A buddy of mine in high school liked to say that there are three things that nobody ever bothers denying unless they're actually true: "I'm not stupid," "this won't take long," and "this won't hurt," that last one particularly when it comes from a healer.
When I got in to work on Thursday, there was an æmail from Nick the HR guy, explaining that it was time for me to go through mandatory sexual harassment training. He said it involved watching a few videos on my rune tablet and answering the questions afterwards, and it wouldn't take long at all. So I pulled it up, and was confronted with two long hours of awful, tedium, and cringe, centered around the employees of a fictitious company, every last one of which was some sort of horrible person one way or another and clearly had no idea how to interact with other kith. I've seen more nuanced characterization on cartoon shows! But unfortunately this was for something that actually mattered to my employer, so I had to not only sit through it but pay attention to it, to be sure to catch all the ridiculously unsubtle points the quizzes would ask about afterwards.
About the only real takeaway at the end of it is that sexual harassment is a Bad Thing You Should Not Do, but at the same time there is no solid, objective definition of sexual harassment that you can definitively make sure you're Not Doing. This kinda makes me question the sanity of whoever came up with this in HR; what in the world made them think that's an acceptable message to send to a bunch of enchanters for whom well-defined rules and solid, objective definitions are literally our livelihood?
The one good thing I can say about it is that it's over, at least. It may have eaten up my whole morning and I didn't even begin to get anything done until after lunch, but hopefully I'll never have to do that again!
Apogee was back now, and after lunch I went to talk with him. He repeated a lot of the same stuff Kayla had to say about trying to soulbind some creature or spirit to use in place of the oculus. Unlike her he didn't immediately shut down the idea, instead spending a good hour talking things over with me and looking seriously at a handful of options, but by the end of it, after explaining some of the principles involved in depth, he'd managed to convince me that Kayla had been right afterall. One thing he said that really stuck with me: "we already have cars driven by living souls. We are trying to do better, not simply to replace one living soul with another."
I also asked him about the squirrel-like monster that popped into the Prime Material in the lab. He laughed and said, "sounds like a rallom. They're not very scary unless they manage to get some of their slime into your mouth, in which case they're very scary, because it's a ridiculously deadly poison."
"Sounds like you know a lot about them?"
"Of course," he said. "As a summoner, it's very important to be familiar with extraplanar creatures."
"So do you have a rallom in your... what do you call it anyway? Collection? Repertoire? Zoo?" I'd heard all three terms (yes, seriously, even the last one) used by various students and professors.
"Stable," he said. I'd heard that one too, but it's kind of old-fashioned. "And yes, I bonded my rallom about sixty years ago." It's still weird hearing that from someone who looks younger than me!
We talked a bit more, but then Kayla came and got me, bringing me back to look at another issue with her. She kept grumbling about how the folks on the news were going to interpret everything, and finally I just had to ask.
"What's the deal with you and the media anyway?"
She just gave me a blank look. "Have you seen the way they talk about us?"
I shrugged. "It all seems like they're just mad we're still making mana cars rather than focusing on internal combustion engines. Any idea why we're not, by the way? They're supposed to be a lot better for the environment, and they shouldn't be difficult to mass-produce with automation."
Kayla just sighed. "Mareleþ's own brain..." she groaned, shaking her head slowly.
"What?"
"Have you ever seen one of those in action? They spew smoke into the air! How is that clean?"
"Smoke can be cleared up by magic far more easily than aspect-tainted mana can be purified."
"So you're still using heavy amounts of mana to get it clean, and then that gets aspect-tainted."
"Sure, but they say it would be an order of magnitude less. And so we get less mana blight, less wild magic..." I lowered my voice. "There are even those who say that overuse of mana in ætheric technology is disruptive on divine levels. They're putting that forth as a theory for why no one's heard from the Gods since the Fifth Age."
Kayla just scoffed at that. "We've still got clerics and paladins. The Gods show their power through them, just the same as they always have."
"Well yeah, but... they used to speak. Directly."
She nodded. "Generally to warn of exactly the sorts of calamities you were praising modern times a few days ago for having put behind us."
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"That's..." I paused, thinking it over for a moment. "...an annoyingly good point."
"Thanks! I'm full of those."
"But I'm still not convinced that's all there is to it. I don't know if that theory's even right, but... there has to be something."
"Maybe. I figure, let þeologians worry about þeology, and enchanters focus on enchantment. Everyone does what they do best to make society better all around."
Well, if she was going to be that apathetic about it, there's not much I could do. I went back to working on the issue with her, and we continued poking at it for the rest of the afternoon.
After work I came home and got cleaned up, then double-checked the address and schedule for the local Meþasite congregation. I spent some time reading the Codices, something I'd kind of neglected for the past few years, to get myself into the right mindset, then when it was time I drove over to the chapel.
The parking lot was surprisingly full. I got there 5 minutes early and could barely find a place to park! This kind of surprised me, as Sharliya isn't really known for being a particularly devout city, but at least it meant I could probably blend into the crowd.
