the vulnerabilities you discovered when the demons come."

I blinked. "That's a lot more lenient than I expected. Is this a stance from before today, or just now?"

"It has always been the way. There would be no point to us Keepers if all we did was stifle life." With a monumental exertion of willpower, Odyn was able to force himself to stand. He closed his eyes and sighed against the wind beating at his face. "To borrow a phrase from your last life, putting the djinn back in the bottle very rarely works out, and never without pain."

I got the distinct feeling that he wasn't talking about hypotheticals anymore. "If this is about tomorrow-"

"My val'kyr can either do their assigned duty or answer your call for intervention, not both at once. Geirrvif will remain, and others are already converging as drawn by their nature, many people will die violently tomorrow night. But I cannot afford to divert more of them your way, even for you. Even if I did, there will be innocent casualties, even if just from shock among those with old and weakened hearts, well beyond your reach. For what you mean to achieve, there was never going to be a clean solution."

"If you tell me I'll do more harm than good if I go through with my plans for tomorrow, I won't do it."

That, finally, got a true and vivid reaction. "I actually believe you." When he turned to look at me, his tone was a small bit less dismal. "Before I answer, I will ask this: do you believe yourself to be good?"

What a question. What did he know? What did he see? How far into the future?

Did it matter?

I stood as well, and took time getting my thoughts in order. I could feel the importance of this moment. "A wise man once toyed with the idea that good cannot comprehend evil, and vice versa. I used to think it was nonsense. I believed that Good and Evil will not understand each other only as long as they don't meet, and then experience will teach everything the other needs to know. But life has since showed me that while most people are good, most really don't understand evil. The ones who talk and debate on the topic most confidently are usually the ones who understand the least."

"The meeting between good and evil usually concludes with the better side dead." Odyn made a gesture that somehow indicated everything. The world. Himself. The storm clouds. Everything. "Or worse."

I chose my words carefully, acutely aware of how much less of the Light there was in Odyn compared to just an hour before. "Good might be the only one that can truly comprehend the other while remaining itself."

The Light flickered ever so slightly. Brighter.

"I believe," I said slowly. "That Good understands itself, but Evil never will. The evil man is inherently hypocritical, or utterly ignorant of himself. Otherwise he'd commit penance or suicide in self-disgust. Or at least stop. Evil cannot create, only corrupt. That's why, even if I end up shunned or exiled, maybe even hunted to the ends of the world for my acts of tomorrow, I will not hold it against anyone."

"I see," Odyn murmured. "You believe what you say. That is good. You will need it tomorrow, especially if tonight concludes for you as I expect it will."

My thoughtful mood was drenched in cold quite effectively. "And now I've an all-new cause for worry." I knew I wouldn't be getting an explanation, I sensed it, the certainty. But I asked anyway. "I don't suppose you'll explain what you mean?"

"It is not a vision, merely a personal expectation based on lived experience. For that reason, I dare not share it." Odyn sighed, looking at the cauldron and the spirits within. "I dare not inflict myself on the matter, any matter, as I am right now."

"But you think I'm about to make a mistake."

"On the contrary, I believe you've acted rightly in all ways relative to this matter, and I also believe that what you are about to do is good. But I also expect it will leave you feeling quite livid."

Oh.

Oh dear.

What was I going to stumble my way into this time?

Odyn took a deep, fortifying breath and put his hands on my shoulders. When he spoke this time, his tone was low, feeble, but completely heartfelt "You could have become my Lei Shen."

I… I appreciated the words, but that was going a bit far. Lei Shen was right there with Ra in the Engine of Nalak'sha, when there was no defense between them and no guards. An astral projection was hardly so dangerous. I'd have to figure out where the Broken Isles are first, find the Halls of Valor, get there, break into Skyhold and do all manner of other things before-

Odyn put his hand over my mouth, even though I hadn't voiced any of that. "This is not just a minor trifle of appreciation anymore. This is a debt of honor. Do you understand?"

Since he still held my mouth shut, I could only nod.

Odyn withdrew. "Light be with you, Ferdinand Rogasian. May others afford you the kindness you do not give yourself."

I watched Odyn leave. I watched him climb up the mountain until he disappeared into the churning clouds. The sky calmed soon after, or perhaps the clouds just lost their will to struggle, that's how bleak the air felt. When the cover of mists finally lifted from the crest entirely, there was no one there.

I turned to the steaming cauldron. I pondered the life forms wallowing within. I considered picking up the shovel, but if things went even remotely like I expected, there wouldn't be a need to. That problem would just solve itself.

I considered turning my back and leaving well enough alone.

The First of the Nine Noble Virtues is Courage.

I let my aura unfold like I hadn't allowed it since the Lightforging. All this time I'd been nourishing and cultivating my spirit with the Light, only without sacrificing the results to the Aura of Vigor like I'd done before. It unfolded around me, now, spreading wide and far, and farther still until my specter permeated the whole mesa our property sat on.

The little spirits stirred inside the cauldron, despite their stubborn sulk. One even dared peak out over the top.

I held out a hand, palm-up. I traced back my own history, all the way back to the point when the nine little spirits had tried to fuse together. I stopped at that moment, when I seized them and stopped them, mid-way through the process of forming an all-new elemental. I invoked the fullness of that memory, the reality recorded permanently in the record of the past.

I'd called it a reflection of the past upon the present before, but the word was wrong. It wasn't a reflection, it was a perfect memory of reality at that point in time.

I called on the Light to manifest that reality anew into the world.

A nine-fold elemental spirit core came into being above my hand. It was new, it was big, it was real, it took more than half of my spiritual mass just to form a mould in which the Light could flow and take its form. Coalesce.

Become.

But the Light did flow and become, and the amount I could channel had grown enough that my conjuration would last for as long as I had Light to regenerate it.

"Go on, you little brats." My voice, my breath, they shook. With exhilaration. "Eat your fill."

The spirits were amazed. Disbelieving. Astounded.

But the call of satiety and growth could not be resisted forever. One of them, the bravest and the least invested in their collective sulk, ripped loose of the others and descended ravenously on my offering.

And so it was, that at the turn of the New Year's Eve of the year 581 of the King's Calendar, I bore witness to the unfolding of all stages in lifecycle of elemental life, from infant to its prime.

The little spirit had barely gorged on half a core's worth of spiritual mass when it began to metamorphosize. But unlike in nature and the Elemental Plane, where a spirit had to digest and grow and self-actualize and repeat until it had assimilated enough for the next stage, there was no wait here, or delay. I'd stopped the fusion part-way through, at a stage where the substance of the cores was most easily digestible because it was practically transmuting itself. Furthermore, the Light worked intuitively.

I was joined together in spirit with the little one, so well that I could easily have it serve his wants and instincts over mine.

One core became two, then three, then six, then twelve, and more. Each time it grew bigger, each time it took longer.

But the meal never ran out, and while the Light couldn't touch it directly without pain, the spirit was more than willing to let me play intermediary for the necessary Revelation. The whole while I felt like I was being eaten alive, my spirit was being eaten alive. But I bore through it, if for no other reason than because I'd need the pain tolerance and ability to work through crippling sapped will soon. And when our different perspectives final reached un unbridgeable gap in concepts and understanding, Granodior arose unbidden within me and over him to offer up his own.

The Spirit of Alterac… He had a personal stake in this. I felt it keenly, even though I still didn't know what it was. I wasn't surprised. Though the little ones had shunned me this whole time, the same couldn't be said for everyone else. Who better to turn to than their senior?

Finally, after many minutes, when the little steam puff had grown into a living whirlwind the size of our house, the infusion of growth and nourishment finally started to lag behind self-attainment. It brought to mind what my mother used to say when teaching me how to plant a garden. It didn't matter how long I fed the same amount of water to a tree if it was just a trickle and a drop.

I cut the flow of power, and waited for the spirit of air and water and flame to finally finish his meal.

The windy, whistling haze around me stabilized. The metamorphosis finally began to settle on a form. The spirit in front of me finally had enough mind to take in his surroundings again, and realized that I was bleeding from a hundred cuts.

He all but ripped himself away from me, which didn't do me much better because it also stole my breath away. I heaved a big lungful when new air rushed back in, which didn't improve his disposition by much. Mortified, the elemental spirit melted all the snow around us and the cauldron, swept it around us to form a protective dome, then rapidly raised the temperature of the air to what I was most comfortable with.

~ Mortification, Apology, Concern ~

I raise a finger for him to wait while I hunched over and kindly bid the Light to heal my body now. And my clothes too. I had to reconceptualize my situation and really focus to make it work for the latter, but I powered through it because my shirt wouldn't survive another bout like that, and there were eight more still to go.

~ Concern, Apology, Chagrin ~

"Does this mean you are speaking to me again?"

~ Chagrin, Vacillation, Embarassment ~

Finally, I was able to stand straight. "I name you Allayiphas." I declared. "But to avoid exposing your true name so others can bind you, I'll call you Phaseshift." 'Allayí phasis' was 'phase shift' in Greek. I shouldn't know that, I only knew English and German from back on Earth, but Revelation was proving useful in many small ways too.

~ … … Acknowledgment ~

"You've internalized the process of changing the basic states of matter, as part of your maturation. Apparently. Congratulations."

Steam was fire and water and air. I'd just seen him manipulate all three states, or at least the last two and their temperature. That was no small thing, as I understood it.

The appreciation this time was wordles, but heartfelt.

I watched the new being I'd created. Unbound from the physical trappings of vapour and ice, he spanned half of my range of sight, and not just because he was so close. How much farther and wider could he stretch and fly now, I wondered.

I knocked on the glass shell. It tinkled. I looked at Phaseshift meaningfully.

Obligingly, he dispersed his physical form, and with it the ice dome back into snow – density manipulation too? – revealing once more the night, the blizzard, the canopy now free of snow underneath, and the steaming cauldron that positively boiled with anxious energy.

I watched my little spirits.

Their souls were filled with want.

"One at a time."

The climax of the volume begins next chapter, and it's another big one. It's available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with advance chapters on Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, Reset the Universe, and Master of Wood, Water and Hill.
 
The Dark Night of the Spirit
A/N: The plot strikes back.


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Chapter 17 - The Dark Night of the Spirit

"-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 11 .-"​



Arrestor, Brumean, Foamgust, Phaseshift, Snarldraft, Terminal, Windflurry, and…

Roilbroth.

Roilbroth. Soup stirrer. Because once upon a time, a baby elemental lounged on mom's stew and thought her off-hand joke about turning into a broth elemental was the grandest idea.

I watched in shock as the flying soon-to-be-spaghetti monster swooped off to… be today's breakfast? Become? Beget? What?

I pinched my nose.

This is it.

This is my life.

"I hope you don't plan to turn out quite this 'special,'" I told the last of the nine, the only elemental that had held back and still not emerged from the cauldron. "Clearly, hoping that Granodior might impart some amount of his good sense unto you lot isn't in the cards."

Those turned out to be the magic words.

So why did I suddenly feel uneasy?

I didn't have time enough to contemplate the echo of dark and bitter irony that I somehow knew was my own from the future.

The last of the nine arose more purposely than the others. When our spirits connected, I recognized him as the one who'd instigated their attempted merger in the first place. When he descended upon the feast I offered, he was steady, almost reluctant… but not because of that. Even through the soul-aching malaise of having my spirit devoured, I could feel that he was… concerned?

For himself, but not really. He had something he needed to do, something he'd been preparing, preparing for, and he worried this would derail him like the first time. Hoped for it too, was afraid of what he'd do if he succeeded, while at the same time determined not to. I couldn't understand him at all.

Despite this, he fed. Of course he did, he was as famished as his siblings had been. The little spirit had barely gorged on half a core's worth of spiritual mass when he began to metamorphosize. His core, like the others, grew to be as large as two, then three, then six, then twelve, and more the further he ate of the nine I'd conjured from past experience.

But even as he accumulated matter and energy enough to become literally anything he wanted, he didn't grow. He didn't turn back to a purely spiritual being either, unlike his siblings.

