--- Balron ---
Lightning struck the tent in broad daylight.
"It's alive!" Xilly shouted from within.
Balron was looking on in concern. He was seated in a small tent a hundred meters away, along with Rania and a third person: Bob, the Senior Dungeon Builder they met in the feywild. Balron wasn't quite sure what Xilly and Galanys were doing in there, but he hoped that they would follow proper safety procedures while they bent the laws of magic to their whim and made reality weep. All appearances to the contrary, Xilly actually struck him as a responsible person. She just had a weird sense of humor.
A few seconds later, team Delta and team Shevon hurriedly exited Xilly's tent. They all carried burn marks on their clothes and terrified expressions on their faces. Lynn was drinking even more heavily than usual, while throwing worried glances back at the tent. Pymion was holding a very fancy looking shield with an ominous looking glowing rune on it. The shield was shackled to his arm for some reason. Balron still understood little of narrative reasoning or prophecies, but it looked to him like the two teams had their prophecy well in hand.
"Maybe my books didn't lie to me about how science works, after all?" Rania said from across the table. "I wonder if Xilly and Galanys are going to accidentally release a cool monstrosity that we then have to hunt down? That would maybe make up a little for the let down yesterday, when Cilia randomly exploded."
"Are you really upset about that, Rania?" Balron asked. "A lot of people could have died if that divine smite had hit the camp, and there is no telling what might have happened in a second fight against Cilia Ulein."
Rania sighed. "I guess I shouldn't be upset, then? I think it would have been really bad if the strike had hit the camp. I'm just disappointed in the narrative, is all. I was looking forward to an Epic Showdown, but it sucks that Epic Showdowns often come with Innocent Victims. It would be cool if we could just have a formally arranged Epic Showdown with the Bad Guys somewhere else, where no Innocent Civilians can get hurt. But I guess the Bad Guys don't want to do that because they would lose the element of surprise if they did."
She looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then continued: "Maybe an arranged Epic Showdown would work if all of us Good Guys promised to act surprised and not prepare too much when the Bad Guys invite us to fight them? That would keep the Epic Showdown fair for everyone."
"It sounds like you are trying to replace wars with tournaments." Balron responded. "That is unlikely to work. If the tournaments are fights to the death, then the bad guys will cheat. And if they aren't, then nothing stops the loser from coming back and fighting for real after they have lost the challenge."
Bob the Senior Dungeon Builder gave him a critical look. "I disagree. What she is asking for sounds less like a tournament to me and more like a formal challenge between nobles. Those are indeed effective ways to prevent conflicts from spiraling out of control."
"That may be different in the feywild than on the material plane." Balron countered. "It only works if the nobles have somebody above them who is stronger than both of them and can enforce that the terms of the duel will be honored. The only entities on the material plane who are powerful enough to enforce things like this are the major nations and the Old Powers. But this war is between two major nations and one Old Power, so there is nobody above them who could credibly enforce the terms of a formal challenge. Except for Denissa Mardok, but she does not care so long as the conflict doesn't start to threaten the entire world. Or mess with her libraries."
The fey looked at him for a few seconds, deep in thought, then agreed. "You may be right. You mortals don't have a stable enough power structure to have proper and reliable duels that will be honored. Your hierarchies are too shallow, and you can't just appeal to an archfey or a world spirit, or swear binding oaths to the things beyond them."
Rania looked disappointed. She sighed again, then went back to work on the sheet of paper in front of her.
She was filling out an interdimensional customs form to allow Bob to visit from the feywild. The laws for this were little known since they so rarely got used, but apparently the Coros had thought ahead and gotten Rania the necessary permissions and official titles to perform these kinds of functions, as a shaman in service to the military of Oruk.
"Your real name is kind of hard to pronounce, and your True Name is obviously private." Rania said to the Senior Dungeon Builder. "So we will stick to calling you Bob on the documents, if you have no objections.
“That’s fine by me.” Bob responded.
“Now then, I need to know the purpose of your visit."
Bob looked her directly in the eyes and pronounced in a solemn voice: "Shenanigans."
Rania rolled her eyes. "Well, yes. Obviously. But what kind of shenanigans? Actually, nevermind. This form has really a lot of stupid questions for categorizing different types of shenanigans and I don't think that it is very well thought out. So let me ask instead: Will you pinky promise to behave yourself?"
