Two days lat­er, Ki'el felt a strange urge to go out into the city of Red­fang Wall. Al­though the group in to­tal had not been idle, the city bu­reau­crats had kept Xam and Broth­er Juno oc­cu­pied with, ac­cord­ing to their retellings, an end­less back-and-forth se­ries of tasks scat­tered across the city. Even so, they'd yet to meet with the City Lord--al­though ap­par­ent­ly, de­spite Sub­com­man­der Rui's cyn­i­cism, they were be­ing al­lowed to move for­ward in the process any­way.

The urge to wan­der felt un­nat­ur­al enough to con­cern Ki'el. She was be­gin­ning to spend more of her days med­i­tat­ing and re­build­ing her qi, even think­ing on qi and aether again... but not so se­ri­ous­ly as to have made any no­table progress. The sud­den urge had come on quick­ly, and it was all too spe­cif­ic, but when Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, Kuli had in­sist­ed that it was fine.

{ I have been send­ing mes­sages to near­by spir­i­tu­al gods. This one would pre­fer to meet in per­son. You are free to refuse... but I be­lieve it would be good for you. }

[ Is that what all that was, ] Meixu added from Ki'el's shoul­der. The fox had con­tin­ued to be over­ly af­fec­tion­ate with Ki'el, though she was be­gin­ning to sense a sta­bi­liz­ing of his spir­it. [ You needn't wor­ry, then, young Ki'el. It's a city de­ity, it will be quite safe. ]

Al­though Ki'el asked the oth­ers--most­ly Chi­an and Mian--if they wished to come, in the end, she set out into the city with only Meix­an, the fox rest­ing once more on her shoul­der.

It was a pleas­ant walk, most­ly. The city was far from lev­el, the roads go­ing up and down a num­ber of hills as it went. Sim­i­lar­ly, the... aether of the city seemed to vary wild­ly, with some ar­eas fresh and up­beat, oth­ers heavy and sod­den, oth­ers sick­ly or in­flamed. At the worst... Ki'el was aware enough of her sur­round­ings to no­tice sev­er­al of the city's Djang giv­ing her strange or dirty looks as she moved through cer­tain parts the city, es­pe­cial­ly in the ar­eas with the worst aether, but she did her best to put them all out of mind. She had... un­com­fort­able thoughts, as to why they might look at her like that, and all of those thoughts would pull her out of the mo­ment and put her in dark places, if she let them.

Those looks and thoughts van­ished when Ki'el turned onto a wide and steep stair­case carved into a rocky, forest­ed hill­side. The en­trance was flanked by wide walls dec­o­rat­ed with im­ages of a large, preda­to­ry crea­ture that Ki'el did not rec­og­nize, walls that sup­port­ed some spir­i­tu­al bar­ri­er around a moun­tain or large hill. Through that gate, every­thing seemed like it might have been a dif­fer­ent world en­tire­ly--the smell of the air, the feel of the aether, the sounds... even the sun seemed a bit brighter, even if it was in the same po­si­tion in the sky.

[ It's a spir­i­tu­al bar­ri­er, ] Meix­an in­formed her when she was stopped to mar­vel at the dif­fer­ence. [ It marks the do­main of a spir­it beast turned god--some­thing that they tend to cre­ate when they de­cide to set­tle down in a place. ]

"Do all gods have shrines like this?" Ki'el had seen small­er wor­ship sites in her youth, of­ten small­er fam­i­ly sites, but she nev­er had any im­pres­sion of pow­er from them, not like this.

Ki'el felt the fox on her shoul­der shift­ing, and she turned to look at him, but the fox's eyes were the same as ever--guard­ed, and un­sure. [ Spir­it beasts and spir­i­tu­al gods are a var­ied group, ] he said af­ter a mo­ment. [ Stay­ing in one place to act as a pro­tec­tor is usu­al­ly be­cause they have formed a con­tract, and those might have pow­er to spare. But not every­one is like that. ]

Ki'el looked around, feel­ing the dif­fer­ence, be­fore turn­ing back to the stairs and con­tin­u­ing to walk up. "The bar­ri­er is some kind of nat­ur­al spir­i­tu­al abil­i­ty?"