He declined and resisted all my attempts to play intermediary for Revelation. Where Granodior had arisen to offer his own aid with the others, that didn't happen either. The little puff of mist didn't change, he just… got denser. Denser and denser, clearer, brighter and brighter until the shimmering colors in him seemed to gain their own gravity, drawing inward as much as he shone out.

That suddenly changed when the infusion of growth and nourishment finally started to lag behind self-attainment. The little spirit coalesced in front of me into a small, rippling, glassy face with eyes that were the window to its soul. And another soul.

Beyond him but still part of him was Granodior. His vast presence was woven into the little one in a manner not much different from how he was with me. He looked at me. Through the little one he looked at me, like how I'd looked at Richard through the nine when I soulgazed him the first time in the mountains.

The rejection of Revelation suddenly inverted. The little one pulled through me on the Light I'd called forward, burned himself on it to force Revelation on all three of us, and died.

What-agh!

My spirit convulsed as all my Light was suddenly ripped out. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground gasping for life while I retched blood and bile. I could feel my blood spilling out, flowing from my eyes, seeping out through my skin in a thousand places, rips and tears smearing the ground red as I struggled to stay aware.

I-this-such p-pain, what-

I reached for the Light by reflex, only for that to be sucked away too, my body seizing further, tearing further as it was ripped by a… a…

This weakness, the drain, so vast… s-so dark, familiar, like – !?

The Light came ever stronger, but struggled to stay ahead of me breaking down to base elements.

P-protect me-

The Divine Shield formed around me, solid and impenetrable but doomed to die young because all around and above and below was the Void.

What-

I reached for all the Light I could grasp in a panicked frenzy, unable to think of anything except heal, heal, heal me please-

My body stopped feeling like it was coming apart at the cells.

My head stopped feeling like it was about to crack open.

My heart restarted. I hadn't felt it stop.

Agh…

"W-wh…" I struggled to speak. I struggled to move. My body still bled and all of me convulsed. The most intense golden gleam seeped out of me through a thousand bleeding gashes as my muscles and tendons and blood vessels tried their best to reform from the tatters they'd become.

I died just now.

My mind scrambled in two directions at once, one half trying to comprehend, the other running my diagnostic spell the deepest I'd ever gone only to – my body – I'd just experienced chaotic failure of my covalent bonds. My tissues – no, my cells had almost broken down at molecular level, I'd very nearly been disintegrated.

I literally died just now.

"W-" I coughed blood. I could barely breathe, and not just because of my injuries. "What the – hell is this?" My words were dust and nothing else because there was nothing to breathe, the void had eaten even the thinnest matter by the time I cast my shield. Everything beyond it was coming apart in a dirge of dark sizzling arcs of annihilation. The air was being unmade faster than it filled in, there was nothing around me and above and below but the Void.

~ Repression, Want, Desire Ours ~

The little spirit. He'd changed. Shockingly, fatally, before I even knew what happened he had died. It somehow killed me too, but there was nothing like a life bond, why? If my spirit hadn't grown as strong as it has-

~ Resolve Ours, Resolve His, Resolve Mine ~

Granodior helped him – helped him do the spiritual equivalent of mindmeld on me so he'd read from me where to aim when… committing ritual suicide as they'd been planning and preparing the little one for the last few months – "You did what?!"

~ Desire Ours, Desire Yours, Mutuality ~

"You don't decide what I want!" My snarl was more mental than voice, there still wasn't enough air. "You do not make decisions for me!" The Void had eaten the air like it now ate the Light my shield was made of, incredible, even the perfect defense was mere food, was this the Light's weakness or mine? No, my mind – I can't get distracted, my brain – I was still having a stroke heal that right now!

~ Desire Ours, Resolve Ours, Outcome Thine ~

I tried to rise only to slip, and not just because my whole body was one mass of pain. The snow at my feet – no, not snow, the earth… Not earth either, the dust… Dust was what I crawled in, all I could see around me, a bed of grey and lifeless powder at the bottom of my forcefield and around and away, rising up as the vacuum pulled and twisted it round itself.

I crawled back in a bid to escape the pull of annihilation. I could feel the ground shifting and dropping beneath my feet as the earth continued to disintegrate. Like I almost had. More and more every moment that passed.

Outside my shimmering golden shell that lost strength faster than I could fuel it, I could see nothing. The darkness swallowed up the Light leaving nothing to see by, save too few motes that vanished in the widening gap. There was only dust, roiling at me and around me, a dust devil made of destruction and ending centred around a predacious dark star.

Dark Star, the disjointed thought pulled at my anguished mind as I crawled away. The wording, why is it important-?

The thought slipped past me as I hit against an almost solid wall of wind. For a moment, I didn't know if I should be amazed or horrified that the other elementals were charging in to be unmade and devoured like me. I shouted a warning through my own spirit, through the Arcane, in my own mind. Stay away, get away, don't come near here, that and a dozen other things howled out without sound, before I realized that wasn't what was happening.

Vacuum effect, the nearly useless revelation came instead of what I'd almost grasped. As the air is swallowed up, more rushes in.

But for the wind to implode at such speed had to mean that the rate at which it was being consumed by the void was truly-

The earth beneath me lurched like a snapped whip and tossed me out of the yawning gap, into the sheltering sheen of an arcane forcefield that rose to bar the way from whence I fell.

"He's alive!" "Thank heavens!" "Grab him, move him back, quickly!"

Arms grabbed me, pulled me. Richard. And Uther. They dragged me away. Past Antonidas who was holding up the protection spell.

Arcane forcefield, I thought dimly as I gasped for air. My own protection had failed and I didn't notice. It can't hope to… no… It's… working? Better than the Light?

The wind whistled in my ears as it was sucked in with the speed of a hurricane. I could feel Phaseshift envelop me, and the others around us too, dampening the worst of the shear. My feet dug a deep groove through the squalling snow as the others never stopped dragging me. Not until we passed outside the forcefield, and then further still to shelter from the gale behind Emerentius's dragon form.

How are they all here? I tried to comprehend as the healing Light – mine and theirs – finally started making a difference in my brain. How long did that all take, how much time did I lose? Again? When?

"Antonidas' alarms triggered on his quarters here, and your workshop as well!" Richard shouted over the wind once he propped me against the dragon. "He teleported over, assessed the situation and contacted me immediately. We coordinated and decided to treat this as a hostile area. Per your prior instructions, I first evacuated your parents to my keep in the south, and the new household additions as well. My Lord, what is happening here?!"

"If the fake-blind man is behind this, I apologize for leaving you alone with him!" Uther said from where he looked around the dragon back the way we came. "As soon as we find a way through that, I will show him the back of my hand! What is this magic?"

"I don't kno-"

~ Disclosure, Deferral, Revelation ~

I hunched over as my mind threatened to splinter again under a deluge of new information. My inner havoc was swept aside by memories of the far past. Mankind's past. And Granodior's own, when crystalline beings from across dimensions bestowed his kind with visions that promised new beginnings as surely as the Light conveying them burned him from within.

The humans – Lordain's sister Mereldar – they weren't the only ones the Light's avatars reached their hand to. What they offered humanity was not the same as what they offered the spirits of the world.

I reeled under the weight of conflicted feelings reaching back nearly three thousand years. Disbelief, hope, mistrust, longing, refusal, regret, want, want, want, want just barely not enough to overwhelm the fear, but if another could do it for him-?

"-ourself said you had to leave Dalaran before you found out about the imprisoned ones," Richard was arguing with his hand firmly clasped over Antonidas' own. And his transmission stone. "Even that just by happenstance!"

"I said they didn't confide such sensitive information to me, not that they didn't have it!"

"The decision is not yours to unilaterally make!"

"The decision is anyone's to make, whatever that is almost killed him of all people! I will not jeopardize the safety of everything because your loyalty is greater than your sense!"

"The Light-"

"Has failed!" Antonidas wrenched free and pointed at Uther. "Your second highest clerist is here, and he doesn't know anything either! Dalaran are the only ones with a hope to handle an attack like this now!"

"Not an attack," I said as much to them as to myself. I felt around for a grip and hauled myself up by Emerentius' scales. The next words tumbled out before comprehension caught up. "They're birthing pains."

The other three were the face of incomprehension.

"It's not an enemy," I explained, though understanding was just now slotting in for me too. "It's the last steam elemental, the ninth, he and-" I stopped just short of revealing Granodior's existence, even as I questioned if I should bother anymore.

"One of those steam creatures?!" Richard balked. "It's doing that? How? They're minuscule! They can barely put out kindling on their own, how is it doing – it just tried to kill you!"

"He didn't," I realized in astonishment. "He's trying to reincarnate!"

I dashed out into the open and stared at the great sphere of nothing slowly expanding to draw in the world. My shredded clothes flapped fiercely as the wind tried to suck me in, but I stood firm. The other eight spirits – seven, soup was of no use here – were all around me, aghast, dismayed, conflicted at what they let their sibling do in their ignorance, confused but ready to help me.

I couldn't think of a way they could. "Void metamorphosis," I muttered. The Dark Star, I knew this was familiar! "But why? That's the death stage of their lifecycle, not the birth – unless I'm wrong? Perhaps the process was flipped because he started it through suicide – no, not important. Uther, Richard, Emerentius!"

"Yes?" "Your order." "Speak."

"I want you to call on all the Light that you can and shoot it!"

"What?"

With a deep breath that hurt my lungs, I reached towards the origin of creation as far and deep as my spirit could go, and used all of it at once to call on the Light. All the strength I had, to my limit, then to the limit I could imagine my limit becoming. When I felt like I could pull no more, when it felt like I was trying to move a mountain on my own, when I was more a gate than a person, I held out my arms and unleashed everything in a great, blinding, continuous beam of radiant gold into the Void.

At first there was no effect. Then the expansion of destruction accelerated. There were shouts of protest and dismay, but I didn't relent. "We don't have time!" I yelled over the clangour. "Help me or stand aside!"

Emerentius took to the air. Richard dashed to the right. Uther dashed to the left. Antonidas stepped up beside me and pointedly, defiantly activated his transmission stone.

It didn't work. There was too much disruption to the Arcane so close. He'd have to flee and try from farther away. Abandon us.

"It's alright," I rasped, my every breath a monumental effort. "You have – good judgment – other loyalties – no hard feelings." Even if he chooses his own best judgment over mine. "Go."

He didn't go.

A second beam of Light joined mine from beyond the devouring darkness. Then a third. Then a fourth. The darkness was boxed in and assailed from all the four cardinal points. The more Light we fed it, the greater it grew. The greater it grew, the stronger the wind blew. The more time passed, the more the Void encroached outward until it was almost on top of us, a looming, large, perfectly spherical space filled with nothing while the wind pushed itself and us at it with the force of a hurricane.

The void gained colour. A swirling vortex of golden shimmers became visible through the dust at its core, waves and motes of light spinning like the corona of a star around it. It was more dark than bright. Potent, but failing. There was purpose within it, and want of life and will and determination. But its thoughts reached out past the yawning gap with something barely short of desperation because its form was unstable and unfinished. It was dying even as it struggled to Become.

I felt the dark star reach out to me, for help and insight and understanding. I gave them freely, but… I didn't have, didn't know what it needed. Neither did Richard. Or Uther. Not even Emerentius. At the back of my soul, Granodior was a roil of awed dismay and selfish hope and repudiation.

What is wrong with you?

"Wayland!" Antonidas called me through a spell to let us speak despite the roaring of the wind. "What is that?"

"… The greatest miracle you'll ever witness," I couldn't tear my eyes from the sight ahead and above me. What it told me... "It wants to talk to you, mind to mind, spirit to spirit."

"You think me mad?" Antonidas balked. "I feel nothing from it save hunger and despair!"

"It's not trying." I looked at the brilliant light whose dying end even all our Light couldn't stave off. "You have protection spells active, it will never disregard such statement of intent. What it's trying to become – it doesn't violate. Even when it's his last hope while dying before he even gets to be born. It doesn't know enough because I don't, we don't know the Arcane enough to pattern-mould a form that can last in the Order of this world. But you might, arcanist!"

"… I don't understand anything that is happening here," the mage released a heavy sigh. "But I'll trust you."

