“When I arrived in Chelou, the guards at the city entrance told me that I wasn’t human.” Saul told Nadine, the elf sitting across from him. “Do you know why?”
“Yes,” she replied simply.
“Could you please elaborate?”
“The guards at the city entrance told you you weren’t human because you do not feel like a human does to an elf.”
“Yeah, I got that much.” He said flatly, rubbing his temple. “Nadine, I apologize in advance if I sound rude, this has been stressing me out since yesterday. Councilor Guillaume told me that you might be able to explain why I suddenly don’t seem to be completely human.”
“I have a policy about giving advice and answering questions. It stems in part from a limitation in my abilities. I only answer what has been asked, and only give advice and information based on what I have been told by the person asking.”
“That sounds like it would be very annoying. What if someone doesn’t want to tell you all of the private details?”
“I like to think of it as clear communication,” the elf explained, “I also have a policy of not sharing personal details shared in confidence unless doing so is necessary for the well being of the person in question.”
“You know what? Fair enough. I’m the one coming to you for help. Yesterday, the guards at the gate told me I wasn’t human. They shined a light in my eyes and told me I wasn’t a quarter-elf either. After dinner last night, the Councilor summoned a shadow guy to examine me. They had me use a cantrip for them. When I said I hadn’t been blessed by a saint, he concluded I wasn’t human. He said something about a light affinity. After that, I tried to use my death amulet to cast a couple death cantrips, but it didn’t work. The amulet works with a human’s death affinity to let us use death cantrips without the icon. That’s all I know. Am I not human? If so, why and how am I not human?”
“You are not human. You are not human because instead of a death affinity, you have a mirror affinity. The how is more complicated. I know part of the answer, but not enough. It also touches on private details of others.”
“I guess I had already come to a similar conclusion,” Saul said. “When you say how I changed is related to other people’s details, does that mean this has happened to other people?”
“Effectively, yes. I find your condition concerning now that I know a bit more about it. I have some questions for you, but asking them would lead you in the direction of something illegal in these lands and forbidden by the temples. The information has been eliminated entirely in the kingdom of your birth due to certain abuses.”
“That sounds bad. You didn’t seem so concerned a minute ago.”
“Oracular power is heavily dependent on our own knowledge.” Nadine replied. “Among other things. I was able to successfully divine connections between a few pieces of information.”
“Is there anything you can tell me? I’ve been warned that a non-human with noble title isn’t safe in Oriawell, and I am aware of laws against it. I really, really would rather not get stuck spending the rest of my life here.”
“If you tell me what courses of action you are considering, I can tell you which one is most likely to have an outcome you want. The more options you give, the better the chances I can find the best fit.”
“That sounds like a good place to start,” Saul agreed. There were some details he wasn’t willing to share, but he could describe around them. “Obviously, I can continue with my current plan. Continue northwest, use the icon set I have picked out, get the Idol to help me shape the powers the way I want. Then, my two options are to stay here in this city for my safety or go home and actually live my life.
“Another option I just found out about would be staying here to use the icons I have and getting your daughter’s help with getting the first half-dozen abilities. At that point, I’d be virtually guaranteed to continue getting the right kind of powers. Then it’d be the same choice of staying in this city or going home. Other than that, I guess I could just go home now and use a different combination. Probably end up with the Guardian Idol. Or stay here and do the same. That’s about it? I could join the Temple of the Scholar as well, if it came to it.”
“So, those are all of the options that you would somewhat seriously consider?” the Oracle clarified, and Saul nodded. “Very well. Four choices, with a few slight variations. Now, what would you say your goals are? What would a good outcome look like?”
“The first has to be my safety I suppose. Not getting arrested or executed. Next would be getting a set of abilities that is highly flexible and inherently versatile. Then helping my family’s…political position. The last one is kind of selfish, but if you can sense the future, is there a choice that would let me become an immortal?”
“Your goals are complex enough that an ideal choice for one might not be for another,” she warned, “now, your best option would be…” Nadine trailed off, frowning. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I may owe my daughter an apology, this is quite irritating.”
“If you can’t tell me something for some reason, that’s fine.” Saul said, some of his annoyance from the past day creeping back in, “but please stop making vague references to things I’m apparently not allowed to know.”
“I’m sorry, Saul, you’re right, I’m not being fair to you. I’m irritated because I believe my divination was interfered with by a third party. You have two best options. One would be best for your family, the other would be better for you.”