Bob's eyes widened, and he audibly gulped. After a few seconds of hesitation, he said "Yes. I pinky promise to behave myself."
Then Bob and Rania both reached out with their pinky fingers and shook on it. It all looked very serious, for such a childish gesture.
"Great!" Rania said with a bright smile. Then she handed Bob a badge. "Here is your badge! It gives you guest right within Oruk."
"Wait, what does a pinky promise do?" Balron asked. "There were a lot of contingencies covered on that form, and you just skipped over all of them!"
It made him rather nervous to see that. Surely there must be a reason for all those questions?
"Oh, that's because it's the third day of the week and the trees over there are acorns." Bob responded, as if that meant anything.
Upon seeing Balron's confused looks, Rania added: "That means that making a promise to 'behave yourself' is a clear reference to that prank with the noodles that the Lady of Still Waters played on the Duke of Late Harvests. It doesn't leave much wriggle room for pranks or deception."
"I see." Balron lied. "And this promise to behave yourself is binding? What happens if someone breaks such a pinky promise?"
Bob gasped out loud and put his hands over his mouth in horror.
"Don't even joke about that!" Rania admonished Balron.
Balron did not know how to respond to this apparent faux pas of his. Had that been insulting to Bob? He hoped not. The Senior Dungeon Builder was a delight to talk to and they had become fast friends over the past few days. He would hate to ruin this over a misunderstanding.
"Anyway, I think that covers everything you needed from me. I have got to go and check on Aranea now, so I will see you two later." Rania said. "She is training with Tanya and the war beasts so that she can learn to civilshape. I saw Tanya barking orders at her earlier and it sounded really mean, even though she was only barking figuratively this time, and not literally like yesterday, when she was a wolf. Aranea is really sweet and sensitive, so I want to be there for her so that all the shouting doesn't scare her."
Balron bid Rania goodbye, then turned to Bob: "Would you mind accompanying me while I inspect the camp? We can discuss our cooperation while we walk."
"I would be happy to." The fey replied as the two of them started walking.
The camp was relatively quiet. Soldiers were practicing their drills as usual, but they did not look particularly on edge. Mostly, they looked unsure and confused.
On the one hand, their leaders had announced that the war was caused by a misunderstanding and would soon be over. On the other hand, a divine intervention had blown up a large section of forest just a few hours later. Their assurances that no, that was totally just a one-off coincidence, were met with some skepticism by most of the soldiers.
It was a good thing that the soldiers remained vigilant, of course. The issue was just that they were now making up all kinds of rumors about what might really be going on. If it went on like this, their irrational chatter could soon cause an issue for operational security.
The situation was quite frustrating for Balron. He understood the technical aspects of security perfectly well, but he didn't have the first clue about how to fix these morale issues. Accounting for people's irrationality was always one of the greatest difficulties when designing security protocols. He was reminded of the time when his university was under attack by demons a few weeks ago and he discovered that the biomancer students had stored sports equipment on his runes, making them unusable.
Galanys might be of help there, if she wasn't currently occupied by Xilly's experiments. He was honestly expecting better of the Shan Kingdom, but he supposed in retrospect that it was too much to hope for greater discipline from a country that was only unified so recently. It was nothing like the military of Oruk, which was designed by one of the smartest people who ever lived.
"You mentioned yesterday that you have several hundred students at a time." Bob said. "I thought you were joking at first, but now I'm wondering. Is that really true?"
"Yes it is. A few hundred students per year is normal in the more popular courses. Is it very different for you?" Balron responded.
"You could say that. I usually have between two and six apprentices, and I have trained each of them a few thousand times. It's the same six every time."
Rania had explained this to Balron earlier, but even so it still sounded so strange to him: Since fey were immortal, they had a different concept of aging. They sometimes came into existence fully formed, but they also sometimes reverted to earlier stages of maturity. They would get younger and forget many of their life experiences, and then they would relive their lives from an earlier stage. In this way they were both constantly growing and changing, but also immortal and forever stuck. Bob claimed that he himself had regenerated more often than he could count.
