Vylkher and the squad really knew how to apply pressure without overtly doing it; I loved watching professionals at work. In fairness, most of it was taking advantage of the golden situation we’d handed them. All they had to do was just walk in formation surrounding us in calm silence, responding to any attempts at conversation with noncommittal monosyllables or nothing at all.

Our party bore up under this pretty much exactly as I expected. Rhydion remained inscrutable as always; Aster and Harker, being professionals, were terse and tense but did not show unease beyond that, and Dhinell grew increasingly frazzled with every passing hour until Rhydion took to bringing her up alongside him so he could talk soothingly to her. I, of course, was fine, owing to that same old benefit of knowing more than anyone else here did. The squirrels might hold that advantage over everyone else (except Aster, to an extent), but they didn’t know about my goblin reinforcements following and surrounding us just below ground level, or about Biribo feeding me updates on that and on the other squirrels moving around in the vicinity. Nor, presumably, did they know how easily I could kill them all if they should give me a reason, or that I could demolish their entire village with a thought the second I gained line of sight on the khora it was built in.

Which wasn’t to say that my walk was without tension. I really wanted to sit down and work on my spell combination. Shock was nice in and of itself but I was sure it would yield some good shit once I was able to start combining it. Unfortunately spell combination took time, focus, and a lot of mental energy; it wasn’t something I could do while hiking. Nor something I’d dared to do while camping, both because depriving myself of proper sleep while on this excursion seemed like a bad idea, and because I was mindful of Biribo’s warning about Rhydion’s helmet. I doubted he would recognize spell combination, given how only one person had it at a time with at least multiple centuries between them, but I didn’t want to risk him catching on that I was doing something unusual and magically extreme.

So we walked in tense silence, through the uniform cold and occasional brief snowfall, for most of the remainder of the day. The afternoon light was just beginning to darken, and I was starting to wonder about the distance, when Harker grunted significantly and pointed up ahead. Between two khora I could now see a new kind I hadn’t encountered before: twice as tall as most khora, vivid crimson, and covered in enormous spikes.

“Yes,” Vylkher stated in response to the question no one had bothered to ask. “We are nearly there. Night comes; you have been invited and thus shall be welcomed until dawn, so long as hospitality is not broken.”

“Your courtesy is appreciated,” Rhydion said, nodding deeply.

Vylkher bowed to him, which made Dhinell gasp in scandalized annoyance, which I had to figure was at least part of the reason he did it. His furry face gave nothing away, though, and we continued on our path in silence.

The sight became clearer as we drew close, and I was almost disappointed by the mundanity. The squirrels lived in…well, treehouses. They hadn’t carved into the shells of the nhithra khora itself, merely using its huge spikes as attachment points for platforms and bridges. Onto most of these platforms were built walls and roofs, all made of cut planks of akorshil. They looked more or less like wooden treehouses from Earth, except in the pastel and jewel tones of khora rather than shades of brown. The thick ropes helping hold everything together were a very typical earth tone, however.

Also, the closer we got, the more I couldn’t help noticing the lack of any ladders leading up to the squirrel village. Visible ones, anyway. I could tell they would be necessary; even squirrels wouldn’t be able to climb the khora itself, which was smooth as glass in texture, with its thorny outcroppings too far apart to make handholds, and most also too big to grip. So they had some means of withdrawing access to the village. Made sense.

Instead of up, we were led down. Vylkher brought us to the edge of a kind of ravine formed between the roots of two of the enormous khora, leading into the space in the middle of these colossal specimens, directly below the village proper.

“The Seer waits ahead,” he stated, bowing again. “You are guests here, and will be safe. My people will defend ourselves if attacked. Otherwise, you shall not be harmed.”

“Thank you,” Rhydion said politely, “for your time and your assistance. We are honored by the trust you have shown, and will repay it fully.”

“Hum.” Vylkher blinked once, almost sleepily, then stepped back. His comrades did likewise, taking up an honor guard position flanking the entrance to the ravine.