I headed inside. The place was packed, but I managed to find a quiet, unobtrusive seat near the back, just before the service started. The Esott got up to the pulpit, bade everyone welcome, and announced that before the night's sermon he had a very special announcement. "As many of you know, Felicity Ellis recently returned from a three-year mission trip to Lutreron, preaching the Path of Meþas in kobold lands. We're grateful to have her back safely among us, and would like to hear her report."
The Esott sat down again and a young lady seated near the front of the congregation stood up, approaching the pulpit. She looked to be about my own age, tall and athletically built, dark hair cut short, almost military-style. "Hi everyone," she said, giving her head a slow little shake back and forth a few times. "Wow, it's still a bit odd speaking Common again! Where to even start? Growing up, I had heard plenty of times about the kobold lands, about the Everbreak and the endless strife and turmoil of Lutreron. So when the opportunity arose to consecrate myself and journey there to defend the faith, I'll admit I was nervous. But it's been a truly amazing experience!
"The thing you rarely hear about is just how many truly Good people there are living in Lutreron. While it's true that the warlords overrunning the land are all adherents of Evil ways, and the people largely follow their example, in a land of tens of millions even a small minority makes for a substantial number of followers of the Path!"
She went on to speak of various incidents throughout her time in the field, which seemed to consist about half-and-half of trying to convince the more-Neutral-leaning kobolds to abandon their ways and follow the Path, and of donning blessed armor to help the faithful hold the line against the hordes of the warlords seeking to bring harm to the non-compliant enclaves of Good kobolds who just wanted to be left in peace.
I was already starting to squirm a bit before she was finished, and it just got worse when the Esott got up to give his sermon. He read from the Book of Desish, one of the worst parts of the Codices, the tale of how Talaran's band infiltrated the city of Desish and opened the city gates to the Counterbalance by night, allowing them to topple the Reeve and claim the city for Good. He went on to expound on how the time of heroes never truly ended; the battlefield has only shifted to more personal realms and so on and so forth, before stating that, with Felicity home now, the church's donors are continuing to give quite generously and they now have the capability to sponsor a new missionary, so anyone who felt Meþas's call within them ought to speak to him afterwards about the possibility of consecration.
What in the world had I wandered into here? This was nothing like church back home; with the Esott preaching hero-tales and the congregation literally sponsoring paladins-militant, it almost felt like the stupid jokes people tell about Meþasites to make us look like a bunch of out-of-touch idiots. But this was actually happening, and the congregation was totally eating it up! I had to fight the urge to visibly, physically cringe when he spoke so strongly against Evil various times. Had he somehow skipped the entire Sixth Age and all the advances we'd made in our understanding of philosophy, morality, and tolerance? Had the people around me skipped it along with him?
Heck, I knew from personal experience that Evil wasn't some terrible thing to struggle against. Vivian was Evil-aligned, and she never let our philosophical differences come between us. Even though things with her hadn't ended particularly well, the time we'd spent together had been amazing and blessed me with many happy experiences and memories I wouldn't want to trade for anything!
Just as I was on my way out, I felt someone gently grasp my arm. I turned and saw Felicity. "Hi. You move in while I was away?" she asked, smiling warmly at me.
"...yeah. Just this past week actually."
"Oh, that's wonderful! It's always good to see new faces in the congregation! Felicity Ellis, nice to meet you."
I nodded, wanting to just get this over with as quickly as I could. "Brad Webb."
"You get a job out here or...?"
"Yeah. Dyralight. I'm an enchanter."
She gave me an odd look. "I... there's a cloud over you, Brad. I feel like there's something you need to hear." Her brown eyes briefly flared with a subtle but noticeable green glow, and her voice deepened about an octave, the cadence of her speech changing. "Stand strong, and hold fast to that which you know to be true. Your faith will be tried, but you will see it rewarded, far sooner than you expect, if you can but remain true for a short season."
Then she blinked several times, her eyes going back to their natural brown. She swayed slightly on her feet for a moment. "Wow. That always takes a bit out of me. I don't know exactly what the message was, but you do, and you're very blessed to receive it." She gave my arm a soft squeeze. "Hang in there." And then she turned and walked off to go talk to someone else. Looking around, I realized that no one was staring at me. No one around seemed to particularly notice what had just happened!
Nope. Nope nope nope. I retreated to my car with as much dignity as I could muster while carefully avoiding making eye contact with anybody else, then drove away with no intention of ever going back. I'd heard of Guidances before, of course — everyone has a story about how their best friend's second cousin's dog-walker had received one that totally turned their life around — but actually getting one myself? One that even literally says "this won't take long" right there in the message? That's sooooo far outside the bounds of anything even resembling a reasonable plan for my life that I wanted nothing to do with it. I'm going to have to see if there are any other Meþasite congregations nearby; they can't all be like this! But if I can't find one that's worth attending, I might just have to stop going altogether, for the sake of my own sanity.