"Reyndell was such a charming man," Diana said. "He was the most powerful witch in the world, a fact that you could learn in the book of world records, and something that nerdy young men knew about, but which was otherwise of no consequence. He was not a head of state and he was not in the military. He was a wealthy socialite who had many lovers. I was one of them.
"He had been trained at the Eight Color Monastery to use his witch powers, but he rarely actually did. Mostly he just went to parties and live music festivals. He was the life of the party and many women loved him, including myself. This was up until the moment Renna published her paper. Then he changed.
"One technique that powerful witches can do, is slow their perception of time so that they can reason things out, read, or learn new things very quickly. They can experience hours and hours of subjective time in just a few moments of objective time. Reyndell must have used this technique to contemplate deep into the future. He came up with a method of saving humanity, in a way. It was an extremely stupid method, but it was a method, and even Renna had not considered it.
"He contemplated that just before the Ven arrived, he would gather all the witches on to the Great Plateau. All non-witches would be forced to leave and live down on the normal parts of the planet. Then he would drain all the water off the Sister World and flood the world, killing basically all of humanity. Then, he would create thralls out of all the witches, one giant pyramid of thralls, with a small, hand-picked population of females that were not thralls. Both me and Fiona were included in that group. It should be noted that thralls cannot have children because a female thrall cannot create a soul for the child, and the child will be stillborn.
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"When the Ven came, nothing would happen because everyone was already a thrall. Even if some of the witches increased in strength greatly, they were his thrall so it would not matter. Then, after the Ven went away, he would move all the water back onto the Sister World and then repopulate the planet using his hand-picked female non-thralls. His plan would have actually worked, until he announced that he had a plan for when the Ven arrived.
"Renna heard his announcement and was disturbed. Then she redoubled her efforts to contemplate possible futures. Her machines were able to give her the answer: Reyndell planned to kill everyone and turn all the witches into thralls. The machines even correctly predicted that he intended to pull the water from the Sister World. She confronted him with pointy questions about his plan in public. He foolishly revealed too much to her, and she confirmed that her machines predicted his intent.
"Renna instead had a plan to build flying machines capable of flying through space, send herself up to the Ven before it arrived and drink in the venthys, making herself orders of magnitude more powerful. Then when the Ven arrived, she would be able to keep a population of witches in line with her vast power, making thralls if needed. This plan is obviously better, however Reyndell claimed that he already contemplated that possibility and that it was impossible for a single witch, no matter how powerful, to control the current population of the world if they all suddenly gained their powers. The only solution was to have a smaller population of witches who were all thralls, with a small group of breeders that were already trusted.
"Renna and Reyndell could not come to an agreement. After hundreds of years of quarreling, Renna finally thought she had enough technology to kill Reyndell. So she attacked, and her initial attacks failed. Reyndell felt betrayed by the attack and retaliated brutally. Thus the war between House Renna and House Marunavi began. I lived through those days, and nobody thought that the war was going to become what it did."