“If someone interfered with your ability, can you trust it?”
“Yes, this is a matter of having gained more information than I should have,” she explained. “Not false information.”
“I see?”
“This is why I choose to be vague sometimes. More information can create confusion instead of clarity in some cases. I do not doubt what I gleaned. Please trust me to understand my own abilities. Now, I’m afraid you need to choose what your highest priority is.”
“They’re all my priority.” Saul insisted, “I’m not going to place myself above my family, but they wouldn’t ask me to sacrifice everything for them either. Can you give me more nuance? An option that’s best for one, and still second best for the other?”
“Such a healthy perspective, very good dear. Yes, I can tell you more. The option that most benefits your family also leads to versatile powers like you want, but more limited than they possibly could be. The option best for you leads to powers more versatile than any Wizard’s, with virtually none of their drawbacks, and a near guarantee of immortality, but while your family benefits somewhat from your rise to power, you would ultimately leave them behind.”
“Wow. That’s pretty detailed. Is that the one you think I should choose?”
“That path is the one in which you join the Scholar’s clergy,” Nadine clarified. “Normally, I don’t have such insight into divine affairs. I believe the Scholar themself is interested in you, insofar as a divine being can lower itself to comprehend we mortals. I will be honest, that is not the choice I would make, but I am biased about this decision.”
“Not this again!” Saul said, throwing his hand up in exasperation. “I have a duty to my family and my title that I’m just not going to ignore! If I were someone else, I’d almost certainly have joined the temple the first time I was invited. The Scholar is and always will be an important part of my life, but not my whole life.”
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“I understand, and please understand me when I say I am not trying to tell you to join a church. I was simply telling you everything I learned.”
“Thank you!”
Silence stretched for a moment, before the elf asked, “would you be willing to at least consider bringing my daughter with you on your trip north? I am looking for other angles on your choices.”
“Sure, I guess. I don’t know if she’d want to go.”
“I’ll talk to her. It is easier for me to predict outcomes that involve her.”
“By the way,” Saul said, “you said you were biased. Is that because some of my choices involve Natalie?”
“Partially. Two of your choices that involved staying in this city would result in both you and her dying. It also has to do with how you worded your goals.”
“Wait, staying would get me killed? Why?”
“I don’t know.” She replied, “that isn’t how my ability works unless I have far more information to start with. If you stay in this city and use the combination you have currently chosen or a different combination, the eventual result is your death, my daughter’s death, and the likely deaths of a large number of other people. I don’t know nearly enough to predict why.”
“So you want her to go with me to fully prevent that.”
“Yes. It would also make that choice better for you, or at least make it clearer to me why it is better.”
“Ok, so what does that tell you?” Saul asked with a sigh.
“Regardless of where you go after, if you continue your trip northwest and bring Natalie along, then in approximately three months, I will see you again and you will be human.”
“And that’s the option that’s best for my family?”
“By far,” Nadine confirmed.
“That’s what I’ll do then. I don’t need to change my plans, and whatever this affinity issue is will work itself out.”
“Now, I didn’t say that. You should still look for solutions. I’m just telling you that you are almost certain to find one along the way.
“Understood,” Saul said, “and since I’m back on plan, I need to get ready to leave tomorrow. I want to get this taken care of as soon as possible.”
“Before you go, do you still want me to teach you another cantrip and some elvish history?”
“Oh right, yes, if you don’t mind.”
“Did you give any thought to what cantrip you would like to learn?” She asked, “I’m afraid I don’t have any more as thoroughly put together as Incandesce.”
“Well, I don’t know any cantrips related to the dark aspects of the mirror icon. Any suggestions?”
“Other than Dark itself? There’s Chill, which darkens an area slightly and reduces the temperature. Or perhaps Cloak. That one requires existing darkness, but wraps it around you. Not that well, mind, it is a cantrip.”
“Chill?” Saul repeated, “that’s a death cantrip. Are you saying there’s a different version for the dark icon?”
“Please take that up with my daughter. I recall her talking at length about something along those lines. Is that the one you want to learn?”
“Yes please.”