Rhydion turned and began striding down into the shadows below. With nothing else for it, the rest of us followed.

I felt a subtle tugging at my scarf as Biribo lifted his head just enough to whisper right below my ear.

“Squirrels all around, boss; they’re at the base of the khora, hidden from view and just out of reach from the floor down here. Most armed. Bows and arrows, darts, and also containers of liquid. Don’t start any shit with this Seer.”

I hadn’t been planning to, but still, good to know.

The space between the massive khora’s equally massive root system was clearly used for ceremonial purposes, and appropriately spooky. I didn’t know whether something about nhithra caused this or the squirrels had hollowed it out deliberately, but the whole area had been stripped of most of the soil, leaving only hard-packed dirt along the bottom, giving way here and there to bare rock. All around us, the smooth red walls that were the rock-hard shells of the roots ascended to ridges behind which the tribe now lurked, with the khora superstructure towering above. Intricate carvings and paintings covered almost the whole surface, apparently just decorative or at most ceremonial in purpose—it wasn’t writing in any conventional sense, anyway, since I couldn’t read it despite my Blessing of Wisdom.

It was obvious where we were meant to go. Though there were other corridors branching off between the roots, the arrangement was far from complex and the destination was visible from the entrance. We carefully descended the sloping path to a wide, empty space in the center of the formation. The towers of khora rose up on all sides, the bridges and platforms of the village suspended above casting shadows across it; ropes stretching across the space were hung with long streamers of charms which created a constant rattling, chiming and humming from the cold wind that whistled through this chasm.

And in the center of the depression, behind a low altar upon which a wide, shallow bowl held a bright asauthec flame, stood the Seer.

I was a little surprised, finally. When you picture a village’s major oracular figure you tend to think of someone elderly, but this squirrel woman was trim, healthy and upright in a way that suggested youth. Their furry faces obscured many of the signs of aging, and her fur was a pattern of tan and white that would tend to conceal graying, but I had the distinct impression she was of prime fighting age.

None of that was what commanded my attention, though.

The Seer had a squirrel sitting on her shoulder. Not another squirrel person, a squirrel. And yet, not a squirrel, to judge from the fact that it was a gleaming white and seemed to have a subtle, luminous aura, with blue eyes that glowed like LEDs. As we all straggled to a halt before the altar, the squirrel stood up on its hind legs and pressed its nose against the Seer’s ear, apparently whispering.

“Is that…?” Dhinell asked quietly.

“Hn,” Harker grunted. “A familiar. Blessed with Wisdom, don’t see those every day.”

Ssssshit.

Okay. My objective here was ultimately to get the squirrels to voluntarily join the Dark Crusade. I had to maneuver them toward that right under Rydion’s nose without letting him, with his mysterious helmet powers and general political savvy, figure out what I was up to. As if that wasn’t going to be enough of a trial, I now had to do it in front of somebody whose entire job was seeing through secrets.

How much did she know? There was no way to be sure, no telling what Wisdom perks she had—and Wisdom perks might do fucking anything, in this bullshit unbalanced cheater-enabling magic system. Bare minimum, she had to know she was dealing with a Champion of a Goddess; familiars could identify Blessings on sight and hers would be able to tell her I had all three. Did she even know which I was? The Seer was studying each of us in turn. Even as I rapidly considered the possibilities, her eyes lingered on me for a moment and she smiled.

Smugly.

I could live with smug. Smug meant she was going to hold this over me, which beat the hell out of blurting it in front of this whole company. With Rhydion standing right there and a host of heavily armed squirrels lurking above, I did not want to try fighting my way out of this.

“Seer,” Rhydion said, nodding his helmet deeply to her.

“Paladin,” the squirrel woman replied. Her voice improved my ability to estimate her age by a bit; she was probably older than me, but I doubted much more than thirty. Younger than Minifrit, certainly.