Antonidas dropped his mental protections.

The dark star's last sentiment was reverent gratitude.

Then it imploded.

The void winked out. The air finally filled the vacuum that nature abhorred. The roaring of the wind snapped and reversed with a mighty boom. The roiling dust cloud burst outwards, washing over us like a tide so thick it blotted out the light of both moons, which had finally peeked through the clouds again.

I cut off my Light and swayed, light-headed. Beyond my sight, I felt the other three beams stop as well. I pushed forward through the haze, driven by anxiousness and urgency that came out of nowhere. Not to Richard or Uther, though I could hear them coughing. I heard the flapping of dragon wings too, again and again. And more. They blew the dust away, letting me see where I stepped. Where I had almost fallen.

A hole in the ground. Not a crater because there had been no impact. A perfectly curved basin left behind by a sphere of annihilation that had eaten into the mesa until it couldn't grow anymore. The pit was almost thirty meters wide, as deep as I was tall, and round to the point of geometric perfection. Even where it continued upwards into the space where the rear-most half of my workshop had been.

Everything had been perfectly undone along the curve, except one corner and wall. Unmade. As I stared at where my life's work had been, a shingle fell down from the last bit of roof still intact.

I jumped down, digging a deep grove in the dust layer as I slid to the bottom, and hurried to the centre where – where…

The newborn Naaru descended from on high.

He was tiny, barely more than a Naaru's mark, two sky-blue crescents centred around a small disc of golden fractals no larger than my thumb.

"What… is it?" Richard's voice approached from somewhere I didn't turn to see. "The power – this feeling…"

I reached out. Up.

The baby Naaru ignored my hands and floated closer to settle on my brow.

My consciousness expanded to what I'd only ever attained during my deepest channelings. I felt strong. I was full of energy. I thought I might be able to extend my senses and awareness for miles, and I did. I knew, with certainty, that I could swing my hand right now and a groove would be dug through the ground at the foot of the mountain, from one end of the enclave to the other.

But the people down there were already spooked enough. They hadn't missed that something had happened up here, they were out and about, staring up at the sky, speaking in worried whispers. I sketched a message in the snow instead, that all was well.

The thought came, then, like a light flung back to the past from my future, that with us joined like this, even true construct creation and manipulation might finally come within our reach.

"S-"

Just when I was about to say his name, the baby Naaru separated from me, pulsed once with love and sadness and commitment to destined death, and plunged down to disappear into the earth.

What?

~ Desire, Eagerness, Vindication ~

What?

~ Vindication, Thirst, Want of Grace Once Spurned ~

My confusion was drowned under an unease more intense than anything else I'd ever felt in my life, then I saw the small light descend into a deep den far and down, only to vanish inside a waiting mouth of stone and rock.

~ Commitment Mine, Commitment His, Glory Eternal ~ (Thirst, Desire of Eons, Want)

The Light suddenly regained the clarity of the future as if a large part of the past interference was now gone.

~ Forbearance, Assurance, Commitment Ours ~ (Want, Want, Want Overwhelming)

I fell to my knees to dig into the earth with my hands. I reached down as far as my spirit could stretch, but I found nothing. I astrally projected and plunged down, right, left, anywhere. I only found darkness, and always wound up close to where I started – Granodior was corralling me?!

I returned to my body, held up by Richard who was talking to me. I didn't listen, I was struggling to understand what – how – why – when had this been set in motion? I'd seen no inkling-

It is not a vision, Odyn's words came back to me. Merely a personal expectation based on lived experience.

Odyn… he hadn't seen this either. Him. What could have interfered with even his sight? There were no fixed moments in time, there were moments when free will reached critical mass and literally none of the outcomes could be predicted, but this – I refused to just believe this was like that, and the Light rung loudly that I was right.

"It was you," I breathed. It wasn't Odyn. It was never Odyn. "The other observer effect – the reason my foresight was impaired, why I couldn't see anything–" The Light wasn't the only means of foresight, spirits were routinely consulted for predicting the future too, the main role of shamans was to cast auguries. "The reason for my blindness to the events of today, it was you!"

(Want, Want, Want) ~ Admission, Confidence, All Will be Well ~

"Granodior…" I – I was wrong. If just any other seer could muddle your foresight, then there could be either one seer or no foresight at all. But if it didn't just cancel out… then it was down to just the ones with enough ability and will to interfere against your purpose.

Just the ones who happened to look at the same events, by coincidence, by volume, or by knowing exactly what you were looking at the whole time. "You planned this, prepared this – all this time you interfered with my sight – manipulated him to – for months – nestled right next to my soul, you have the gall to claim mutuality you bastard!"

"My Lord!" Richard called me, shook me. "What's wrong? Who are you talking to?"

I clenched my fists in the earth and barely noticed his futile attempts to lift me up. To talk to me. Talking had failed, astral projection had failed, I couldn't press the issue when I didn't even know where Granodior was, I couldn't travel so far down without digging for weeks, attack… what? Alterac's whole landmass? I'd be lucky if I got a bunch of gems to glitter underground and then I'd be spent. Spirits were elusive, they weren't like elementals with a physical core-

I stopped.

"Ferdinand!" Richard called louder. "We can't help you if you don't tell us-ugh."

I called down Judgment on myself, on the part of Granodior that had been merged with me, and through it him.

Granodior flinched. I saw it. I felt it as my mountain shook. I swayed in pain, his and mine, but I judged again. Another earthquake, stronger. Again. Again, again, again- nothing?! No, there was one but not here. I caught barely a glimpse of a rockslide through Granodior's senses before he blocked his part of the bond entirely, the sheer gall to ignore me-

"Wayland!" Uther hauled up to my feet by both shoulders. "Snap out of it! Whatever you're doing, it's-"

I shoved him away as Judgment came down on me with more force than I'd ever called in my life. The tremors were stronger now, but they happened far to the south in the lowlands bordering Hillsbrad. I continued, again and again until the Light's judgment was one, pulsing, near continuous beam of wrath. But Granodior wasn't even paying attention anymore, every blast of Judgment merely scorched at the edges of his self. My output…

This was the reason why non-physical entities had to be corporealized before they could be vanquished. I was so limited compared to the vast scope of spiritual entities even now, I couldn't damage him any more than I could have healed him fistful by fistful when we first communed. Even if I could… all I'd achieve is more earthquakes, landslides and avalanches half-way across the country.

My anguish was being overtaken by white rage but there was no outlet, there was nothing I could do. If only I could find where he was – no, the physical form I saw was just a puppet. Just enough of his spirit invested as he needed to eat the little one, that complete and utter rot pustule.

I can't stop him, I realized bitterly as I shook with abject futility. I can't stop this, I can't save my – the-

… There was nothing I could do to him.

My chest barely ruptured under my claw strike, but my incorporeal hand speared straight through and ripped Granodior's spirit graft out through my back.

I barely kept from collapsing.

My Light faded.

The others cried out at the sight I made, a second, hazy outline disjointed from my flesh like a double vision, goring itself through.

Far and deep in the earth, the Spirit of Alterac was shocked out of his thirst.

"What are you doing!" One or another of the others cried. Or two. Or all three. Four. I was too dazed and my senses convulsed too harshly to tell.

They didn't have time to take me to task, to demand answers, to grab me.

Dust and earth kicked up so fast that the earthen hand had wrapped around me before they could react.

"What are you doing?!" The earth of Alterac spoke to me through human words for the first time, his voice flanging as the rest of his body formed onwards from his arm. "Stop!"

Uther's power word enveloped me in a shield, then Antonidas' severing spell cut the earth's hand at the wrist just in time for Richard to take his mace to my restraints.

"Go to hell."

My incorporeal arm ruptured my spirit outright on the way out.

The vaguely humanoid earth vessel drifted back like a landslide. It ignored the follow-up maneuvers and spells to stare at me in incomprehension, all the way until the three men paused in confusion at the lack of hostility.

"Alterac," I gasped in breathless pain, holding the diaphanous lump in my bare fist. It was transparent, but quickly turning dark. Effusions dripped between my fingers like bloody sand. "The land – of wicked – of cowards." I began to laugh. "How fitting that the spirit of the land itself should be every bit as craven! Duplicitous!"

"Our Pact-"

"Is worthless!"

My head went light. I swayed. I fell to the side-

Richard caught me, supported me, He held me upright even as he glared at the spirit of his own country. Farther away, now, Antonidas and Uther flanked the creature, wary. All around us, the spirits of wind and water and flame whirled tensely. Farther off, up outside the pit, the dragon stood and watched. Imbued his own will into the ground. Waited.

"The worst part – is that – you could've asked." I panted, regaining my balance through sheer fury. "Just now – the little ones – were practice for the pain. All these months I've been cultivating my power, my spirit, all leading up to taking your pain on myself when I gave you what you've always wanted. What your entire kind has always wanted. I was waiting. I didn't want to overstep, I was waiting for you to ask, that's all it would've taken. We'd have discovered how to Lightforge spirits together. Instead you'd rather eat a baby!"

I tossed the spirit core away in disgust. It fell into the earth and out of sight.

The Spirit of Alterac stared at me in incomprehension. " … … I do not understand you."

"You are a coward," I ground through clenched teeth as my senses returned. "To your last whimper." My strength rose back within me, letting me stand unaided again. "You'd rather act behind the back of your only friend, to gaslight an infant that doesn't know anything. And now that he does know something, he takes responsibility for his past actions, unlike you! Your conviction isn't stalwart, your gratitude is the opposite of devout, and our pact didn't endure half a year!"

"You speak of responsibility?" The earth rumbled. "When you fail to comprehend the future boons?"

"He has more worth and potential than you ever will!"

The truth in those words resonated so strongly in the world that even the spirit of the land could not deny them.

"I should have wondered about it before, damn me." I cursed myself bleakly. "How does a lone dragon, even a black one, incapacitate an entity as vast as you? On his own? When he was so young? Only if you never fought back, never let yourself acknowledge danger, never confronted him. Like you never let me acknowledge you to others, or reveal your existence at all. A creature that eschews hardship to the point of self-destruction, someone like you who'd rather eat a baby than endure a fraction of the pain that your nemesis did, to get the one thing your kind has always longed for most. Why would I ever suffer my fate to be entwined with one like that?"

I stopped to catch my breath. Waited for an answer. Something, anything, everything, this… why did it come to this? Or could I truly claim not to know?

"… … You would impose your own mores on me? On us?"

I almost saw red. "Don't invoke morality when you're the only form of elemental life not beholden to cannibalism!"

I waited for an answer. A reply. Any word at all. None came.

As always, the one who said 'you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs' was the one person not willing to be the egg that gets cracked.

Granodior's eyes lost their light, the risen earth lost form, and he was there no more.

"A coward," I sneered. "To your last whimper."

The last stones and dust from the large earth body crumbled and fell still. Slowly, so did the dust. The silence of the night finally returned. The others watched me, wary, worried and full of questions.

They didn't get their answers this time either. The earth began to vibrate, strongly, quickly, faster and faster and then it suddenly burst like a geyser in front of me, leaving behind a tall, polished, green staff made of thorium. It was capped with an orrery as big as my fist, and all of it was studded with white topaz gems from top to heel.

I stared at the object in front of me. I stared at the object that I had asked Granodior to make for me. I stared at what he had insisted was a gift but was now being used as a peace offering. A bribe.

I felt just about ready to explode with rage.

"EMERENTIUS!"

Everyone flinched. Even the earth.

The dragon took to the air and landed on my other side.

"We're leaving."

"My Lord-" "Wayland, you can't just-" "You owe us an explanation-"

"NOW!"

"-. .-"


Emerentius flew us north. With speed and purpose. The thought vaguely came to me that maybe deceit and treachery hadn't had their full of me tonight, but I refused to let Granodior's treachery taint all my other friendships. I just leaned forward on the dragon's neck and let my fury smoulder the whole way.

Sometime later, we crossed over to Lordaeron and further in. There were some lights in the distance, and watchtower beacons. They were faint but many enough to tell me it was a city. I didn't ask, and then Emerentius turned eastward for another stretch.