The implications for their behavior were immense. Balron already had difficulties modeling the behaviors and idiosyncracies of normal people. How was he supposed to deal with this? He really wanted to trust his new friend. Bob was interesting and fun to talk to. And yet, he kept thinking back to his youth, when so many of his former colleagues were killed by fey who they thought were their friends. A cultural misunderstanding, Rania had called it. With such massive differences between mortals and the fey, tragedies like this were practically inevitable. Should he view Bob as a ticking time bomb, despite his friendly appearance?
In the end Balron decided to take a leap of faith. He might not understand the fey, but Rania did. And if she said that Bob could be trusted, then for once in his life Balron was going to do just that, and not spend his time anticipating and planning for a betrayal.
"It's a pity we can't visit the university proper. I would have loved to see so many students in one place." Bob continued.
There was an old Orukian law that forbade fey and other entities with known mind-affecting abilities from getting access to certain government buildings. A sensible law in principle, but counterproductive in this case.
"I have good news on that front." Balron responded. "Rania and I messaged a member of the Coros organization about this issue yesterday, and we asked them for help. They are pretty good at outmaneuvering these sorts of laws, and they seem to value Rania's opinion quite highly. I didn't expect much to come of it, but just this morning I received an answer back: They proposed building an entire new organization to facilitate your visits. They are going to call it CICE, or the Center for Interplanar Cultural Exchange.
"Your apprentices will be able to come and go as they please, with semi-permanent fairy gates. They ask all fey visitors to exchange gifts with them when they visit, as per the rules of hospitality. They gave me this list of appropriate gifts and asked me to show it to you. What do you think?"
He handed over a short list of items to Bob, who adjusted his monocle before reading it. "Oh, that won't be a problem. These all look like pretty cheap gifts to give, and some of the gifts they offer in return sound very valuable. I like the proposal. I think it should be easy to convince the Lords and Ladies that this is a favorable deal for us."
Balron was glad to hear it, but also a little confused. He didn't know what most of the things on that list even were. What in the world was "Essence of luck (pickled)"? But whatever it was, he was quite certain that it would be in no way cheap to acquire on the material plane. Not to mention, it should be quite a bit more valuable than the flowers, rocks, and poems that the Coros were offering in return. They would be making a killing on this.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"I'm looking forward to it." Balron responded. "I hope I won't overwhelm you, but I really do have a lot of things I want to talk to you about."
With how old the Senior Dungeon Builder was, he would be an invaluable source of knowledge, even if there were some things he wasn't allowed to talk about. Back at the university, his coworker Professor Fizzflame kept telling him that exploring ruins was useless because all important historical events were already recorded by the Historians of Secrets anyway. But now look at him: He made friends with a fey, and he even talked to a Genesis Dragon, whose very existence was considered apocryphal.
Bob the Senior Dungeon Builder was right there when history happened. He was a primary source to cite in scientific papers. Come to think of it, maybe he should ask him to get a scientific publication ID for citations. That should probably not be high on his list of priorities right now, but old habits die hard and it was difficult to get out of the university's "publish or perish" mindset. Adventurers needed a different mindset, and the perishing in case of failure was much more literal.
"Don't worry about asking too many questions." Bob replied. "I can always just be mysteriously evasive if I need to be. And besides, I am a Senior Dungeon Builder because I love teaching. It is part of who I am. I'm actually sad that I won't have an opportunity to meet some of your students in my own home. Some of the Lords and Ladies expressed concerns about letting too many mortals run around the feywild. But maybe there is something we can do about this with this new Center for Interplanar Cultural Exchange?"
Balron made to answer, when they were both suddenly interrupted by a telepathic message that was tinged with concern.
"*I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I have something important to discuss with Balron in private.*" Dov said.
"*Oh, that sounds exciting! I will leave the two of you to your conspiracies, or whatever other adventure related activities you youngsters get up to nowadays. I will see you later, Balron.*" Bob said, and wandered off.
Balron quickly followed Dov back to her tent and verified that all of their many wards were still running and nobody could be listening in. Well, nobody except for people with bullshit powers, like Adam Gust or the spirits, at any rate.
Dov took a deep breath before she started talking. "*Alright, I don't think there is an easy way to say this: I have at least three different infohazards in my head that may end the world.*"
He was shocked for a moment and blinked at her in confusion, but then preparation took over.