“We are grateful for your time and attention,” he said. “The undead are a plague upon us all; they do not discriminate by faction or race. Our mission is to seek out and destroy their source. May I implore the aid of your people?”

The Seer remained impassive; her familiar whispered in her ear again and her big fluffy tail twitched twice.

“Everything in its place and time,” she said after considering Rhydion for a drawn-out moment. “Our leader will decide whether we shall help you. I will decide whether he shall see you. His business is in facts. Mine is in truth.”

Interesting; separate hierarchies for the religious and political leadership, like the wolf tribe. The cats’ system was a lot more complicated, and I hadn’t wrapped my head around all of the details. Maybe my familiarity with the wolves would help here…

“I’m sorry, but… Facts, and truth? Could you clarify that?” Aster asked pointedly.

The Seer smiled at her. “With a long and involved discussion of spiritual philosophy which at least one of us would enjoy, yes, I could. Here and now, what matters is that I will be the judge of who and what you are, and the leader will judge what we shall do with you. If, that is, I judge it worth his attention.”

“Then consider us at your disposal,” Rhydion interjected before anyone else could derail the conversation. “What do you require of us?”

Instead of answering, the Seer stared at him, and slowly reached out one hand over the flames. She opened her fingers, dropping a fistful of powder into the burning oil, which caused a gout of spicy-sweet smoke to billow up. My vision wavered—

Heal.

Everyone’s heads snapped around at the pink flash around me. I held a hand over my nose, waving away smoke with the other. “Sorry. Reflex. Y’know, it’s considered polite to give people warning before you administer mind-altering drugs to them. Or, if you’re feeling generous, ask permission.”

“You’re a wary one,” the Seer said, insufferably amused. “Peace, Lord Seiji. You have been invited here under hospitality and will not be harmed or permitted to suffer harm so long as hospitality is respected in kind. My spirit is primed with the necessary medicine; your senses will not be affected beyond the first rush.”

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“Warning would still be appreciated,” Rhydion said evenly. The others had backed away from the smoke, leaving him and I standing before her with the rest of the party a step behind us.

The Seer inclined her head deeply in a posture which mirrored his earlier one, then straightened. With both hands, she made an expansive, clearly ritualistic gesture, as if gathering up the smoke from the fire and wafting it toward her own face. The smell was…not exactly pleasant, but true to her word, I didn’t notice any further effects after that first rush of intense pungency had caused my eyes to water.

“I will know what brings you to us,” she said, and the cadence of her voice had changed. This was now ritual. The familiar’s sapphire eyes shifted to fix on each of us in turn, following the gaze of the Seer as she studied our party one by one. “Your business of the moment is not important.”

“It’s a little important,” Harker muttered. Rhydion made a sharp gesture at him.

“It is what brings you,” the squirrel woman intoned. “What drives you. Who you are is too large a question. But…what you believe.”

She closed her eyes, inhaling slowly and deeply through her nose, repeatedly wafting the smoke toward her face with both hands. After filling her lungs completely she let the air out far more quickly from her mouth; it was visibly smoky. Finally her eyes snapped open, and I could not be certain it wasn’t just the firelight or the pageantry, but I thought they held a soft, golden luminosity that wasn’t there before.

“You believe in nothing, save yourself,” the Seer stated, staring directly at Harker. “How paltry. You, in the same, but with…layers.” Her gaze switched to Dhinell, who bristled slightly. “Religion, culture, all channeled through that sole fixation on what is best for you. No less paltry, and the more contemptible for it.”

The priestess was practically quivering with indignation, but very much to my surprise, she kept her mouth shut. There was much glancing at Rhydion involved; at least his presence served as a mute reminder to stay on mission.

“You believe in your lord,” the squirrel woman continued, turning to fix her stare on Aster. “Not without virtue, that. Nothing exceptional about it, though, nor interesting.”

“Well, you’re just full of judgments,” I retorted. “And what do you believe in, that’s so much more profound than the welfare of your own little tribe?”