When he landed, it was amidst trees atop some rather sheer hills surrounding a sizable body of water. Despite myself, I tried to piece together my location. Was this Darrowmere Lake?

Emerentius lowered a wing for me to glide down.

My knees were so weak when I dismounted that I almost couldn't walk. I sat on the nearest rock I could find and put my head in my hands. The sound and shimmer of transformation came from where the dragons stayed, but I didn't look.

My arms, my legs, my whole body shook with… I didn't even know. Fury wasn't strong enough, anxiety wasn't strong enough, terror wasn't it, horror closer but still not strong enough even then, not when – not when I'd…

If I, even with all my foresight, if I could be used with such impunity – so callously –

"I didn't see it coming," I whispered, my black rage finally giving some way to shame. "I didn't see it coming at all.

"That's why it is betrayal."

I laughed bitterly at the dragon's words. I looked up when I heard human footsteps. I was surprised to see what he held. My bandoleer.

The bandoleer with the bags of holding that I'd commissioned from Madam Tayer some time ago. I thought that had been destroyed with the rest of my things.

"The range of destruction wasn't so great at the onset," he explained. "I was able to save some items."

He walked away to give me my space.

Looking through my bags, I found practically all my essentials there. My rations, my herbalism and alchemy kits, my toolkit, my fingerless gloves, my weapons, my guns, potions, the items I'd painstakingly stacked up on for today, the deed to the mountain. The case of magic eater fish was there too, the ones Antonidas had accumulated far too many of while still on his doomed quest to find the fish I actually wanted.

I also found an unfamiliar package. On taking it out, I found it to be a bundle of clothing. There was a card attached. It was a Winterveil gift that Madam Tayer had sent me through Orsur, as a surprise. I'd created a new tradition, just like that.

It was a gift I hadn't received yet. Emerentius must have found it, or been given it to pass on when everyone was evacuated.

I looked down at myself. My clothes were a mess of scraps and loose threads. I called on the Light for them to mend, but too much of them was gone. I supposed it was just as well. Just because my biggest ally betrayed me didn't mean I was going to drop everything else going on in my life.

Yesterday's shirt and slacks weren't the attire most appropriate for insurrection.

I put on the clothes. They adjusted themselves to fit me, the inherent self-realized enchantment that was testament to their maker's skill. One of several. There was a jerkin too, and pauldrons and bracers to go with it. Boots too, done in the same. Someone else had contributed these, Master Keyton? He was a smith though, not a leatherworker. An associate? New guild member?

The clothes were quite luxurious. And distinctive.

This is the image I project to people.

I looked to where the dragon was. Emerentius was still in human form, standing straight with his back to me. He had a hand out, palm-down, and his eyes were aimed intensely at the ground.

I felt the earth begin to vibrate, and then vibrate harder, outright shaking not much different from the end to the events that had just passed. The soil burst allowing for the rise of a familiar sight, an identical sight to the one that had finally sent me into a rage back home.

A thorium staff as tall as I was, capped with an orrery as big as my fist, and all of it studded with white topaz gems from top to heel.

That's right, the mithril deposits near Andorhal did have some thorium mixed in.

"My abilities may not stretch to the same scale," Emerentius told me as he approached to offer his creation. "But I have skill enough to substitute for him in this, at least."

I hesitated, but accepted the offering. "Thank you."

"I would say you are welcome, if this did not come at the price of you learning in such a painful way, how my forebears won the War of Shaping despite the gap in scope."

"What's that?"

"Elementals are imbeciles."

Despite everything, I couldn't help but bark a laugh.

One more time, I was seized with the impulse to drop everything else and hunt Granodior down no matter what it took.

But I had no way to find him, and no resources to call to help me, at least not in a time window worth a damn. Dalaran, maybe? Even if I did, though, what then? Wage war on a whole country's landmass? Could he be corporealized? I had his name, assuming it was the full and real one and he didn't lie about that too.

But if Ragnaros could choose to be summoned without the ritualists meaning to, without them even knowing what they were calling, who's to say an entity like that couldn't just refuse? And what if he holds the people on the surface hostage? Did I want to drive him to that point? Could I afford to? Would he use the method of matter recomposition I showed him?

Even if he didn't go that far, collateral damage might be unavoidable regardless. Every time I harmed him, an earthquake happened. Do enough harm and he would stop controlling where they hit. Might be unable to.

The world doesn't stop turning on anyone's whim, let alone mine.

I collected myself. I had a job to do, and a rapidly shrinking time window for it. I was weary, in pain and depressed, my spirit was literally gouged through and bleeding. The Holy Light could heal the flesh and bolster the mind, but the spirit was what was used to move it to begin with. Healing a wound like this, the seat of the soul itself, it wasn't as simple as just casting Holy Light at the problem over and over. It had to heal naturally. Over time.

But there were cures for everything if you were willing to pay the price. Time cured all ills, but it didn't need to be of the objective sort. Just a meaningful enough subjective experience. Engagement.

If ageing could be slowed, then it could also be accelerated.

I called on the Light to bear me through what would be, what would become of me if I sat atop a mountain and just meditated for the next three years.

It wasn't an instantaneous process, but it also didn't take more than an hour.

My spirit healed over. It was less than before, it seemed that this method allowed healing but at your own expense, and certainly not self-transcendence. Or the technique wasn't complete.

But I was still strong enough for what I needed, and would be able to rebuild and grow again from here on too. That would have to be enough.

I rose to my feet, feeling like I could face the world once more. I was older, but jumping from the age of fifteen to eighteen wasn't that big a sacrifice. I was taller too, even as I felt I still had more to go. At this rate I'd surpass the tallest Kul Tiran in short order. Maybe I'd keep growing until I grew as big as the Vrykul of old, the genetics were all there.

Fortunately, my practice and preparations for today's operation meant I had a good enough grasp of size altering magic, to bring myself back to a height that could still fit through doors.

I was ready, but didn't feel it.

I looked at Darrowmere lake.

It belatedly occurred to me that being here did not make sense. "How… did we get here so fast?" No dragons flew this fast, how –?

"I am able to use the Leap of Faith spell as a continuous effect. The tunnel vision and inertia makes it dangerous enough to be useless day to day, certainly suicide in battle, but for long straight lines with no obstacles, I've found virtually unlimited acceleration to be most convenient."

'Convenient' says the dragon about… probably the greatest breakthrough in transportation this world had seen in ten thousand years, actually. "That's amazing."

"Thank you."

I tossed a rock in the lake. I tossed another one. I chose a flatter one next and sent it flat against the surface. It skipped seven times.

I stretched. I tested my range of movement and deemed it good. I stroked my new beard and took a few minutes to trim it into something passable. Then I endured a few additional minutes of Emerentius quietly disdaining my substandard skills while undoing my work and putting in his own, because as an assassin he was well versed in all methods of grooming and disguise.

"Let's go."

"As you say."

Once more, I rose into the sky on the back of a dragon.

"… Do you think it will work?" Emerentius asked as he aligned on the path back to Alterac. "What the spirit means to do?"

"No." That was the most painful and damning thing about all of it. "It won't."

Elementals could self-actualize by devouring the cores of their fellows all they liked, but the Light didn't work that way.

"So it is all for nothing?"

"I don't know." The confession tasted like ash in my mouth. "The little one didn't think so."

Ever since I took up my purpose in this world, I'd done by best to choose the actions that made for the freest choices. I never discounted the possibility that I'd regret it later, but I never imagined that I'd have to stand aside and respect the choice of a newborn infant to offer himself up as food.

"Why did he not renege?" Emerentius asked me when we crossed the border again, sometime later. "The pact was in bad faith."

"He must think his sacrifice will be worth it," I said bleakly. "He might even have seen it in a vision of the future. He's a being literally made of the Living Eternal Fire, I can't guess what kind of insight and foresight he has now. Even if he doesn't, he'd have made the same choice anyway. This is just the sort of thing the Naaru do."

"Good has unfathomed depths of its own, it seems," Emerentius mused as he flapped his wings, taking us higher. "I am not sure I appreciate them, but I suppose it's not such a bad thing, for good to do the right thing regardless of how anyone else feels about it."

If it is the right thing, I couldn't help but doubt.

"It will not be painless, will it?" Emerentius wondered. "Or quick."

"No." Days, weeks, months, years, how long before he's fully digested? And he'll be alive and in pain for all of it. Alive so he can give and keep on giving all the Light he can the whole time. "It won't be painless. Or quick."

We reached Alterac City just as dawn was breaking.

Emerentius drifted into a slow, circular glide far above the capital, where no one could spot us. "Has the plan changed?"

"No." I took a deviate fish out of my pack and checked with my second sight that it was still the right arcane pattern. "I'll rely on you for passage through the mountain, as discussed."

I ate the fish and promptly shrank down to half size. I started taking out vials of pygmy oil and drank those next. Each one shrunk me down to size even further, and I didn't stop until I felt the other magic approach critical charge. While becoming a pygmy would make for some fair schadenfreude, this wasn't what I'd come out here to do.

I was so small now that the mouth of the vial took up half my face, but I wasn't done.

I cast a forcefield to protect me from the force of the air, pulled out the baby spices, sprinkled them all over me and abruptly shrunk down to a tenth of the already small size I had become.

The three magics combined brought me down to the size of a mouse. With a bit of Revelation and tweaking, I was able to further improve the efficiency of all three effects until I was as small as a fly.

Conveniently, the magic affected everything within my aura in a continuous effect, including my equipment and the air.

My weight was still the same, and my density was several orders greater than before, but those were a feature, not a fault.

Also, I could levitate.

"Young ones," I called to the elementals that I'd helped transcend. They'd stuck by me, followed me all the way here despite my condemnation of their basest nature. Didn't abandon me even after I laughed when Emerentius insulted their whole race. "Will you help me today?"

~ Concern, Determination, Agreement ~

I jumped off the dragon.

Phaseshift caught me and carried me down in a funnel of wind. The others felt left out, so they linked together in an invisible current to bear me hence, from up amidst the clouds all the way down to earth like on a slide.

I hit the solidly packed snow at a sprint, unnoticed by anyone because of my small size in the lingering darkness. I glided forward, and back and round and forward again. With each skid I formed runes and patterns on the cobbles and earth under the snow. They were imbued with my spirit and actively channeled the Light, but went unseen beneath the white cover, save for the slightest glimmers in the occasional patch of thaw.

With the spirits preventing noise from traveling more than one foot away, I recited the first ten stanzas of the Havamal as I went, projecting it strong and wide through the Arcane. Over and over again each time I reached the end. The same words formed in runes from the lines I left behind with every step and slide. The stanzas were interspaced with passages enunciating the function and purpose of the spell, and those to come.

I left a trail of Lightforged runes behind me in a perfect circle around Alterac Castle, right outside the walls of the keep. Up and down streets, under and through homes when they were in the way.

When an obstacle blocked my path, I moved it. When a building or wall was in my way, I jumped over it, or inside through cracks in windows and keyholes. There I'd inscribe the next segment of the ritual on the underside of the floor. When I had to hide from people, I just stopped in a mousehole or a shadowed space to etch my ritual circle from a distance. Precision got easier and easier every time.

The smaller one's body was, the greater the accuracy and better attention for detail. More of the spirit was free to use and apply creatively as well, it turned out.

Eventually, I reached a dead end in the form of the mountain. Alterac Keep was partially dug out of a peak, through which ran a number of supply and escape passages. It was where the castle got its independent water supply as well.

Asking Emerentius to use his earth magic to dig a fresh tunnel was the most obvious option, but an unnecessary one. It would have made it much more likely for us to be discovered as well, security and surveillance were quite tight for the occasion.

But he was Fahrad, the Black Blade, once the second in command of the Ravenholdt Assassin's Order. He knew where and how to sneak without arousing suspicion. More importantly, he and his former master knew where the tunnels and secret rooms in the mountain were. He only needed to open slits no thicker than a trencher through the rock, from one passage to the next until I was all the way through to the other side.

With his sense of smell, tremor sense and my second sight bolstered by the elemental spirits aiding us, nobody saw us.