[ More like a script, ] Meixu an­swered. [ If you went hunt­ing, you'd find places where it's be­ing sup­port­ed. Don't, though. ]

Ki'el gave the small fox a look that told him that she wasn't stu­pid.

It was a long stair­case, seem­ing to Ki'el to be far longer than the hill should have been tall. By the time she felt she should have reached the top, look­ing ahead, she only seemed to be halfway there, and she was be­gin­ning to sense some­thing lurk­ing in the trees that flanked the stair­case, prowl­ing around her.

{ We are in­vit­ed, } Kuli an­swered her hes­i­ta­tion. { The guardians are not hos­tile. }

This was feel­ing more and more like an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion where Kuli had been mak­ing de­ci­sions on Ki'el's be­half with­out her knowl­edge, but un­der the cir­cum­stances, she did not feel in­clined to ar­gue. In truth, she had no in­ter­est, right now, in watch­ing over every­one else's de­ci­sions, even as they ap­plied to her. She just want­ed... well, she wasn't sure what, at the mo­ment.

Ex­cept a home. That... she was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand that the feel­ings she'd had when she left the sect were not go­ing away, not calm­ing down. Dulling, per­haps, but no more than that.

When Ki'el fi­nal­ly reached the top of the hill, she found the tem­ple to look al­most for­eign to her. She had seen cer­tain el­e­ments of Djang ar­chi­tec­ture, sure, but this... whether it was a re­li­gious tem­ple or sim­ply a build­ing to pro­vide com­fort to a spir­it beast, it cer­tain­ly didn't look or feel like nor­mal build­ings, even in the Djang style. The hill­top it­self had been cut per­fect­ly lev­el, and there were five build­ings, four at cor­ners around the cen­tral fifth. The four out­er tow­ers were three sto­ries tall, and each lev­el had wide ve­ran­das around a small­er, sealed in­ner sec­tion, the walls of which were dec­o­rat­ed with more im­ages of the same beast that had been at the en­trance.

The cen­ter build­ing had five sto­ries, with the fourth and fifth sto­ries hav­ing the same wide ve­ran­das and the same dec­o­rat­ed walls. Strange­ly, the fourth sto­ry also had four wide walk­ways that con­nect­ed to the third floor of each of the tow­ers, slop­ing down as though it might have been a roof--but it was clear­ly meant to bear weight. The fifth floor was the only place Ki'el could see with an open door­way, but she could see noth­ing with­in from so far be­low.

All around the build­ings were var­i­ous idols and totems, of­ten with heavy use of met­als like gold and sil­ver, and clear­ly pre­cious gems mark­ing cer­tain fea­tures. Most of them were carved with ob­vi­ous script and suf­fused with en­er­gy, and though Ki'el could not see them close­ly enough to try to iden­ti­fy the char­ac­ters of the script, none of them gave off nor­mal qi pres­sure. Even the ones that seemed to be peace­ful in na­ture gave off aether waves that felt harsh to Ki'el, and she won­dered if that was the de­ity's na­ture, or the in­scrip­tion­ist's, or... some oth­er fac­tor.

There was one hu­man-look­ing at­ten­dant stand­ing in the plaza calm­ly, as though wait­ing for Ki'el. It... her in­tu­ition about the per­son was very strong­ly that they were also of spir­it beast blood, but there was no out­ward sign that she could see, ex­cept per­haps a dis­tinct fa­cial struc­ture, but that could have been for more com­mon rea­sons. Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed only briefly be­fore ap­proach­ing the per­son and bow­ing, not quite sure how to broach the top­ic.

"You are the Lady Ki'el and the [ Su­pe­ri­or As­sis­tant ] Kuli, cor­rect? And one guest." Her eyes flicked to Meix­an, who did noth­ing to cor­rect her or pro­vide in­for­ma­tion. "Our lord is await­ing your pres­ence on the fifth floor."

