The next day Seriana, Hassina, Fireesha, Galeena, Mirio and I all met in the open, flat area atop the unfinished, permanent keep that our people were constructing. There, under the white light of the morning mists and with the regular sounds of the elves working below us in our ears—the crack of stone, the scrape of the saws, the shouted questions and answers—we had our meeting.

The high council met every morning, and the meetings ran long. The minutiae of the day still had to be attended: every elf in the settlement was laboring under our orders, if indirectly, and that came with a glut of administrative and executive decision-making that never seemed to run dry.

Today would be an especially long and important meeting of the High Council. We had many matters to discuss now that our relationship with Lord Akkakesh was seemingly established and stable. We didn’t just have to make our plans for how to proceed with our concerts, now that they would be a regular thing: we had to decide what to do with our [Air] keys, and we had to lay out a plan for bringing about my promised ritual.

But before all this, we had to chew out Hassina.

“First,” I began. Then I faltered. I looked at Hassina, and her cool, reserved face told me she knew exactly what was coming. “Let me say that I have admired you so much of late, your holiness.”

Hassina seemed utterly uncharmed by the compliment. “Do go on,” she said flatly.

“I imagine it was no easy thing to tell the story of when Narana came to Ithmel Bel during the hour of tales,” I said. “And yet you did. Elves have criticized you for it, as you must have known they would—and yet you did all the same, because you saw it to be right.”

Hassina was silent, eying me warily.

“You were the one who spoke of unity in your tale,” I continued. “And in the wake of your story, I did what I thought best and shared my thoughts on it with no-one. Of the many messages I felt your tale contained, one was a warning against frail unity, false unity: that unity which comes from putting total faith and obedience in one elf—me. Military affairs demand a rigid chain of command, but civilization grows brittle if it leaves no room for deliberation.”

I paused. No one spoke: they saw that I clearly had more to say, and had no intention of interrupting me. Mirio and Galeena both looked uncomfortable, neither of them looking directly at me or Hassina—but then both of them were unused to being councillors.

“I know that many spoke against you in the wake of your tale, and had I commanded them to silence they would have fallen silent, but only for the wrong reasons: only because of the very thing that you warned against. So I said nothing. It’s always been my right to say nothing, when the tales are told where I’m the antagonist.”

I let out a soft sigh. I wondered if perhaps I should have given my praise more freely instead of saving it and using it as preface to an admonishment. But I hadn’t known that was what I was doing at the time, hadn’t known that she was going to do what she’d done at the concert.

“But now let me say how much I admire you for telling it when you did,” I said. “I thought of it last night as I watched you conduct. I thought not only of your story, but your insistence that we judge Luthiel in the proper time.” I paused. Hassina’s stony face told me she knew full well that the knife was coming. “Yet now I wonder if your boldness is rooted somewhere other than wisdom.”

I leveled my gaze at her. “Why did you choose to tell no-one that you intended to add further risk to our concert by mixing in music that you knew Lord Akkakesh would not enjoy?”

Hassina’s cool expression was unchanged. It was easy to see why: I led this council, and to imply that she’d done what she’d done out of ego was a serious accusation against her. But I had to do it—otherwise it would have to come from the mouth of someone else, possibly Seriana, and that person would be the target of Hassina’s ire. Or no-one would say anything, and that would be worse.

“Lux Irovex,” she said. “It’s self-aggrandizement to admire someone for having the courage to challenge you.”

I blinked. I really had gotten to her. But I wouldn’t argue with being called self-aggrandizing. “Yes,” I said.

Hassina tried to control her breathing—but I could hear well enough to hear her fuming, just a little. “I was trusted with coordinating this concert, yes? You were the one who told me to dance. So I danced.”

“I see,” I said.

“If I must defend myself for taking my responsibilities so seriously, then so be it,” said Hassina. “We don’t even know yet what we could gain from a more thorough connection with these elementals. The more Lord Akkakesh comes to understand us, the more likely they are to see what beneficial exchanges can be made. Surely somewhere, Akkakesh will find something more than music to want from us? Surely a greater understanding of this new kind of storm lord will be to our benefit?”

Her voice was calm, measured. She looked to each of the councillors as she spoke. “Think of what we mean to accomplish with the [Air] we gained on that mountaintop: we mean to explore. We can send our people to fly over distant, unknown territories. We know they’ll be dangerous, we know that eventually, some of them will not return. What’s more, we have no specific knowledge of what gain there is to be had by sending them here or there. Yet we do it anyway, because even without knowing the gains to be had, we know they exist.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “What territory could be a more worthy place to try, than the mind of the other? What could be more worthy of risk than trying to help the creatures who we fear learn to understand us?”