There were wards and spells here and there, but not many so far away from the castle proper, and none that couldn't be circumvented. I had quite purposely gone wide for this first stage.

"The First of the Nine is Courage," I intoned when the first circuit was complete. The entire circle glimmered as it became anchored in place, ready to be cast later.

Then I went on to walk the other eight.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance.

The bell tolled noon just as I completed the last of the nine rounds. The steadily brighter glow from the ritual circle could no longer be missed by even the most casual observer. Already there were murmurs and pointed fingers, running children and guardsmen, soldiers gathering in rows up on the walls.

That was fine. Advance warning was the whole point. It meant that the people inside had all the incentive they needed to separate back into their factions, instead of being all lumped together for the second stage.

And third.

I returned to full size at the outer end of the Central Square

I approached the castle gates at a steady walk. The Light shone out of me, casting my face and hands in a golden sheen. The glow seeped through my new clothes as well, and I had no illusions about what kind of sight I made.

A long form-fitting coat split all the way at the front, to let me stride purposely forward. Beneath were matching trousers and a dress shirt and vest. Around my neck was a long scarf, its long end fluttering behind me in the breeze. All were made of a double-layered runecloth so strong even I couldn't tear it lightly. All were so white you couldn't tell them apart from the cleanest snow, except for their hems and collar made of brocade woven in cloth of gold.

The armor was a sight to behold too, made of leather from some manner of beast, etched in flourishing patterns and dyed wholesale in burnished gold. The back of my leather vest was etched in a single mystifying pattern, like plant life leaning away to make way for a tree, long leaves sprouting around a central spire of knots and vaulted arches. The design culminated in a flower made up of seven Arathi knots, between my shoulder blades.

No one barred my path. Not even the patrolmen.

My wake was filled with people uttering whispers and prayers.

The castle gates closed by the time I got there, but that was fine because I could levitate. The spirits bore me aloft on wings of wind as I simply jumped over the gate into the inner yard.

Arrows and crossbow bolts pinged off my invisible forcefield, but I ignored them and moved on.

I only stopped when the side entrances to the barracks slammed open and disgorged an entire company of soldiers. They came together to bar may path, one hundred men-at-arms in five rows of twenty, full armor and pikes aimed. A perfect hedgehog formation between me and the doors to the great hall.

Just as the captain was about to address me, I pointed up.

A dragon's roar shook the air as Emerentius came down from the sky. At the same time, I activated the ritual and caused a golden forcefield to spring to life. The globe encased the entire castle in a sphere of Light, both above and underground. The dragon landed on the top of the golden shell just as it closed. He glowed too, then, and so the burden of keeping the ritual powered was no longer mine.

Let's go, everyone.

Windows frosted over and hinges froze stiff as Foamgust and Brumean went to work. Snarldraft and Windflurry kicked up a gale so strong that the packed snow flew up like a blizzard. When that wasn't enough, Phaseshift began to assault the ground with alternating warm and cold extremes, until the older snow, earth and frozen mud broke down to dust and lifted up into the air.

Within fifteen seconds, the entire courtyard had been overtaken by a dust storm. Eyes stung, throats clogged, lungs coughed. It was impossible to see more than a meter in front of you, even if you could somehow force your eyes to stay open in all that.

None of it touched me as I turned to the right and my next destination. Phaseshift followed me, his job done. I bid Arrestor and Terminal to spread through the entire dome, in and out of the keep both so they could actively scan for castings to interfere with. As true spiritual entities again, they were uniquely suited to do that. Mana was a measurement unit, not a resource. The one and only means anyone ever used for unassisted mystical acts was the spirit.

My minions wouldn't be nearly as good as an anti-magic field, they'd need to choose who to target and would only be able to interfere with one person each at a time. But I didn't need them to disrupt all magic, not even most magic. I didn't need them to do it indefinitely either.

Just teleportation, for however long it took me to complete stages two and three. Just any attempts and seeking outside reinforcement.

And escape.

When I reached the entrance to the dungeon, it was locked, so I shrunk mid-leap to pass through the keyhole and returned to my regular size on the inside.

I strode up and down cell blocks, leaving behind more golden glowing runes with every step, along the floor.

Some guards tried to bar my path, so I smote them. A few backed away with heads bowed in fear. A few more threw their weapons to the floor and offered their service. These I accepted after looking into their eyes, then directed to reclaim their arms and disarm the other guards instead.

I soulgazed every prisoner as I passed by as well, the experience nothing compared to Odyn or Emerentius. Some were there rightly so I left them be. Some were there unjustly, so I unlocked their cells and told to wait until I send word that it's safe. Some were there for true crimes, but repented and were willing to make a try at a more honorable life. These I also freed, but made sure were all denied weapons and gathered in a separate room from the rest just in case.

I only stopped twice.

The first was when I found Narett. The sight of my alchemy teacher on a torture rack stopped me in my tracks. The look on his face when recognizing me was only less soul-striking than him being unable to talk. When he opened his mouth and showed me that they'd cut off his tongue, I had to clench my fists and remind myself that the nine noble virtues included discipline.

I healed him. Regrew his tongue and his pulled nails. I glared at his right arm that ended at the wrist. Regrowing a small muscle was one thing, but lost limbs needed time I didn't have, or biomass he didn't have. How long had they been starving him? When had they snatched him up?

"They fed it to the dogs." Narett coughed harshly as black phlegm clogged his lungs. "Forget it, I'll be fine once I get to my philosopher's stone, just get me out of here."

"Wait with the others until I'm done. You'll know when."

He didn't wait. He salvaged some clothes and boots off one of the guards I'd knocked out, picked up a mace and knife, and followed in my footsteps.

When I stopped the second time, it was to the sight of my farmhand. Howard. Kairozdormu, the bronze dragon of time. Who'd tilled our fields, collected chicken eggs, and grown our turnips with the sort of enthusiasm I still couldn't imagine being totally faked.

He was huddled in the corner of a dark, dank, windowless cell. He was covered in scars, had only one eye, and lacked his right foot and entire left arm. When I pulled the tiny door window open and looked inside, he didn't acknowledge the sound. When I undid the lock and opened the door, he blinked slowly in surprise and met my eyes with a grim, smirking grimace.

I soulgazed him without any warning, without any restraint or deliberation. I'd already given him the benefit of the doubt, and like Granodior he'd wasted it. I was sure there had to be people, not just gods who could resist my Soulgaze, who could turn it against its purpose even, but he didn't even try.

I saw with crystal clarity the future that could have been, the future that Kairozdormu had planned for me. Becoming king, Alterac rising in strength around me, industry, diplomacy, a new order for the entire continent in the east. It wasn't even a bad idea. I could do an incredible job at kingdom building.

I wasn't sure what to do with my other realization, that everyone I'd met who could see the future was so much better at it than me.

"It can still come to pass," Kairozdormu rasped as the vision ended, not caring about Narett or anything else outside the two of us. "Give the word and I will make it happen."

"Now you need my permission?" I began healing his injuries as best I could, but his missing limbs were even closer to hopeless than Narett's. "Why would you bother? What makes this so important that you would let them do this to you?"

Kairozdormu was a giant time dragon, he could have escaped at any time, could have destroyed the entire castle if he wanted. His entire goal was to divert the flow of events into a new direction, a timeline he considered better than the one Nozdormu stewarded. I couldn't imagine why he would let anyone do this to him.

"Nozdormu told me I have to convince you to convince him." The dragon-man hissed in pain as his rib snapped into proper place. "If this doesn't prove my commitment and beliefs, nothing will."

"See, this is why lizard brains are nature's dead end. This isn't you assuming responsibility, it's emotional blackmail."

"If you are only going to-"

"You have to do one simple thing before I say yes or no," I interrupted him with a last burst of healing light.

"What's that?"

"Try to leave the castle."

I left him without another word. Only shook my head when Narett tried to ask questions. My feet took me from the dungeon to the other chambers on this level. The well room, the wine storage, cold storage, the bunker, the escape passages in case of a siege, now blocked by the golden Light like the rest. I traced a runed glowing path from one room to the next along an inward spiral underlying the entire castle until I stood in the middle of the undercroft.

The prisoners had deployed through the entire basement of the keep while I worked, trying up guards, securing supplies and weapons, barring doors against the reinforcements trying to come down while brainstorming solutions. The realm's injustice was turned to my benefit here, now. The prisoners included some of the most competent and stalwart of all walks of life.

Labourers with grit, a medicine woman accused of being a demon lover by a highborn suitor she'd spurned, a former lawman with the most discerning eye but too many scruples, former soldiers, former officers with the know-how and discipline to get everyone organised.

It was a stark contrast to the chaos that continued up above. The heavy resistance and arcane counterattack I'd been on guard for failed to materialize. I sensed with sight beyond sight that a task force with at least three mages was almost finished setting up outside, but that was dreadful response time. I sensed a second one too, through the ceiling almost right above where I was. Coincidence?

Either way, they were too late.

The muffled thunk of a walking stick heralded the return of Kairozdormu. He stared blankly at me but didn't speak. I didn't either. We both knew why he'd failed to pass outside the shield. I'd included an element of Revelation just so everyone who tried to cross it would know why they failed.

Instead, I sat down. Poured the Light into the ritual script, until every room in the Alterac Keep undercellar glowed like sunlight. I poured more of myself until this and the outer dome became a single, synchronized whole.

Then I called Judgment down on the entire castle.

The force with which the Light smote me almost made me lose my life on the spot.

Judgment… was a double-edged sword. Empasis on sword. To invoke it, to commit to balancing the scales between you and your target… it meant that you committed to infringing on the privacy and sanctity of another's being. It was a direct, intimate, hostile act and turnabout all in one.

To enact it meant that you committed to violence. You committed to being judged in turn for everything ill you did the other person, including being wrong to call down Judgment in the first place. It was a mighty task just to unleash it on a single target. You needed a dedicated ritual circle to do more. Or less.

If I'd done this back when the king summoned me to court, I would have died right there.

There are still some good people, I thought with relief. Even here.

Awareness returned slowly. Achingly. My sight was a torn canvas of moving spots. My breath burned going out. And in. My head pounded. My skin was drenched in sweat. Vaguely, I felt arms around me. Narett, trying his weak best to support my body as it spasmed and seized. Even so much older than most here, he… was the closest to innocent.

More slowly than ever, with more pain than ever, with an effort of will so fragile it was a wonder I could do anything at all, I managed to heal myself one more time.

My flesh mended. My head still spun, but my sight cleared. My body seized one more time and slumped bonelessly.

But my spirit didn't share that relief. It was a torn and tattered mess of waves, ripples and diaphanous webs quickly breaking apart.

It – still wasn't as much pain as Emerentius went through. And, at the end of the day…

This was always part of the plan too.

Slowly, painstakingly, agonizingly, I managed to spread my spirit far and wide. Managed to get the elementals to spread it far and wide for me, even as they grew frightened and distressed on my behalf. Farther and farther they took me, until I permeated the entire castle and beyond. Until I was present in every inch of space inside the dome, however faint.

I breathed deep, of prison stench and fear and human waste and dead vermin. Now that the time had finally come, I thought about what I had been preparing to do all these months.

I found that I had no reservations left at all, to deal with purely human evil.

"Beyond the flow of time – and thought of the gods – there springs eternal and boundless the Light that shows the Truth."

Here, now… with everyone fallen and defenceless, at their most vulnerable… with their spirits wounded, their characters laid bare by Judgment indiscriminate, their souls at their most open… I infused every fragment of myself with the Light, with the clearest expression of my most refined method of Revelation, and then…

I gave all I could of myself as a gift.

"May this sacrifice – be my blessing. Let all who abide here – share equally in it. Let all of you on this day – and as many days as the Light shines in you – see as I do."

With a relief so sharp it made me feel like I'd just been born anew a third time, all but the core-most part of me broke apart in a myriad pieces. So many pieces that not a single person within the Dome was passed over. Not even the dragons.

There were four dragons in Alterac Castle.

I blinked slowly. I did my best to hold myself upright with shaking arms so Narett didn't have to anymore. I did my best to breathe. I felt weaker than I ever did, less than I was even before the Light and my memories came back to me. But… The pain was much less, barely a burden.