Ki'el re­mained bowed for a mo­ment. "If you would show me the way..."

"I was won­der­ing if you would try to jump," the at­ten­dant laughed cheer­ful­ly. "You would have found your qi abil­i­ties sealed with­in this bar­ri­er, but some are sim­ply so im­pa­tient. Of course, we will take the main stair­case." The woman ges­tured to the build­ing be­hind her, where a door­way slid aside with­out any ob­vi­ous use of en­er­gy, and no ap­par­ent per­son there to have done it.

Ki'el was slight­ly cu­ri­ous, but she had no doubt it would be triv­ial to hide such work­ings in a well-built tem­ple.

Fol­low­ing the woman up the stairs took longer, again, than Ki'el felt it should, and she found that the woman man­aged to get far ahead of her de­spite Ki'el nev­er feel­ing like she slowed down or need­ed to rest. She frowned, but made no at­tempt to ar­gue or to com­plain, es­pe­cial­ly since the woman ahead seemed pa­tient.

The stair­way only led to a closed hall­way, with many slid­ing doors on ei­ther side of the hall­way, doors that some­how blocked any aether that might have passed through them as eas­i­ly as they blocked the light. It mere­ly led to an­oth­er stair, and Ki'el felt sure, this time, that each stair­way was longer than the last. A part of her want­ed to com­plain, feel­ing like the re­stric­tion must be some kind of tease or abuse, but she re­mained silent, mov­ing stub­born­ly up stairs and down hall­ways un­til at last she reached the fifth and fi­nal floor. Al­though she got the im­pres­sion that the climb had tak­en far, far too long, when she looked ahead, the shad­ow of the sun through the door did not seem so dif­fer­ent than it had been.

In be­tween her and the open door, of course, was a mas­sive spir­it beast.

[ Ban Molu Rotan ] was the beast's name, ac­cord­ing to its qi, and it was a very large striped cat--and Ki'el could feel in­tense pow­er ra­di­at­ing from it in gen­er­al, but also ra­di­at­ing from its claws and fangs in par­tic­u­lar. She had no rea­son to have doubt­ed that it was an in­cred­i­bly pow­er­ful beast--but it was also clear­ly pre­sent­ing it­self as such. Ki'el bowed again be­fore it, still un­sure why she was here.

"Lord Molu Rotan, I pre­sent to you the young mis­tress Doua Ki'el, the [Su­pe­ri­or As­sis­tant] Kuli, and the [Po­lit­i­cal Ex­ile] Meix­an."

Po­lit­i­cal Ex­ile? Ki'el felt her­self freez­ing, but she felt no change in the fox on her shoul­der, not even any sign that he was bow­ing or oth­er­wise be­ing po­lite to the lo­cal guardian de­ity.

[ Meix­an? Oh... from the old days. ] The mas­sive beast got to its feet and moved clos­er, but al­though Ki'el no­ticed with her eyes and from the shift­ing spir­i­tu­al pres­sure, it seemed to make no sound, and she did not feel any flex or shift in the floor be­low her as it moved, de­spite its size. Ki'el not­ed that the woman who had led her in re­treat­ed qui­et­ly as the de­ity ap­proached her, and shut the door a mo­ment lat­er. [ I sup­pose this is a sign of old wounds heal­ing? ]

[ There is no fur­ther need to for­give, but some things will nev­er be for­got­ten. ] Meix­an's men­tal voice re­mained steady. [ The girl re­minds me of my daugh­ter, is all. ]

His daugh­ter? Ki'el re­sist­ed the urge to turn and look, but she could tell that her own qi was in flux. Was that what seemed so strange in how Meix­an was treat­ing her? Or was there even more still un­spo­ken?