"Stop the telepathy and do not read my mind." He spoke out loud. "Give me a minute to get something."
Then he took out one of his bottomless bags and went rummaging through it. He tried to keep his mind blank and think of nothing at all while he did so. He couldn't really think of a way that would be dangerous, but why take the risk? The whole point of preparing for such things was that you could run on auto-pilot later, and he was not a hundred percent certain that Dov wouldn't continue reading his surface thoughts out of habit.
After several minutes of searching, he retrieved a small notebook from his bag. It was covered in dust, and the ink was barely legible by now.
No wonder. He wrote it over a century ago, as a thought exercise.
"Read this." He said as he handed her the booklet.
Dov raised an eyebrow, but said nothing and began to read.
Balron continued trying to keep his mind blank, although it was getting difficult by now. Curiosity killed the cat, but one did not become a professor of wizardry without some innate curiosity and it was difficult to suppress that. He wasn't a monk, after all. Meditation wasn't one of his skills.
After a few minutes, Dov began to comment on his notes. "Wow. It's, uh, significantly less messed up than scenario 4."
That sounded good. Now if only he could remember what scenario 4 was.
"I think the situation is mostly scenario 2, with a bit of scenario 3." She added.
"I'm afraid I don't remember what that means." He responded. "I wrote that quite a while ago and my memory is not perfect. Do I need to know what it means?"
"I think not? The instructions seem perfectly clear to me. I will just have to think about them for a while, to think things through."
"Then please do so. I'm going to resist the urge to read my own notes until you have decided exactly what it is safe for me to know."
You couldn't really be too careful with info-hazards. It would be exciting, if it wasn't so terrifying.
Dov stayed silent for a long while as she thought.
Eventually she spoke up. "Alright. I think you should know the following: Cilia Ulein died and I have become her new host. She tried to possess me, but I fought her off. Being psychic and a Davlash gave me unique abilities to do so, which was frankly suspiciously fortuitous. I have Cilia's mind locked away in a part of my brain, in quarantine. She is disabled, and I can read her memories. I know now why she did what she did. Why she started this war. Why she wanted to fight us. I'm not telling specifics here because I'm not sure if that is safe.
"I think I can read her thoughts safely and reliably. I can't be completely sure of that, of course, but I have a lot of practice with this and frankly I don't think this was planned by Cilia because what kind of plan involves getting yourself neutralized and stuck inside the head of someone who might just decide to ignore you?
"So I think I have a pretty good sense of her motivations. It looks like she was well-intentioned, but some of the things she did seem like rationalizations to me. I can't safely go into the specifics here, I think. But I do want to let you and the others know as much about this as possible."
Balron took a while to process all that before he responded. "That sounds a lot less terrifying than I first feared. Are you sure that you know where to draw the line and what you are not allowed to talk about?"
"Yes, I am. Cilia thought about the topic a lot. I know what to keep secret, and I'm good enough at schooling my features that I think I won't let anything show. Frankly, I'm surprised that you are taking all this in stride. I was expecting you to freak out."
"Oh, I might freak out later. This is definitely more excitement than I was expecting today. I haven't thought about this topic in almost a century and suddenly it is very, very relevant. I can't do anything except to follow the plan I made back then. I'm probably going to freak out properly this evening. But let's get the others first so that you can explain the situation to them. As much of it as you think is safe. And please do keep in mind that you can always tell us more later, but you can't take something back once you have said it out loud."
They then left the tent to go fetch the rest of team Nundru.
Once she had everyone's attention, Dov began: "*Alright, so there is no easy way to say this. I have started hearing voices in my head. But it's ok. They don't tell me to murder people or anything. They mostly just want to help me. One of them is a great magic tutor and another one gives sound financial advice.*"
"*...what?*" Asked Atrog.
"*Sorry. Humor is a good way to deal with stress and this is actually difficult to talk about.*" Dov responded nervously.
She then became more serious and proceeded to explain the situation to them all, in more detail than earlier.
She explained that she was learning from Cilia, who was imprisoned in her head and mentally split up, whatever that meant. Apparently, parts of Cilia wanted to help Dov learn despite their animosity, because a willingness to teach has been one of her most deeply rooted personality traits for millennia. That was why Dov had joked about getting help from the voices in her head. She was apparently being literal and one of the voices was actually trying to improve the finances of the Shan Kingdom.