And the Light was still with me.

In the end, I had no reservations about dealing with inhuman evil either.

No one was getting in. No one who possessed fewer than three of the nine noble virtues was getting out. Not so long as Emerentius maintained the ritual from outside.

And inside this Dome of Penitence, powered by my spirit, fuelled by the Light's grace and driven by my lingering will to happen without fail, under the watchful gaze of Valkyries flying on wings unseen… The Royal Court and its foreign guests, the most numerous assembly ever gathered in one place by King Aiden Perenolde of Alterac Kingdom, descended into an orgy violence and blood as everyone began to soulgaze everyone.

I reached into my bag, I pulled out a magic eater fish, and I ate it. In part to see if I had enough left in me to see this through to the end. See if I still had discernment, power and self-control enough to pre-empt, suppress and dispel the wild magic in it.

I did.

I waited a bit more, to see if my stomach turned at what I had just done.

It did not.

For all that there wasn't any foresight involved, Odyn had been completely right.

I was, quite thoroughly indeed, utterly livid.



Read ahead on on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with an advance chapter on Understanding Does Not Presage Peace. I'll also be discontinuing Reset the Universe (since I made too many mistakes with it) so I'll post the last chapter I have for that and resume 'Everything Everywhere One Thing at a Time' in its place this month too.
 
The Shifting Flow of Fortune
A/N: The plot hits with a girl. Repeatedly.

Also, demon scab.

Ferdinand-the-Prophet-2.png

Chapter 18 – The Shifting Flow of Fortune

"-. The False Lady .-"​


She had been seduced.

Taking the girl's face had been a last-minute whim. She'd been using a throwaway face before that, convinced that the tall tales about a 'purified' traitor in the black dragonflight were just that – tall tales. In other words, in need of verification but almost certainly untrue, and thus guaranteed to not demand any sort of long-term commitment. For all that humans were the mortal race that posed the greatest threat to dragonkind, their rumors tended to be the opposite of accurate.

Then she saw the dragon in question by mere happenstance, flying over the border while she was masquerading as a Stromgarde army camp follower, and knew she had to look into this herself.

Infiltrating Alterac conventionally would have been too much tedium for too much risk. The Ravenholdt assassins were a troublesome adversary, she knew this even before she learned that the traitor black dragon had been in their ranks. Moreover, going in as an unassuming outsider was too much risk for too little reward, she was unlikely to gain any more information than she had already gleaned, never mind direct access to this 'Emerentius.' Worse, if she did get access, it would likely involve at least a show of allegiance to this 'Prophet,' even if just to appease his pet Duke.

Since open sedition was needlessly troublesome to navigate, it made more sense to join the other, stronger side. Conflict was inevitable either way.

Stealing the identity of a foreign noble was therefore the best option, but not one done lightly. Adopting a high-profile identity would tie up a lot of her time. If she did it as a short-term scheme only to dispose of the identity after a week or month, it would be an unacceptable waste of assets and leverage. May even invite investigation and suspicion, perhaps even discovery of her true nature in the worst-case scenario.

Compounding matters, her opportunity window to insinuate herself into Alterac's court was very brief. She didn't have the time to fully charm, enthral or otherwise divert suspicion about inconsistencies in 'Ysolde Prestor's' behaviour. Or her father's, a Lordaeron noble who'd initially refused to entertain the Perenolde suit, and even had someone already in mind from down in Stormwind.

Many times had she already wondered if the price was truly worth it, but she dared not rouse her sire from his millennia-old torpor for mere rumors.

Then the young King of Alterac neatly derailed her entire mission by being so infuriating as to drive her to absolute distraction.

His mind was too sharp for casual enchantment, he didn't eat food that wasn't tasted and tested in front of him, magically and alchemically. He didn't drink from bottles he didn't witness being thoroughly cleaned before being opened and tested in front of him the same way. He didn't clasp arms with anyone who hadn't removed their cloak, he didn't shake hands without gloves on, he didn't kiss any cheek that had any sort of makeup on.

He didn't even marry her normally. Instead, Aiden Perenolde held a sudden, unannounced ceremony that very morning, with just the priest, parents and witnesses.

It was so unexpected that she'd almost been caught missing from her room! She'd meant to finally access the dungeon where the rumored bronze dragon was kept, while everyone else was too asleep and drunk to catch her in the act. She barely made it back to her chambers in time, and she had no time at all to find an opening to work her 'charms' on her 'father' who'd been getting cold feet.

Even that didn't matter because the young king got his way all by himself, somehow. She didn't know how, she hadn't been allowed in the room for it, it was galling.

Aiden Perenolde then had the insolence to 'reassure' her that it was all to 'spare' her the 'usual' courtship troubles. Which was to say, the local games of gossip, knives and poison that 'might be too much for a gentle lady from outside the country'. It wasn't just the women scorned she had to worry about either, he told her with such genuineness that even she believed him for a moment, it was enough to make her want to scream.

The man was demanding and gracious, thoughtful and condescending, mildly mannered but also refusing to take no for an answer, perfectly able to have his way even against her much older 'father,' who should have been beyond coercion because he was the subject of a different king…

By the time the priest pronounced them man and wife, her whole body was aflame with wanton devilment. If Aiden Perenolde wasn't already a black dragon, she was going to find a way to turn him into one because this? All this?

This was unacceptable.

She had been seduced and she didn't hate it, it could not be borne!

Even now, finally engaged in the lovemaking that the young king had refused her every time before – even when she snuck into his bedchambers – he turned away all her advances and only made a move when he was good and ready.

That, as it happened, was after they'd bathed together. Soaked in the hot soapy water long enough that nearly every contact drug she'd brought out for the occasion had long since washed away. It was outrageous, infuriating, the insolent man took pleasure in every discomfort he inflicted on her, it made her face burn and her blood boil with every one of her failures until she was driven to complete distraction.

But.

But. Finally.

Finally, she'd wo-

"Lover's Frenzy, I assume?" the young king said in her ear, one hand locked on her breast and the other between her legs.

She didn't freeze at first, but only because she was mid-whimper and didn't realize what he'd said until after he'd locked his grip on her, clenched his fingers, ran his thumb repeatedly over- over- through- aah!

"Fast-acting aphrodisiac, absorbed through flesh but not skin, does not dissolve in water, an able choice I admit, but I assure you it's unnecessary. Also, I am not ignorant to the other effect of the concoction, which renders the user susceptible to suggestion after the act. That you'd apply it to yourself means you're protected from the same. Meaning you've either a secret talent for poisons, a secret mastery of alchemy, or you aren't human. What shall I look for first, milady? Pointed ears beneath your silken hair, or scales beneath this velvet skin?"

He knew?! He – no! "Mnnn~ah!" She wrapped her arms around his neck and ground against him with a moan, just before she might have hesitated too long. "You can – look under my – skin – all you – like – husband!"

She burned inside and out, at losing again, at how low she'd brought herself, at how she hadn't entirely pretended just now. It was worth it, she told herself. It had ruined his certainty about what he'd just called her out on. He wasn't so sure anymore about what he'd just seen through. He'd seen through her.

Her new husband turned rougher, drawing ever more wanton sounds out of her for the rest of their foreplay, then he ruthlessly withdrew the moment he'd scrubber her womanhood clean of the drug. He exited the bath and walked out of the room. Left her there. He – he just left her there! He left her there, alone, to stew in – without – pent up like some lubricious ape – she – he – that lowly wretch!

She took as torturously long as she could to get herself presentable, because if he was going to leave her unsatisfied and make her wait on top of it, she'd return the favour ten times over.

She finally went looking for him after no one came for her for over an hour, stewing on the inside from yet one more defeat.

She found Aiden in his private study – this was the first time she was allowed in – just as he was sending off a servant to arrange a meeting with Archibald Greymane about Isiden's fostering – he was giving his worthless nephew more thought than he was giving her!

Before she could say anything, a guard came running in, dashed past her and whispered something in the king's ear… which she didn't hear with her superior senses because of a ward on the desk, damn that man!

Whatever the message was, it made Aiden turn stiff and cold.

Ten minutes later, she was locked with her 'father' and their retinue inside a guarded suite 'for her safety,' while her new husband went to deal with whatever it was. She was denied details, unlike her 'father' who also withheld her the details because 'gentle ladies needn't worry about such things,' the audacity!

More than ever before, she regretted her impulsive decision to kill the Prestor girl and take her face. If she'd known this would happen, she'd have come as someone more inclined to bloodthirst, the Gilnean mistress perhaps? Archibald Greymane kept strange bedfellows, but putting on the airs of a ripe matron wasn't beyond her skills. Then she might even have been allowed down in the dungeons, to add her own expertise to the bronze knave's interrogation.

But no, she'd have had to cater to a doddering old fool instead, and his woman that she'd be replacing was the sort to have schemes of her own. Too much work for anyone to uncover and co-opt in the time available.

They were kept locked in almost long enough for her to seriously consider bringing out her spells, damn everything else.

The smite came with no warning. One moment she was fuming over having to restrain herself, the next she was screaming in pain, toppling from shock, collapsing to the floor from the searing blow to her very spirit. She cried out as her sight burned golden, her body and spirit both convulsed as she was judged by powers spurned, she relived her entire life in an instant but was not allowed any self-delusion.

When the gift of foreign strength entered her, she hadn't the wits to question it until it displaced the largest, newly scorched tendril of fleshy pus around her soul. Settled in to burn hot and bright for a day, what – who – why – who dared?!

"Agh – wh-what happened - Ysolde?!" came her 'father's' stammer as he knelt by her and pulled her up. "Daughter, speak to me, plea – agh!" Lord Prestor flinched as she met his eyes.

She flinched too, as the deepest essence of him was revealed to her. Her breath stopped when she realized the deepest truth of her had been bared to him.

She couldn't react to the impossible feeling that she was the one found wanting.

"Wh-what was that? Who – what are you? Where is – what have you done with my daughter?! Where is she? Who are you? What are you?!"

It took all her strength to push him away, and she swore to herself that her scream was from effort rather than fear at the man's bared blade.

Her dragon breath was pitiful, but somehow barely enough. The man fell back from her with a scream, dropped his knife and kept screaming as the fire caught on his hair and clothes. She felt a spike of terror when it looked like he might put it out. But the last of her molten spittle landed on the oil from the toppled lamp, fallen off the end table by the door.

The dying screams of Lord Prestor were long and torturous, but still ended before her shaking stopped. It took even longer to muster enough strength to climb back to her feet. The screams and choking from the servants were a wretched mirror of her own, as the whole room burned around her, filling with smoke and the smell of roast pork. She wrapped her arms tight around herself in dazed confusion and soul-deep pain.

She snarled in fury.

The dying screams ended to arcane missiles, and the flames to icy waves

That she needed more than one frost nova ignited what was left of her hobbled mind, until she felt such fury that the locked doors were pulverized on the way out.

She was-

"Good Gods, milady is that you? What – fire! You, get water! You, go warn he King that whoever did this is already in the castle! Milady, let me-"

She didn't know any of the guards, but she did after their eyes met. Worse, they suddenly knew even more about her. The leader's reaction was so sharp and loud that even the messenger paused to turn.

She almost didn't manage to act first. Again.

The hallway filled with fire just before it would have filled with naked swords.

And as she cast her eyes down to avoid further repeats of the same, as she stomped past screaming, writhing bodies and through her own flames, as she kept her head bowed low as if in shame, Onyxia, Daughter of Deathwing, swore that she'd find whoever had done this and make their entire bloodline pay.


"-. The False Suitress .-"


When the Archbishop came to her, she thought he'd take her along on his procession to the southern continent, perhaps even introduce her to the people in her eventual parish. Her training at the Grand Cathedral was drawing near a close. She also knew that her parents refused to consider any suitors from outside their home country.

With all omens aligned with the prospect of her return, it was the perfect way to satisfy all parties. So when the head of the Church arranged a meeting, she was confident in the path that the Light had seemingly prepared for her.

She hadn't imagined that Alonsus Faol would ask instead for subterfuge and deception. But ask he did and accept she did, to attend the Alterac Grand Engagement Ball as his secret eyes and ears.