[ I see. And you, Su­pe­ri­or As­sis­tant. ] Ki'el felt the mas­sive beast's eyes lock on her, though its spir­it and in­tent seemed to pass her by al­most en­tire­ly, doubt­less lock­ing on to Kuli her­self. [ You said that you are re­strict­ed in how you can broad­cast mes­sages be­cause of your host. I trust this is eas­i­er? ]

{ It is. Young Kuli's spir­it has re­cov­ered much, but I would not have wished to hin­der her any fur­ther. And... I be­lieve she would be in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing what I will tell you as well. }

[ The mat­ter of the so-called wis­dom of the (Ri'lef). ] Ki'el felt a strange sense at the word as it flowed through her, a hes­i­ta­tion, like the word felt for­eign to the one speak­ing it, even as it was passed along clear­ly. [ Their [ web of fate ] is not small, and they strike me as gen­uine, but I de­test be­ing en­snared in things I do not un­der­stand. I may al­low you to make your case... if you can pro­vide what was promised. ]

Ki'el paused, sur­prised, and with some ef­fort, fo­cused her thoughts on Kuli. [ This mat­ter is about the peo­ple who cre­at­ed you? ]

Ki'el felt the at­ten­tion of the spir­it beast turn to her, but not mean­ly. Ki'el felt her­self flush, though she should have known that the de­ity would be able to hear her ques­tion. [ You were not aware? ]

{ Ki'el is still a child, and she has many more im­por­tant things to wor­ry about. But yes, Ki'el. The Ri'lef have long ne­go­ti­at­ed with the spir­i­tu­al gods of this world, in the in­ter­ests of keep­ing bal­ance. Al­though you are my pri­ma­ry con­cern, I re­main in con­tact with my cre­ators, and was asked to per­form a few tasks should the op­por­tu­ni­ty arise. Now, more than ever, this is nec­es­sary. } There was only a brief pause. { Guardian De­ity Molu Rotan. Of the many se­crets of qi and spir­it en­er­gy, the most com­mon among guardian deities is why the two seem to be the same, and yet dif­fer­ent, is that not so? It is not so much a se­cret as it is knowl­edge be­yond that of this world, and it is knowl­edge that can be passed, with some ef­fort. }

At last, the spir­it beast stopped star­ing at Ki'el, turn­ing and mov­ing back to where it was lay­ing be­fore. Be­fore it had even sat down, though, it spoke again, a strange­ly in­tro­spec­tive tim­ber to its qi. [ Qi and spir­it en­er­gy are [yin] and [yang]. Qi ab­sorbs, car­ries, am­pli­fies the pow­er of the world, while spir­it en­er­gy re­jects it, com­bats it, dom­i­nates it. This much is known. ] Some­thing in the spir­it beast's trans­mis­sion, though, held doubts, per­haps even deep ones.

{ The pow­er that you call Spir­it En­er­gy, and the pow­er you call Qi, are both craft­ed el­e­ments, gifts from the Grand Mas­ters of the Heav­ens. As your words sug­gest, they are re­flec­tions of one an­oth­er, but I gath­er from your words that you do not un­der­stand why. } There was a pause. { Ki'el. While we talk, can you cre­ate two of your aether cy­cles? One left, one right? }

Ki'el... had itched to do that for a while, but Kuli had sug­gest­ed that she wait. Now, though, the tim­ing of the aug­ment's re­quest struck her as odd. "Did you ask me to wait only so that I could do it now?"

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{ No. I wor­ried that you would use the aether and do more to slow down your heal­ing than to help it. But... it will be a help­ful demon­stra­tion for now. }

Ki'el frowned, but cleared her mind, find­ing that Kuli man­aged to help her do that even as the aug­ment con­tin­ued to speak. { There are forces in the [uni­verse] more fun­da­men­tal than qi and spir­it en­er­gy, and young Ki'el was taught to use some of them by her mas­ter. You have like­ly seen how the qi and spir­it en­er­gy mir­ror each oth­er, pro­gress­ing sim­i­lar­ly, but the way they re­act to in­tent and their meth­ods are very dif­fer­ent. }