“Lord Seiji,” Rhydion said, more sharply than he’d ever spoken to me.

The Seer’s shoulders shook, though, with quiet and brief laughter. “Ah…and then, there is you two. Here, I find more complexity than I can see through at a glance. One allows the humiliation of his subordinates in service to a higher cause; one bridles at a much milder critique of his. And neither the one a person would naturally suspect. Interesting!”

She lowered her hands to fold in front of her waist, smiling with a kind of…canny benevolence. I don’t know how else to describe the expression, but it did not put me at ease.

“I will have truth,” the Seer stated. “To tell me falsehood will cost you everything. Speak your truth, then. What do you believe?”

Her eyes focused on Rhydion, then me. He and I turned our heads slightly to look at each other sidelong.

“Aside from the superficial and obvious,” the Seer added, with another amused curl of her lips. “’I believe in the Goddess’ and ‘I believe this is silly,’ respectively. Tell me your deeper truth.”

I had to grin at that, albeit reluctantly.

Lucky for me, the Seer turned her expectant stare back to Rhydion.

“Deeper truth,” he said slowly. “I believe many things, Seer. I gather that you seek…a foundational answer. The belief that, below and supporting all others, motivates my soul and all my actions?”

She canted her head slightly to the side for a moment in a gesture that was half nod, half shrug, and all annoyingly inscrutable.

“I believe in people.” Rhydion’s voice was quiet, but firm, and unhesitating. The conviction was audible in every word. “Perhaps… Yes, I think, even more deeply than I believe in Sanora. A goddess is a priceless source of guidance, inspiration, hope, countless virtuous things to elevate the spirit, but a goddess is also a distant thing. It is for the people that I do all that I do, and because I have faith in them that makes it seem worth the effort. People want to be better than they are—they want to do right, to uplift themselves and one another. To live in peace, with love. I believe that they will do so, if only they are shown how, inspired to try, and given the opportunity. All around me, everywhere, I see people failed by those they trust—denied that opportunity and that faith. But I believe that things can be better. One fingerhold at a time, however many lifetimes it takes, we can raise people up, to become all that they have the potential to be.”

He stopped speaking, and stayed quiet long enough I thought surely he must be done. But the Seer continued staring fixedly at his helmet, and I followed her lead. Indeed, finally, he added in a bare whisper that resonated with fervent certainty.

“They are worth it.”

Slowly, the Seer nodded once at him. “And that is your truth.”

She turned to gaze expectantly at me.

“I, uh… Well, that was a hard production to follow,” I admitted. “Look, lady, I’m an atheist. If you wanted me to talk about the things I don’t believe in, I could do that all night. This, though, uh… This is something I haven’t given much thought.”

The Seer tilted her head slightly to one side, just staring at me.

“Okay, any thought,” I acknowledged. “Like, ever.”

“Then this is an important moment for you, Lord Seiji,” she said, again with that amused little smile. “Think on it. Give it the time it takes and be certain, because all of this will end, immediately and without amity, if you try to tell me falsehood.” Her smile widened, and there was something implacable behind the superficially gentle expression. “These others follow the two of you—it is your beliefs, your hearts, that tell me what you will do. And the tension between you that will tell me how it will go. I will hear this truth, or you will leave this land.”

I inhaled, tasting the frigid winter air, the incongruous stank of whatever hoodoo she’d put in that brazier. What did I believe? Not fucking much, to be honest.

“The hell is an atheist?” Harker muttered from somewhere behind me, followed immediately by a muffled thump as somebody elbowed him.

Belief? I’ve never been an adherent of any political philosophy—that was really starting to bite me on the ass here on Ephemera. I could tell you exactly what’s stupid and wrong about every major system, but none had positively impressed me. Being a child of two countries and cynically realistic about both, I can’t say I’ve ever felt very patriotic. As for religion… Sure, Japanese daily life is filled with little rituals, and they mostly have some origin in Buddhism or Shinto, but that’s just…stuff we all do. Culture. It was never significant to me, except as a set of general expectations for getting by in society. I was acquainted with Christianity from my time spent in California, as my grandparents had gotten into it. I could see why it appealed to people, but to be frank, Christianity as Americans practice it tends to either amuse or scare me.

