Despite everything I had gone through to gain my boons, and the handful of storm winds whipping me with everything from snow to sleet and gusts dry enough set twigs on fire, I stayed in the sphere of storms. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to reach up even to plateau, much less the rest of world, with how self contained the storm was and the goddess’s veil on top of that, but exhaustion didn’t leave much room for thought and I had made a promise.

I could feel the wind whispering boon waiting to catch a word and carry it off, waiting to whisper a message in my ear. Much like how I could sense the shadows from our first boon. It wasn’t exactly suited to listen in on whoever and wherever I wanted, but Esie could be right about things acting oddly here and I had the advantage of the Twin Founts’ blessing.

So I laid on the ground as the storm continued to batter me and focused on the potential of the boon and in the center of my focus I placed the best image I had of Azabel: the goddess’s half broken statue near the Rookery. I urged the wind to take me beyond the border, beyond anything familiar, and pushed the wind to tell me an snippets it caught about her.

For the briefest moment the storm of storms seemed to pause, stretch in my mind’s eye. Suddenly, it wasn’t just here, swirling around me, but it was elsewhere, everywhere. Little pieces of storms and weather all over the world. The scale of it—the duality—even in that briefest of moments threatened to push my mind past its limit.

I was laying on the outcropping in the storm, but I was also an angry roil of wind leading the vanguard of a thunderstorm, a fleck of snow swirling into an open doorway, a droplet splashing down into a lake and being subsumed, the gust playfully tugging on trees of a kind I had never see before, I was—

The weight of the goddess’s attention pressed on me. Snapped me out of the vision and all I wanted to do was shrivel in on myself. This might be another infinitely small piece of Her attention like it had been for the Dark Sight boon, but there was no way She would ever take kindly to me trying to pry information out about Her sister without Her permission.

Surely, that would be seen as a betrayal and there was nothing the goddess liked less.

Hear what I cannot.

Surely, the goddess would never admit to being unable to do something. Surely.

But that hadn’t been a wind spirit and it certainly wasn’t me. Nor was I dreaming. And the goddess was nothing if not mercurial.

I felt something seize upon my desire to hear something about Azabel that no one else knew, that could help Esie for whatever mysterious task she was trying to accomplish, along with my desire to learn more about the Lady Blue, hidden behind it.

The desire seemed to spin out of me and fuse with the storm winds. Nothing moved. It was the single greatest pocket of still air I had found since entering the wind spirits’ home. Then the winds descended and with them—cacophony.

Thousands of voices all speaking, yelling, whispering in a language I didn’t know and never heard before but all of them uttered the same name over and over again.

Azabel. Azabel.

Prayer more brazen than anything I had ever known. Demanding and asking and pleading. A torrent of words that made me wonder if the other goddess ever made her followers shut up.

That layer peeled away into an incessant background buzz to reveal another of people using the goddess’s name to praise her and her glory. Their wonder at their home and its bountiful nature. All the wonderful things she blessed upon them.

The wind spirits might not be able to translate the words, but hints of their meaning bled through how the wind spirits communicated, which in turn seemed to affect the wind whispering boon. Or perhaps that was another side effect of the impossible situation.

Another layer deeper, another thousand voices. Though this time they seemed to be telling stories. I got the sense of history, great feats, and deep loss. Perhaps these were the people telling Azabel’s myths and legends.

Each layer was similar. Another group of people speaking about the goddess, but each time the numbers seemed to lessen. Become more manageable, until the very end.

The last was a presence so vast that it encompassed all the others before it, but it also seemed diminished compared to Heliquat. Like the presence should have had Her strength and power, but something had whittled it away. Still strong, but possibly getting weaker.

Water. Moving, shifting, everywhere.

Somewhere my body was fighting the certainty it was drowning, so sudden was the change in what I was hearing. And the water was total. But slowly, my time growing up by a lake and then fighting on the shore, resolved what I was hearing.

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The water wasn’t moving normally like it would in a current or from the wind. No, all the shifting I was hearing was from multitudes of shifting bodies. So many that they changed the water’s natural flow.

Then a gust of wind got ahold of my body and tossed it into the air. Another gust billowed up under me and I got sense of finality as I was tossed from the ball of storms.

Hear no more.

I tumbled out onto the outcropping and stopped short a foot or so from its edge. My leg flung wide, so that my foot dangled over the impossible drop to the fog below, but, frustratingly, I couldn’t will up the strength to drag myself to safety.

My body was done. Despite the lack of wounds or bruises, it knew what it had gone through. Navigating the paths in the main area of the spirits’ home could be tiring on its own, never mind everything I went through after for the boons and now the Lady of Calm Waters’ favor.