I saw the gleam of passion in her eyes as she spoke, her fervor giving her more and more certainty as the words flowed. I didn’t interrupt her to give the obvious correction: I wanted to hear all her justifications.

“Ancient mages have gleaned out methods to translate even the most fervent of passions between unlike psyches,” Hassina said. “What if Lord Akkakesh could be shown exactly how an elf feels when they hold a baby in their arms? What could better protect us from that which we rightly fear?”

She looked around at us—and the confidence that had filled her face as she spoke seemed to falter in the silence. Mirio at least seemed somewhat interested in what she had to say, but the rest of us were quiet, completely unmoved.

“She didn’t ask why you did it.”

It was Seriana, and her voice had a chill to it. In the light of the morning, the green strands in the archmage’s hair seemed almost luminous.

“She asked why you didn’t tell us.” Seriana leaned forward, steepling her fingers. “And since you have not answered, I’ll take the time to add to the admonishment that Lux Irovex has already given. Did we not deliberate many times on how to best minimize the risk of what we were attempting? The best of our earthshapers took time away from constructing the defenses here to bore a hole deep into the peak—all to minimize risk. A hundred mages composed and carved spells, channeled mana and then stood at standby—all to minimize risk. Dozens of our most capable stormcallers stood watch upon that peak, ready to take a bolt of lightning for you—all to minimize risk.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Seriana turned her cool expression on me. “Some of us manage military affairs, and the authority to gamble with lives—including their own—is a given.” Saying this, she then turned to Hassina. “But as civil servants, you and I have not been trusted with that privilege except in the direst of circumstances. True, you were trusted with the authority to arrange the concert how you chose, and the concert itself was a dangerous affair, but one could still make the argument that by risking elvish lives without consulting Lux Irovex, you overstepped your authority. I won’t make that argument, and I see that Aziriel has not, either. Yet one could.”

Hassina heard all of this, her face impassive. “Is that all, Archmage?”

“To me the question is a two-pronged fork,” Seriana continued, ignoring her. “Is it the case, your Holiness, that you did not see that what you chose to do added an unnecessary risk? Or is it the case that you did see, but chose not to consult us—perhaps because you saw no use in our thoughts on the matter. Because you knew without needing to check that all our knowledge and wisdom would have only made for pointless argument?”

Hassina’s expression seemed to harden—but only for a moment. Doubt flickered on her face as she considered what Seriana had asked. At last her fortress of impassivity crumbled, and she simply looked tired. “The latter, Archmage. I….” She sighed, then composed herself again. “I wanted an in-road. But I know that you only agreed to the concert once Aziriel and Zirilla were in favor of it, so I doubted you’d be in favor of my plan. And Aziriel favors caution everywhere—I doubted she’d see our long-term chances for survival were better if I made the attempt.”

“You were right on that count,” I said. “An in-road, you say? We could have asked Akkakesh to listen to your stories in a year’s time, at the concert we play in their honor. Why compound the risks?”

“I was given authority over the concert,” Hassina said, her face a stubborn scowl. “I used that authority as I thought best.”

“I’ve no doubt that you’re more familiar with the precise legal terms and definitions which show that you had the right to do as you did,” I said. “But that’s not what matters here, and I’ve no doubt you can see that also.”

Hassina blanched, seemed to think of a reply—but fell silent. At last she hung her head. “Yes, Lux Irovex.”

I let the moment stand for a while, then moved on. “As it is, everything has worked in our favor. Once Akkakesh’s stormling arrives, we can negotiate a schedule for our concerts and the exchange of payment. With that done, we can get a more rigid idea of how many personnel, and how often, we’ll be committing to the mountain’s peak.”

“I’ll want some elves with [Elemental Telepathy] just watching the concerts,” said Hassina. Her voice was still somewhat deflated, but her repudiation was apparently not going to interfere with her duties. “I want them making note of what the elementals like best so that when we’re selecting what to play we have some guides. And we’ll have to seriously consider whether to move lodgings into the mountain peak, along with an archive of our music.”

“Best to discuss it once our elemental diplomat arrives,” I said. “Though since we’re speaking in brief, I should say that in the days to come, I’ll be looking into acting on my own plans for the elementals. I want to see if we can create permanent structures that function as instruments for them—like wind chimes, but larger and more varied. Perhaps if we built some scaffolding into the mists, that might be the best place.”

