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

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

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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.




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).

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.




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.

A/N: Azeroth technology is a tricksy business.

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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.



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).

A/N: The last happy thing that will happen for a long while.

---

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.