My mind ached and felt numb. Something warm and wet dripped from my ears and nose, and I had just enough presence of mind left to be sure it was blood. Mortal minds didn’t seem to be made to witness all that the winds had offered up.

But there’d be time to dwell on all I heard later, just like with everything else that had happened. It hurt to think on it for now, and…secondly, I needed to get up. Go back to the plateau and show that I had gained both boons. Check on Prevna. Perhaps see if Mishtaw had a similar experience when she gained her second boon in the storm. I could decided what I’d tell Esie when I had more focus and my body wasn’t trying to pull me into memories simply due to how weak I was. Like how I’d been too tired to sit up properly when I infected my foot after stepping on a hook.

My mark mark wasn’t prickling like it had then though. So that was something to hold onto. To remember.

I heard footsteps coming towards me and despite my best efforts I didn’t really manage to shift my head or keep my eyes open. When I felt two pairs of familiar hands my ability to stay awake deserted me entirely.

- -

Later I learned that while the wind spirits didn’t allow whisper women into their home during the trial, my antics seemed to have ended the trial early at the end of the third night, so Mishtaw and Prevna were able to come down the ramp in the mountainside and collect me. It seemed the wind spirits weren’t as keen to carry me themselves after they flung me out of the storm.

There was no guarantee that the wind spirits would have kept the trial going for another day, but no one could deny that the winds had a sudden shift before everyone still in the spirits’ home was plucked up and shoved out of the veil.

Everyone in my cohort managed to earn the wind whispering boon before that, but there were two girls in the younger group that hadn’t managed to reach a wellspring before the sudden closure. It was unprecedented. Horrific, apparently, that they’d be split from everyone else in their cohort because they were slow.

I didn’t doubt I had made two new enemies, but I never bothered to pay attention to the other cohort so I didn’t know their names or faces. Well, Prevna told me their names were Rolana and Stelle, but she also wasn’t sure exactly what they looked like. Everyone else was hurried from the plateau shortly after the unprecedented occurrence back to the Seedling Palace.

I was allowed to stay since I was the cause of the disturbance and I was sleeping off my bone deep exhaustion. Prevna got to stay through Mishtaw’s influence and most of the other whisper women stayed because they wanted to figure out what happened. Prevna even said that there were some new arrivals who heard the gossip and arrived within an hour of Prevna and Mishtaw carrying me back to the top of the plateau.

All in all, whatever had happened this time had been much easier to notice than when I had my visions after gaining the dark sight boon. I told Mishtaw and Prevna that I had tried to use my wind whispering boon in the storm to see if it would work, but that something must have gone wrong and I got so exhausted that the winds had to push me out of the storm.

Both of them could tell that I was holding something back, but they didn’t press me on it. Not yet. That’d likely come later when they had their own thoughts in order and they thought I might be more willing to share.

Nothing of what I experienced, except for that last moment before the vision changed to water, seemed like it might be a true secret. Really, it had seemed to be a nation of people venerating their goddess in a variety of ways and then, in the water, the Lady Blue’s legions. Perhaps it would be good to insist just how many soldiers the Lady Blue seemed to have at her disposal to assault the goddesses’ shores, but I wasn’t sure if anything I had learned was really what Esie had wanted to know. There was nothing specific to pass along.

But, despite that, I knew I needed at least a little time to process everything I had experienced. There had been a number of things I would’ve previously thought impossible, or at least improbable, before earning these last two boons.

I still wasn’t sure if I had wind spirit existing within my skin, for one, and Mishtaw wasn’t much help in determining that answer to that question. She said they became our breath and ears for the wind whispering boon. So the spirit could be there, or it could have been a symbolic gesture for earning the boon.

Really, I wanted answers and so did everyone else, but there weren’t any clear ones to be had. I might have experienced it, and I might have felt the weight of the goddess’s eye, but part of me, a small part, couldn’t help but wonder if everything I had heard was actually due to the goddess’s power. Or if the wish maker might have somehow wormed her way in when I thought I was awake, but wasn’t, and given me a taste of what a real wish might be like. Perhaps if was her doing and not the goddess’s then that might be why everyone else had felt the change. Or perhaps no one would have felt anything if it was entirely a dream. Or it could have just been the nature of using winds rather than dark vision.

I had no way to be sure. Not now. Not unless the goddess struck me down for using a wish unintentionally. And perhaps the lack of punishment was answer enough: the goddess hadn’t given the people who rose Grislander out of nothing this long to ponder their mistakes.

The questions rolled around in my mind like the chaotic storm that had given me the opportunity to reach beyond my current capabilities. After the whole experience I could only be certain of three things concerning it: I had gained all my boons, I had completed another favor for the Lady of Calm Waters, and when I returned to the Seedling Palace it’d soon be time to pick which sect I’d give my loyalty to.