Still, Dov continued to be evasive about the details. She only said that she had to keep some other knowledge secret because of safety concerns. Balron approved of the vagueness. If she talked about everything except the infohazard, then it would be easier to find out what the infohazard was by looking for the gaps.
"*I'm not sure what to think of this.*" Rania said. "*On the one hand, keeping secrets between friends is bad. On the other hand, destroying the world is also very bad. I think I can accept that you are keeping secrets, on balance. I like how Cilia is now basically a mentor for you, and is also already dead. The logic checks out, although she got it backwards because you are supposed to become a mentor first and then die, not the other way around.
I have one concern though: You have to promise not to let the knowledge corrupt you and turn you evil!*"
Rania locked eyes with Dov and awaited her response. "*I promise not to let the knowledge corrupt me and turn me evil.*"
"*Awesome! Then I think this is actually pretty great. You can now dispense strange insights and wisdom at dramatically appropriate moments. Normally that would really stretch plausible deniability, because why wouldn't you just mention it earlier? But you now have an in-universe reason for being mysterious and keeping secrets until the right moment. It's awesome!*"
"*Yay! We are still friends!*" Aranea added and moved to give Dov a hug. "*I don't really get anything of what you just said, but I trust big sister that I can trust you!*" She added, as Dov returned the giant spider's hug.
"How worried should I be about all this?" Atrog asked Balron.
"As worried as Dov says we should be, I think." Balron responded. "I made plans for this sort of situation quite a while ago and don't actually remember the details, but I do remember that I was satisfied with the results. I trust Dov to be able to understand what I wrote, and she has a good head on her shoulders."
"Thank you. I don't think we are in imminent danger. In fact, I believe there are a lot of ways in which this knowledge could turn out to be helpful rather than dangerous." Dov said.
Rania suddenly got a worried look on her face and made to speak up, but Dov kept talking "No, Rania, I know. I'm not going to fall into the trap where a wizard tries to use forbidden knowledge because they overestimate their own abilities and then end up dooming everyone by accident. It's a different type of knowledge and that trope does not apply. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I should talk to Lilian the next time we meet her. She is an expert on tropes and might have some ideas to contribute."
Rania gave a sigh of relief.
"I don't really know what to think about the fact that Cilia is now taking up headspace in your brain, but if anyone can handle that it's you." Galanys said to Dov. "I was tempted to ask you to tell me all the details, but then I caught myself and realized how stupid that would be. Dealing with infohazards is not something I know how to do. I mean, you hear about them every once in a while when you study wizardry, but I didn't think I would ever encounter one. Let alone that you would suddenly learn three major ones at the same time. I don't think I would be very good at dealing with that."
"No offense intended, but you really wouldn't." Dov responded. "Your mind is always racing ahead and looking for weird loopholes. If you knew an infohazard, you would probably end up triggering it by accident within a day or so. You should try the meditation exercises I talked to you about, those are really helping me to deal with this.
In any case, there is one more thing I should mention just in case: I'm keeping secrets that aren't dangerous to know, but could be dangerous if other people find out about them. According to Balron's notes I should not tell you about those things because they are need-to-know only and it's better to be safe than sorry. Even though I trust you all, there are risks of mind reading, divinations, and some horrible, horrible things I didn't even know were possible until I read his notes. I'm seriously tempted to just scrub those memories from my mind.
I will tell my parents about it though. They are more experienced than us and should be able to defend even against, uh, that stuff I would prefer not to think about.*"
Balron was not quite sure if it was a good thing that he couldn't remember the details of what he wrote back then. On the one hand, Dov looked very disturbed by it. On the other hand, you couldn't prepare against something you didn't know, which was anathema to him. But on the third, fourth and fifth hands, he had in fact known about it back then, and he trusted his past self to know what he was doing, and these were infohazards they were talking about, which were an exception to the usual rules.
"*This brings me to another point I should emphasize, ...*"
BOOM
Dov was suddenly interrupted by the sound of an explosion from outside the tent, seemingly up in the sky.
They reacted immediately and rushed out of the tent while drawing their weapons.