She could see the logic, she was a highborn lady fully flowered and unspoiled, but still a few weeks short of her majority. Therefore, any attempts at a whirlwind wedding would be illegitimate, even if they found a corrupt enough priest to officiate. More importantly, she hadn't taken her vows of anointing yet, and even if she had, the oaths of the Church didn't preclude nuptials. If anything, it was the opposite – the Light's virtues were the same ones that sustained a good and fruitful life, including children.

By presenting herself as one of the eligible maidens of Stormwind, she was even guaranteed at least some time in private with the king. With Ser Saidan in sight as her chaperone, of course.

She'd steeled herself for weeks of double speak and false smiles.

She didn't last three days.

The Court of Alterac was a den of serpents, to the point where she barely endured the first feast, before dropping all pretense that she would entertain any engagement prospects.

She imagined this was her punishment for taking the mission for the wrong reasons. She'd accepted not for duty, or even relish at the challenge. Instead, she'd agreed mainly because she was curious to find out more about this child saint that His Holiness was so taken with, perhaps even meet him. This young man acclaimed as a Prophet when he was no older than her, the man who gained his own dragon somehow, after he brought a man back from the dead. The prospect was just too irresistible to miss.

May the Archbishop and the Light both forgive her weakness, but in the end the subterfuge hadn't been needed at all, to complete her true mission here. She witnessed all she needed before she even reached the keep. The powers of true far sight may still elude her, but the practice she got with more modest ranges let her witness more than enough.

By the time her retinue was in sight of Alterac Castle, she wagered she could make a fair guess about which of the king's men were corrupt. She knew the faces and the 'crimes' of at least one third of the people currently languishing in the royal dungeons too.

Were the local priests complicit, or coerced? Blackmailed? Perhaps their letters were being intercepted?

Court, if anything, was even worse. Appearances were so well confected it was nearly saccharine, but beneath the veneer was all pus.

It was a small blessing that hers was not the only foreign delegation. Key word being small. Stromgarde was a no show, the Kul Tiras contingent left early, Dalaran sent a single mage – recently dismissed under suspicious circumstances from the Council of Six – and the entourage from Lordaeron proved almost as fickle as their hosts. Lord Prestor was a fair enough man, but the Lady Ysolde was the sort that fit a bit too well in with the locals. Even the Gilnean delegation only welcomed her once she proved able to ease the king's illness, and not with open arms.

In the end, she stuck with the last because it was where she could do the most good.

King Archibald Greymane of Gilneas swung between pathologically shy and explosively paranoid, the latter being why he insisted on coming personally. Not to present any eligible maiden, but to negotiate the fostering of King Perenolde's toddler nephew.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to follow through on any of it because of his frail health and paranoia. He was too thin, pale, tired quickly, he was irritable and lacked patience, he bore the company of strangers very poorly, was always anxious, barely managed to sleep, he had trouble thinking and concentrating, even his memory was failing. Worst of all, he suffered from tremors in the hands, face and head, some of them extremely sudden and jerky. There seldom passed a day without him injuring himself in some way.

The silver lining, if you could call it that, was that the man's wish to avoid people meant he rarely left his guest suite. This put the burden for everything on his son Genn. It was an unfair toil, but the prince latched onto any opportunity to be elsewhere with a tragic, guilty relief. Not because of the burden of care, but because the king unloaded all his paranoia and hostility and condescension on him, whenever he was there.

A fool, weakling, scoundrel, traitor, a complete incompetent for still not making any headway in his plans of treason, what the king accused his son of changed almost daily.

It was that ultimate perversion of love, when one 'trusts' only their closest family with their 'true' self. The face they don't dare show in public. The proof of Genn's unparalleled status in his father's heart was in how the king didn't subject his mistress to the same hardship, despite her almost never leaving his side.

Light or no Light, she couldn't bear to see it. Not without doing something.

It took persuasion, luck, and the Light's guidance for her entreaties to bear fruit.

It was thanks to the newest holy arts that she succeeded. The arts His Holiness had introduced to the Church just before she was sent here. The arts divined by that same Prophet that was so completely avoided in conversation here. The diagnostic spell was the only one she had achieved any manner of skill in, but she expected it to become her mainstay.

Archibald Greymane had mercury poisoning. And not just the trifle from touching contaminated coins either.

King Archibald Greymane of Gilneas was an alchemist. And not just any alchemist either, but one well on his way to creating a philosopher's stone. She didn't know much about the vocation, alchemists – true alchemists – kept to themselves. But she did know that ingesting mercury was one of the late stages. It was why so many of them used to die, before their secrecy thawed enough that they dared seek help from the Clergy, for the Light's steadfastness and healing.

She did not know enough to judge. Perhaps the miracle elixir at the other end of the torment made everything worth it.

To her shame, her ability to purge toxins was almost non-existent compared to mending bone and flesh. True diseases had long eluded the Church, and mercury was one of the poisons that posed similar challenges. It was a prominent element in alchemy for good reasons. That gap in ability was not easily bridged.

Now, though, with this spell, she had the sight and insight that she'd lacked. That they'd all lacked.

She'd still only reduced his symptoms so far, but that alone raised her higher in the king's eyes than all but blood kin. She also managed to repair the damage to the lungs, and more general decay from insufficient air. She was almost ready to broach the topic of extracting the toxin outright. She should have focus enough to try without making things worse, at least.

She'd offer once she had a private moment with Ser Saidan, she decided. She wouldn't act without all due forewarning, she was not that kind of lady. Doubly so since it wasn't all good news. While the better rested and mellow king had begun to treat his son better, this also revealed a deep animosity between Genn and his father's mistress, who no longer commanded all royal favor.

The latest damage to the king's lungs was almost completely undone when Judgment came down on all five of them.

She flinched from the Light's sheer density. All at once, the mistakes of her life played out inside her head, with none of the biases or justifications.

But she didn't fall. She didn't sway, didn't start, didn't topple. She didn't hurt.

When the gift of foreign strength entered her, she was not caught off guard.

She saw a verdant forest surrounding a rent cove whose ground was not ground but instead moist flesh. On it was table with a jenga tower rising up into infinity. In front of it, a wizard matched spells with some sort of green-skinned brute, magic and might clashing in snarling contempt as dwarves, gnomes, trolls, elves, giant bug creatures and man-bulls and many other things were trampled underfoot.

Above them, three giants of flesh and metal matched the Light against Fel darkness, while beings of golden crystal stood opposed to two horned fiends. All around, dragons swarmed the sky from horizon to horizon. The Black licked at the pus spraying up from the fleshy ground. The Red ate their own tail. The Green turned in their sleep. The Blue mourned and rejoiced. The Bronze wove threads of sand into looped knots.

Tentacles and tendrils of blood and bile seeped up from the bedrock. Two burning eyes glared down from amidst the corpses of gods littering the Great Dark. The Fire burned. The Air roared. The Water roiled. The Earth languished in sorrow deep below. Each and every time the chaos churned, block upon blocks of the trembling tower fell down from heaven.

And right there in the middle, cross-legged on the table at the base of the jenga spire of time, sat a man with blond hair and a beard and blue eyes. He was taking blocks out of the tower's base, coating them in glue, then putting them back in place, one by one by one until a wholly new, unyielding foundation grew taller than his hands could reach. So he used the falling blocks to make a club instead.

Then he got up, bashed the wizard over the head with all the force of salvaged time, took the green brute's staff, and swung it hard at the tower, smashing everything upwards from his hard work apart.

The man's eyes met her own as the future fell to pieces around them. Then the eyes were gone. There was only Light shining forth. The axe came down and smashed through the table, rending down into the flesh below. It s̷̲͌ç̵̕ȓ̸̦e̴̫͊å̸̧m̵͚̃e̷͐͜ḋ̸͈.

Lady Mara Fordragon reeled back, away from the king on his chair, up to her feet from where she'd sat on the small seat nearby. She struggled to hang onto the – the vision – soulgaze, some inner certainty told her – to sear it as clearly as she could inside her mind.

She knew, now.

The Prophet was real, he was true, he was here.

And as the results of the Judgments of everyone else in the keep echoed in her spirit, she knew that not even a third of them would make it past his wall.

Not even the dragons.

Save one.

There were four dragons in the castle.

"Ohhh," moaned Archibald Greymane, eyes wide and grief-stricken as he looked up at his son, whose first thought had been to check on his father despite everything. "Oh… Oh my son, I killed your mother… I persuaded her to take the mercury together, curse me! I didn't want to face it. Like a coward, I didn't – wouldn't – every time I refused your help, every time I said a real man doesn't need it, every time my tongue spewed its poison at you, I lied. I was just punishing myself for my sin. Punishing you for nothing, my poor boy, I'm not worthy to be in your sight…"

Such family hardship healed in an instant, it was a miracle. A miracle while Mara could barely stem a measly illness of the flesh.

"Wh-what was that?" Ser Saidan rasped somewhere behind her. Much closer to the ground than his massive two-meter bulk should be.

She would have turned, but the king's eyes met hers.

The symptoms of mercury poisoning were the whole point, she suddenly knew. Mercury being poison was not disputed. Alchemists merely considered it all worth it for the mental effects. They did not consider paranoia and other psychological issues to be symptoms of the mercury, but a consequence of the self-reflection – and reassessment of everyone else – that mercury induced.

If they survived long enough to come to terms with all the lies told to them – by others and themselves – they might just get close enough to enlightenment to see into the final mystery.

She did not see how it was worth it. Even if imbibing the poison tore the veil off all self-deception, it was not a quick or easy process. Was this why Alchemists were so solitary? They became absolutely horrible people for – so long a time, too long for even the ties of kin to endure. Was the final discovery worth so much? Losing everything and everyone that made life worth living in the first place?

The second soulgaze of her life ended with the feeling that Archibald Greymane now asked himself the same.

"My Lady!" Saidan's voice came, louder. There was rustle of plates and heavy footsteps, clank and thud of his large shield against the floor, then his hand was upon her shoulder. "My lady, please! Are you alright – that was – the Light, I can -"

She reached up for his hand reflexively, looked back to find him transfixed, then followed his gave to the Lady Tharia and was promptly transfixed herself. The woman – she was covered head to toe in gruesome scars, old one previously hidden, and her eyes-

The third soulgaze of Mara Fordragon's life ended with her backing away in open-mouthed horror.

She didn't have time to warn the others before they, too, met the serpent-like eyes.

Saidan Dathrohan jumped between them with no time to spare, molten flame spraying around his shield with the smell of pitch and dead multitudes. The dragon breath singed her sleeves, caught the king's leg and the prince's arm, knocked their senses askew so harshly that they couldn't think through the pain and she screamed-

"Light," the knight grunted. "Give me strength!" The man set his legs and dove forward, splitting the fire breath harder, wider.

Wide enough that they finally escaped its wrath and could finally think again through the pain.

"RUN!" The knight bellowed. "RUN, RUN NOW!"

It was all she could do to help Genn Greymane carry his father out the door.

The last thing Mara Fordragon heard on the way out was a dragon's roar screaming out of a woman's throat.

The last thing she saw was the Light weakly outlining Saidan Dathrohan with power he'd never grasped before.



"-. The False Goblette .-"


They still made her wait. After all the trouble she went through to get herself captured, sold to a circus, and hauled all the way to Alterac's capital as the festival's star attraction, they still made her wait. Every chance taken, every leeway afforded, all occasions come and past, everyone in the Capital and many beyond had come to see the savage greenskin in a cage. Yet still no sign of the all-knowing boy.

All the events planned for, every trick played, every insult sneered and trick inflicted on the more daring simpletons, and here at the end still nothing. It was ridiculous, absurd, unacceptable, it had been weeks!

What kind of diviner missed all this?

As a final insult, the 'good' king of this benighted land had 'kindly' declined the circus access to anywhere closer than the outer ring of the city. To 'protect' his more refined subjects and guests from 'unfortunate exposure.' She didn't know if the exact words belonged to the king or just the guard captain that delivered them. She didn't much care either, she wasn't here for either of them.