They performed the same nodding routine as before, and Saul learned how Nadine used the alternate Chill. Her visualization was of sweeping aside the day like a curtain, leaving an area dark and cold out of the warmth of sunlight. She had developed it to the point that nearly any sweeping gesture would do. Saul could feel the concept he’d visualized as a balance and fulcrum in the curtain rod she imagined. It made sliding the curtain easier, and gave him another angle to better understand this idea of efficiently leveraging metaphorical force.
The history lesson that followed was less smooth, containing lingering traces of emotion.
Five hundred years ago, a fleet of human ships had sailed along the edge of the world. They landed in the goblin territory to the east of the elves, and began an aggressive campaign of expansion and extermination on the native population. The humans pushed inland all the way to the edge of this mortal region, and claimed a tiny part of the adjacent immortal lands. Seeming to already know the folly of challenging dwarves in their mountains and aeries, they instead turned on the unfamiliar elves. While the elves’ society was nearly as scattered as the goblins’, they had a council that coordinated to respond to the attempted invasion. They created the eastern border they had not needed before and rebuffed the humans’ advance.
Over the next two centuries, the quality of the environment in the mortal region began to decline, creating areas where no immortal could dwell. The human political structure already contained incomplete immortals and was minimally affected, while the vast majority of the elven council and its representatives could no longer operate in those places. When a region on the southern part of the eastern border rapidly dropped in quality all the way to mist, the humans mounted another invasion, seizing an area roughly a third the size of their existing land. When they were finally stopped, reclaiming the lost territory was deemed impractical. Militarized strongholds were established along the new border and with them, the modern status quo.
Nadine had very strong feelings about the last half. Personal feelings. She was at least three hundred fifty years old.
“…to tell you the truth, it’s not that different from the version of events I learned.” Saul said. “Our version just makes it sound necessary. And ancient. Distant ancestors fleeing political persecution.”
“We don’t hate humans.” Nadine told him, “there are other places with humans. The Oriawell family and their supporters are our enemies.”
“The king?”
“That is what their head calls himself with his meager divine authority. Guillaume is only an outer councilor and has nearly as much.”
“I don’t know that much about the king.” Saul emphasized, “I respect him as much as I do anyone granted title by the saints, but I don’t think me or my family are your enemies.”
“Thank you, Saul, I’m happy that you feel that way. Now, I know that you are eager to get going, but your uncle stopped by this morning and asked me to talk to you about something.”
“Oh. I may have yelled at him last night. In my defense, he at least mostly deserved it.”
“Yes, he kept quite a few things from you yesterday that you wish he had just told you,” she agreed. “One of those things is related to me, and he wanted me to tell you for him.”
“Ok?”
“I am your great-great-great grandmother. I try to keep in touch with all of my children and grandchildren, but it gets more and more difficult as the generations wear on. After one of my grandchildren had a child with a human noble, I haven’t done nearly as well getting to know all of my descendants. I wouldn’t want an association with me to cause problems.”
“So I am part-elf?” Saul said, taken aback, then thought it through. “No, if my entire family wasn’t fully human, someone would have noticed. Your grandchild could be a quarter-elf. Can they have fully human children?”
“To all appearances, yes. There will be lingering traces, but nothing that can’t be explained away.”
“Do you think that ‘lingering trace’ is related to my affinity changing?”
“It almost certainly is,” the elf confirmed, “but at most it influenced what affinity you ended up with. This isn’t something that just happens.”
“Thank you for telling me, then. I’ll keep this private. Do you think I should tell Toby?”
“I would caution you against doing so unless you are certain his attitude toward elves is positive.”
“Which is why Uncle Nathan didn’t tell me this yesterday,” Saul realized. “I’ll give him that one. But if he’s the one who would decide whether to tell me, does that mean my dad doesn’t know?”
“Sadly, yes. I’ve chosen not to have a relationship with any descendants holding direct positions of power in human lands. It would only make their jobs harder.”
“Which is why Uncle Nathan wanted to come here with me after I chose not to contend with my sisters for my father’s title.”
“He has genuinely come to see me as family,” she said fondly. “I know you don’t feel the same, and you may never. I don’t place expectations on family, I am simply here if you need me.”
There was an audible snort from somewhere outside the door, drawing Saul’s attention.
“Ah, Natalie dear,” Nadine called, “since you were so kind as to listen at the door, I assume you’re willing to join your cousin on his trip?”
“And get away from this place for a few months?” Natalie replied, sticking her head into the room, “consider me already packed. Also, I think I’m technically his aunt.”