"*Up there!*" Rania shouted excitedly in their heads as she pointed at a burning object far away in the sky.
"*What is that?*" Galanys asked.
The object was difficult to make out, but Balron's simply activated the magnifying enchantments that he had had a biomancer weave into his eyes.
"*It's an airship!*" He thought in shock. "*Incredible! Only a handful were ever built. I didn't think that any of them survived the Cataclysm! I wonder if the government kept its existence a secret, or if it's something else.*"
"*Perhaps more importantly, can you tell why it is currently on fire and going down?*" Atrog asked.
"*Wait. Can anyone else hear that?*" Dov asked.
"*Sounds like someone is screaming!*" Rania said.
Shortly afterwards, Balron was able to hear the scream as well. It sounded like the source of the scream was getting closer.
"aaaaaahhhhhh!"
Ah, there it was.
"AAAAAHHHHHH!"
"Featherfall!" Balron intoned as he cast a spell.
"AAAHHH! Oof." Lilian Weaver said as her fall was stopped a few meters off the ground and she gently touched down.
"Hi everyone! So we meet again! Thanks for breaking my fall there!" She greeted them cheerfully, while nonchalantly putting out some parts of her clothes that were still on fire.
"Hi Lilian!" Rania greeted her, followed shortly afterwards by the others.
Before they could say anything more, Xilly and Tanya arrived, alongside a dozen guards and war beasts.
"Oh no! It's you!" Xilly shouted in dismay as she recognized Lilian.
"Oh yes! It's you! I was wondering when I'd next meet you. Before I forget about it in all the other excitement, I think you are supposed to have this." Lilian said as she pulled a book from her bags and handed it to Xilly. It had a screaming face on the cover.
Balron's senses were immediately assaulted by alarm signals as the proximity of the book triggered half a dozen of his wards.
Xilly looked at the thing with sheer horror.
"Yeah. You should probably go get that submerged in brass as soon as possible." Lilian said.
Xilly took the book and immediately ran off without another word.
"I have numerous question." Tanya said idly as she watched Xilly run away. "But those can wait. First I need to know: What is that giant smoking thing in the sky? Is that a dragon? Is it going to attack us, or does it otherwise pose a danger to us?"
"Don't worry about it." Lilian responded. "It is a..."
BOOM.
"...it WAS a prototype aircraft from the Great War." She corrected herself mid-sentence as the aircraft exploded again.
It was miraculously still in one piece, but it was now falling much more quickly. That explosion must have taken out the anti-gravity, Balron guessed. There would be no saving it now.
"It's a long story." Lilian said. "We were on the way to hunt down the last of the gryphon-squid hybrids we found, before it has a chance to hide and lay eggs, when one of Lord Edge's childhood friends chose this opportunity for his sudden but inevitable betrayal. But don't worry about it. Lord Edge is surprisingly competent, and so are the others. They will be fine."
BOOM.
This time the explosion was large enough that the flaming wreck of the aircraft disappeared completely in a flash of bright light.
"...they will PROBABLY be fine." Lilian corrected herself.
"Anyway, why is everyone paying attention to me?" She continued. "Usually when I fall randomly out of the sky, I end up in the middle of something dramatic that is already going on. But none of you look like you are in a rush."
"That is indeed worrying." Tanya replied. "Everyone, go on high alert! Something dramatic is going to happen soon!"
The soldiers immediately started issuing orders and scrambling in all directions.
Seconds later, a voice could be heard throughout the camp. "Attention! A Historian of Secrets is about to arrive! Clear the area and avoid hostile action against House Mardok's representative!"
"There we go." Lilian commented.
Then Adam Gust appeared in a flash of light, along with an Orukian nobleman who looked quite out of his depth.
Adam took a look around at all the gathered adventurers and officers, and looked confused. "Wait. How are you all already gathered here? You had like three seconds to prepare for my arrival. I was expecting people to panic."
"You are welcome!" Lilian responded.
Adam gave her a nod of acknowledgement, though he looked a bit disappointed. "Well, at least that saves us a few minutes of time."
He then pointed at the noble next to him and Tanya, the highest-ranking Shan leader present, and said: "You two will shake hands now and make up. Denissa Mardok says that this war is inconvenient and we have bigger fish to fry."