She was on her second day of considering that maybe, possibly the insolent boy had actually had good reasons to ask that she not come over as a goblin. Once again, she decided that if it had really been that important, he'd have made it an actual condition instead of a mere request. If he was truly as all-knowing as he claimed, he should know that a dragon's visage was no trifle to take on and off like a rag.

When the giant golden dome snapped in place around the central keep, her cage was too well tucked away inside the smallest tent for her to see it.

She definitely felt it though.

And the roar, everyone heard that.

The nearly riotous stampede to get a better look meant that she didn't have to put any effort into escaping. Sneaking around until she reached a roof was only slightly more difficult. She ignored the inner voice saying that she wouldn't have had to go through all this trouble, if she'd just snuck her way into the kingdom outright, goblin or not. The blacks tended towards elaborate schemes, the only way she'd stayed ahead of them was by doing it even better.

She stood on the roof of the random hovel and saw a giant dome of gold. A giant dome of Holy Light with a huge dragon right on top of it. Bigger than her. He stood. He watched. He was black.

They made her wait for this?

She stood and stared at the strange sight of a black dragon… not doing anything.

'Emerentius.' The kinslayer. An assassin of lords and kith they'd never known existed.

… She had been politely invited, and it was almost certain the boy-saint knew about her secret work to purify black dragon eggs. Since there hadn't been black dragons trying to assassinate her every moment of the day since, the invitation may still be in good faith. It wouldn't do to make any hasty decis-

The inside of the dome flared brightly.

Over one hundred lives were instantly snuffed out.

She gaped, wide-eyed.

Then even more lives began to end, men, women, and then even two children died to – foul murder – butchery – treachery!

Treachery!

She shed her goblin form and took to the sky with a roar.

The other dragon's head snapped towards her instantly.

She braced herself for an attack, but none came. The other merely straightened, rose to stand on just his hind legs with ease she envied, and watched her approach. His altered body structure was a remarkable surprise that threatened to enthrall her, the Life magic within wanted to understand and adopt it post-haste, to be able to stand so erect, so graceful. But she pushed it down.

He looked surprised. He had the gall to be surprised, wasn't his new 'master' supposed to be some peerless seer? Or did the boy play games as well?

She soared high, made a wide sweep of the castle and the dome around it, then banked low to land on the face of the mountain peak right above it and him. "Why the surprise, oh kinslayer? Did your 'master' not invite me himself, or was that a ruse?"

The other stared at her. "Rheastrasza?" He rumbled incredulously, heedless of the many humans pointing, staring, listening and panicking all around them. "Lady Rheastrasza, is that you?"

"You do not sound pleased to see me."

"… This is not a good time."

"It is always a good time to stop the foolish and brazen." She tapped the transmission stone under the scale of her palm, tried to contact Korialstrasz. Her heart sank when it failed. Had they – he couldn't have been slain, she'd have felt it! "Cease whatever this is at once!"

"I cannot."

"I will not ask again."

"I will not fight you."

"Then this will be easy!" Her flame filled her gullet to bursting, then she leapt and dove down, bathing him in her hottest, most purifying fire of life as she flew by.

He crouched low over the dome and took it. Didn't make a sound as her fire scorched his flesh. When she banked around for a second sweep, she saw that the damage was much reduced compared to all other blacks she'd ever burned. What did get through was already healing.

She almost abandoned her course. She'd been told all the details the mortals could find about his 'Lightforging,' if it was really true… If he really had been freed from the Old Ones' influence…

Inside the dome, people old and young continued to die ever faster, and then a child fell to murder again, a girl not even flowered.

No, she could not ignore the many times before, when the blacks made dead fools of the rest of them with ruses much more convincing than this.

The black did not move at her second plume of fire. Or the third one. Or the fifth.

On the sixth pass, she made as if to breath on him again but bodied him instead, if the dome fell then Korialstrasz should-

The black jumped over her, grabbed her by the wing on landing, wound around one full circle before she understood what had happened, and sent her hurtling dizzyingly away, to crash and roll to an indignant stop in the middle of the public square.

She scrambled back to all fours with a snarl. She didn't know how she'd avoided pulping or otherwise harming any of the humans around her, but his disregard for them sealed her path. Her breath came in fits and sparks. The snow melted and steamed around her, both the falling flakes and the layers around her feet. Once more she tried to reach her Queen's consort. Once more, she failed.

He doesn't need continuous contact with the dome, she thought as she rose back in the air with wrath and frustration. This will be harder than I thought.

"Please, milady," the black pled, and he sounded so earnest, damn him. "Do not create conflict where there is none."

"Oh, but there is and you know it," she growled, landing once more above him. "You are overstepping your mandate, black dragon, and infringing on mine."

"My loyalty has changed, but it needn't conflict. Please do not do this."

"Then you cease. Then we may speak."

The other briefly closed his eyes in resignation. "For what you may yet achieve in the future, I will not bring you lasting harm." Any hope that he was surrendering perished when his eyes opened to show determination shining like the sun. "But even so, you will not interfere."

"What a lofty claim!" She rumbled in turn, making sure not to let slip her inner disquiet at his odd behaviour. Pushed away how earnest he still sounded, what it could mean for him to be so strong in holy power, she couldn't let herself believe it, not after so much. Not when she didn't know Korialstrasz' fate, no so easily, not so soon, not now, not when children kept dying. "Perhaps I should read into it more."

"Do as you must."

She obliged.

Rheastrasza of the Red Flight took to battle against her ancient foe.

And on the streets below, men, women and children ran for their lives, driven by quaking earth and the roars of dragons.


"-. The Rightly Guided .-"
(earlier that same night)

He was praying when he felt Wayland perish.

It was only his faith that kept him in the Light despite his shock.

It was the freshly revitalized will to try new things that guided his next act, but he only succeeded thanks to experience.

He projected out and up. His awareness resolved itself high into the sky, far above any bird or cloud. The entirety of Stormwind Kingdom far below was his to know, and he knew he could peer into the dark swamp to the east, or south into the Vale of Stranglethorn if he wanted.

He did neither. He turned instead to the North and flew forth, hastened to trace back that connection even though it left his body empty. The soulgaze was no paltry divination, it embedded a deep synchronicity that did not fade unless deliberately spurned. He didn't know if Wayland knew, but he did know that he could use it to find him. So he did, flying at the speed of imagination, so quickly the world became like a tunnel of light around him, up and onwards to the North, all the way to the edge of the continent of Azeroth, then further.

When he stopped above the boy's mountain home, his vision resolved into a scene of endless hunger and absolute destruction. A dark star eating the world, bite by bite, devouring the very forces holding matter together, sucking out even the Light of creation itself to feed its yawning maw.

When he tried to get closer, his vision began to tear and ripple as the pull began to tug at his own edges. The monstrosity was even inflicting itself upon the spirit world. Defying the pull took much of his strength, but at least it let him reach and see within. Darkness. More darkness. An Angel of Death.

She was there, curled up on the ground. Curled around Wayland's spirit, who writhed as the Valkyrie struggled to keep it from tearing completely loose from his flesh and blood.

She was failing. Even if it weren't constantly drained to feed the ravenous darkness, a valkyrie's Light did not easily cross into the living world.

He almost spelled Wayland's doom when he reached out to them, her focus shattered, but there was no other choice. If an angel's light was reserved for the world of spirits, man would just have to bear the burden in the realm of life.

He prayed as fervently as he ever did in his life.

He barely succeeded, and it would have been for nothing if Wayland hadn't invoked his protection spell in time.

It – Light – such weakness he'd never felt – even at his most sickly as a child – where was – he – his body – it was so far away, he – he couldn't – he had to…

He would have been lost to the green dream, if not for all those days he spent at sea, weaving runic enchantments into his body and staves upon his bones.

"It – seems – we both – saved each other – " rasped Archbishop Alonsus Faol as his head lolled on the floor, fallen weak and empty from his nightly prayers inside the Sanctuary of the Royal Chapel in Stormwind Keep. "But – what was that – it was – it is!"

Wayland! Wayland was under attack! He was dead, had been dead, he was dying again that very moment!

Alonsus only found his feet on the fifth try. He stepped on his mitre, knocked the Holy Book off the altar, knocked two candlesticks over and down on the way out, but he ignored all of it. The candles were unlit, darkness was nothing to the Light, and the Light would surely forgive him for prioritising its most beloved son.

The Archbishop stumbled, hobbled, strode, ran and sprinted with nearly mad urgency, out of the Church, across the grounds, through the queen's garden and into the keep through the nearest door he found. Sentries balked in shock and tried to catch up, but they failed because the Light drove him. With every breath he felt stronger. With every step he got faster. With every moment he felt a growing premonition that something terrible would happen soon.

Please, Light, don't let me work a miracle only for him to suffer or do something more terrible!

The servants cried out at the sight he made, but he didn't have time to look or act any less mad than the crisis unfolding. He demanded to know where to find the king's mage, and dashed where he was directed too fast for whys and thank yous.

If only he'd had the slightest foreboding! Then he might have accepted King Llane's offer of spending the last night of the Interregnum with him and his, instead of bowing out to let them be with family and friends as was the way.

The guards outside the royal suite barred his path from sheer shock at his dishevelled appearance. He almost wanted to conjure a shield and barrel through. Almost. The Light was with him, his strength would smash even the locks on those big doors.

"I need to see the king's mage!" he shouted instead, so loud that all inside would hear him. "Right now!"

Refusal, denial, questions, demands to know why he was in such a state, things were fit to become even more of a circus than they already were, before the doors opened from the inside.

"What's going on here?" thundered the voice of Anduin Lothar. "What racket is – Your Holiness! What in heaven's name?!"

Alonsus barely got his request out, hit all at once by the shortness of breath he'd been spared on the way over. He was ushered in, led to a chair and hovered over by the King and Queen and Arathor's heir while he regained his speech.

"I need –" he wheezed, finally, standing back up. "I need – Master Medivh!" he cried in relief on seeing the sorcerer there. "Thank the Light you're here! Forgive me your majesties, but I need the help of your mage! Sorcerer, you claimed to be unequalled in matters arcane, I need you to prove it! How far away can you traverse by spell?!"

The four exchanged glances, but King Llane, Light bless him, did not make light of his urgency. "Where do you need to go?"

"Alterac." The Archbishop cradled his forehead, unsure if the image of woe he just saw was a new vision or recent memory. "As deep in the heartland as you can get me."

"What happened-?"

"What is happening, there is no time, I need to get there now or not at all, please. Can you do it?"

"I can," the mage himself finally said, equally curious and grim. "I'll be wanting and explanation, but if it's so urgent as to have Your Holiness come charging in like a feral beast, we cannot dither. Do I have your permission to scan your surface thoughts?"

"Why – visual reference?"

"As true to your desired destination as you can."

"Anduin, summon as many guards as you can!" the king commanded, even as he was ushering away his wife. "We're going too."

Alonsus almost staggered in relief, and a raw self-recrimination. How witless and single-minded could he be that he didn't request proper help himself? And more? A king, a man among men, the greatest of mages all before him, willing and eager. Yet even as he begged for profane passage to the other side of the world, it never once occurred to him to ask the mage to also come along. How –? Why –? In such a dire hour – had he internalized the prejudice against the arcane arts so deeply that –?

The Aegishjalmur came alight around his mind. Not at Medivh's probe, but a second one, subtler. He looked for it. Found it. Lost it. He could not understand what had just happened.

But Gegn Galdri ignited like a furnace in his breast. And as the Light poured into the stave to turn away some evil spell, the Veldismagn came alive with defiance, and Lukkustafir showed the blind wherefrom sprung the evil it failed to turn away.

Alonsus turned his inner eye to see its path.

Behind Medivh's own mind, a demon stitched into the fabric of the man's flesh stared back at him, its face completely startled and misgaged.

It was the same face from Wayland's visions.

For one, fatal moment, Alonsus Faol was stunned into complete inaction.

He barely had time to throw up his arms before a wave of indiscriminate destruction exploded out of Medivh with catastrophic might.



The next chapter is available on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with advance chapters on Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, and Everything, Everywhere, One Thing at a Time.
 

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