“They’d essentially be little toys,” said Fireesha, apparently willing to speak now that we’d finished admonishing Hassina. “But we could make them quite sophisticated. The instruments that are played with [Air Magick] alone can create some extraordinary sounds.”

“We’d need to make them extremely sturdy,” said Seriana. “You know how a toddler likes to wield a lute like a club—elementals are worse.”

“[Armor] enchantments, perhaps,” said Fireesha. “I’m sure we could use [Body] if the materials are right.”

“We can think on it today,” I said, wanting to head off any deeper discussion. “And put forth some names of people we can spare who would be good choices to assess the viability of the idea and put some things together, if need be. I may not have the time myself: I’m likely to be directing and protecting some of our outer airborne keyshapers and scouts.” I looked around at all of them. “Which brings us to one of the other issues this council needs to discuss.”

Now it was Galeena who spoke first—she was the head shaper, after all, and the direct superior of every keyshaper we were sending out on the back of a wildheart’s spectral broadwing to collect [Earth], [Water], [Light], and [Wild] skill keys. Essentially, now that we’d established ourselves, Galeena was at the heart of one of our most important endeavors.

“What do we do with the added [Air]?” she asked, finishing my thought with a smile on her face. “Zirilla has already made a fairly comprehensive assessment of our people’s aptitudes—no matter what we choose to do with the skill keys, we’ll at least know who is next in line to receive them. My own desire for these keys is about what you might expect: I think we ought to put more of the wildhearts in the air and have them carry our keyshapers.”

“Is there even any argument in favor of our other options?” Fireesha asked. “The keyshapers are bringing in skills keys at the rate of hundreds a day, and we’ve barely gotten any of them in the air. I know we can make our existing forces faster, or create some fully airborne hunting parties, but neither of these things really compares to the ability to convert our abundant essence into keys.”

“I’m not sure how much longer essence will be abundant,” said Hassina. “Our levels are getting higher every day. I don’t want to bore everyone with the numbers, but our average class tier is about 2.7 across 2655 elves. Raising us all from level 20 to level 25 is coming at a cost of almost 80 million essence. From 25 to 30, 165 million. Yes, on this world our hunting parties are impressing everyone by bringing me absurd amounts of essence each day—but almost everyone is going to have a level limit past 30 by the time the week is out. And when you add the cost of our levels to the essence that our flying key shapers are spending….”

She didn’t need to do any more math to make her point. It took a keyshaper 500 essence to create a rank 1 skill key by stripping the aspect from the world around them. A rank 2 skill key cost 1000 essence to fuse out of 3 rank 1’s—and thus had an essence value of 2500 overall. A rank 3 skill key cost 15,000 essence and 4 rank 2’s—25,000 overall. When considering the extra skill cores that we all got just in the first 10 levels, outfitting everyone with decent skills was a far more costly proposition than just keeping our levels at their limit, and would be for a long, long time.

“We’ll be diverting our essence almost entirely into the formation of skill keys, soon,” I said. “That, and our permanent enchantments. But even with the cost of skill keys, it will be a while before our key shapers don’t have the essence they need to do their work. Until then, I agree that our [Air] keys should go to getting as many of them working as possible—with one caveat.”

“That being?” Galeena asked.

“When our people start travelling further from the settlement to strip aspect and shape new keys, we need to bolster them with more [Air] skills. I want them all fast and powerful. We’ve been lucky enough not to lose people to this world yet, but that only continues as long as we stay cautious. I want them ready to outrun or outfight the unexpected.”

“That seems reasonable,” said Galeena.

“And I have something else to burden your calculations with, Hassina.”

“Oh?”

“My ritual,” I said simply.

All of them seemed to grow more attentive. It was what we’d all been waiting for, after all.

“It requires more than five thousand [Primeval 3] skill keys.”

Hassina made a small noise of disbelief.

“Yes,” I said. “By my count, that component will cost about 650 million essence.”

“That component?” she asked.

“I’ll also need some loose essence,” I said. “An enormous amount of distilled primeval mana. In concentrations that are likely going to involve not only well-constructed mana wells, but a great deal of blood and decay magic as well. And I’m afraid that’s not all.”

“Oh?” Hassina asked. “Should I be making notes?”

“Just one more thing,” I said, smiling a little. “I’ll need to kill and harvest the blood of something… very, very powerful.”