What did I believe? Why was I doing this? Because I couldn’t go home and Virya would horribly kill me if I didn’t, of course. But now that I actually considered the question… That wasn’t all. I had changed a lot in my short time here. I was driven by more than survival and self-interest. I just had never sat down and reflected on what. What was I doing? Why was I doing all this?

I thought about all the misery I had seen. The bloodshed, the despair, the diseased and hopeless and abandoned. The casual cruelty of those who elevated themselves above it, from smirking Fflyr highborn to Virya grinning as she twisted my spine nearly in half. My constant…frustration.

And suddenly, I laughed.

The Seer smiled; everyone else stared at me in a mixture of expectation and alarm.

“I believe,” I said as soon as I could speak clearly again, “in people.”

Rhydion’s armor rasped almost imperceptibly as he shifted position to give me a more direct look.

“You’re not supposed to lie,” Aster hissed from behind me. I ignored her.

“I believe in the darkness in people.” I spoke to the Seer, the words flowing from me as if suddenly liberated from some grim confinement. “People will forsake and abandon and betray almost anything if they’re pressed over it, and you know what, why not? I don’t think I even blame them anymore. The universe is unfeeling chaos and life is mostly suffering; who are any of us to judge anyone else for cracking under the pressure? Loyalty, love, virtue, none of it stands up when it’s truly tested. But you know what never fails?”

My own clenched fist rose in my vision before me; I hadn’t actually decided to brandish it, but the gesture felt too appropriate to drop. I was grinning, I knew, reveling in the unexpected freedom of articulating something I hadn’t even consciously considered before.

“Anger. Time and time again, I have seen people stand up, turn on their tormentors, and break the wheel. Win, when they absolutely should not have been able to. All the pain, the humiliation—if you only figure out how to burn it the right way, it becomes fuel. Rage grants energy that will roar when love flickers out. Hatred keeps you focused no matter what oppression and drudgery is imposed on you. So long as people can find the will to fight back, I believe there’s hope. We can make a better world. We can be free, and stronger, and have peace and space to catch our breath without having to scrabble and claw for every scrap. And the only thing that will get us there is being too pissed off to stop.”

Wind whistled through the canyon, carrying the biting chill of the winter evening, the quietly odd music of all the charms dangling above us.

Slowly, the Seer blinked her eyes once, expression inscrutable.

“And that,” she said quietly, “is your truth.”

We gazed at each other in thought for a moment.

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” she added frankly. “You’re a scary guy, aren’t you, Lord Seiji?”

I settled back into an upright posture, lowering my fist, and let my grin relax into a smile. A calm, serene, beatific smile, just like hers. I looked pointedly at her familiar, and then back into her eyes.

“Yup.”

Aster began muttering constantly under her breath, mostly too low to be audible. The only phrases I caught were “needs a hug” and “punch him in the kidneys.”

Rhydion was still staring directly at me. More even than usual, I’d have given a lot in that moment to know what his face looked like.

“Truth I asked,” the Seer finally intoned, “and truth you have given me in good faith. I have…the answers I sought. Perhaps I do not know them yet, but you have given me much upon which to think, and meditate.” She paused, tilting her head again, then nodded once. “What an interesting group you are. I think…that your quest is worthy of support. Very well, you shall go before our leader, to plead your case to him.”

Rhydion turned his focus back to her, and deliberately folded down his hands in the traditional Fflyr gesture. “We are grateful for your consideration, Seer. If the Goddess grants it, we can reach an accord with your leader, and work for our common good.”

“Oh, goodness, no,” she said pleasantly. “He’s not gonna give you anything, not a chance in hell. But hey, you might as well ask him anyway. It’s not as if you have any better ideas.”