It was Meix­an who re­spond­ed to that. [ Every spir­it beast that tries to learn qi tech­niques dis­cov­ers that very quick­ly. Qi at first ap­pears un­sta­ble and vi­o­lent, but it is the way we use the pow­er, not the pow­er it­self. ]

Ki'el found her­self al­most au­to­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ing a small Right­eous Aether cy­cle first, and was able to put to­geth­er a Sin­is­ter Aether cy­cle in only a few more mo­ments, tak­ing the time to make them as close to the same size and thread di­am­e­ter as she could. When she fin­ished both, she felt Kuli re­leas­ing her, and then catch­ing her up to the con­ver­sa­tion, she found her­self won­der­ing again just what--or who--Meix­an was. But... more than that...

"Are you say­ing that spir­it en­er­gy is based on the op­po­site of Truth aether?" Ki'el held the two cy­cles be­fore her, and she felt the spir­it beast be­fore her scan­ning the two small cir­cles float­ing above her hands.

{ Yes. Aether comes in tiers, the low­est tier be­ing what Ki'el has pro­duced here. At every tier, there are two ways of us­ing the aether, and they are op­po­sites, in a sim­i­lar way to how these two en­er­gies ap­pear to be mir­ror op­po­sites. At the low­est lev­el, as a con­se­quence of their na­ture, one [Op­pos­es] and one [Sup­ports]. Each lev­el is built on the lay­ers be­neath them, and each lev­el uses all the forms of pow­er be­low them. Even at the sec­ond lay­er, [Space Aether], one must [Sup­port] one thing and [Op­pose] an­oth­er at the same time. }

[ That en­er­gy is very small and thin, ] Rotan's pro­jec­tion held a kind of lazy cu­rios­i­ty, but it also felt more in­tense to Ki'el, per­haps be­cause he was no longer shield­ing her from it. [ Far thin­ner and pur­er than ei­ther qi or spir­it en­er­gy. More fun­da­men­tal, you say. ]

{ Qi and spir­it en­er­gy are de­signed to ease the tran­si­tion, so that [chil­dren] do not make great and pow­er­ful mis­takes. } Kuli's men­tal tone re­mained mat­ter-of-fact, de­spite what Ki'el might have ex­pect­ed to be a con­de­scend­ing use of the idea of adults as child-like be­ings. In­stead... Kuli's in­tent seemed to very care­ful­ly weave to­geth­er the idea that peo­ple, even­tu­al­ly are ex­pect­ed to grow past the stage, and that it is not shame­ful to be ig­no­rant for a time. { The low­est lev­els of qi and spir­it en­er­gy have all aether above this lev­el sealed off, but it is still a more pow­er­ful en­er­gy. In truth, both qi and spir­it en­er­gy are of the fifth lay­er of aether, and their [weight] can­not be com­pared to that of the real thing. }

There was a si­lence af­ter that, as the guardian de­ity, and Ki'el, and Meix­an all con­sid­ered what had been said. Af­ter a mo­ment, Rotan spoke. [ There is a lim­it to how strong one can grow, in ei­ther spir­it or qi, then. ]

{ The lim­i­ta­tions on this world have more to do with this world's youth than the fact that the nat­ur­al en­er­gies are of only a cer­tain com­plex­i­ty. With the right ed­u­ca­tion, more is pos­si­ble than any on this world may ever ac­com­plish, us­ing far less. }

Ki'el was only half pay­ing at­ten­tion. She had a ques­tion... but she thought it was not wise to ask, nor even think it. She had no idea how sub­tle a though the guardian de­ity may be able to pick up. In­stead, she tried to find some­thing else, an­oth­er thought to dis­tract her, and end­ed up speak­ing a ques­tion. "I un­der­stand that qi is based on Truth aether, which tries to cre­ate the ef­fect we de­sire...? But what is its op­po­site?"

There was a pause, and Ki'el felt the aether around her stir­ring for a long mo­ment be­fore Kuli replied. { Truth and Con­tra­dic­tion are the two forms of Con­se­quence Aether. Just as Right­eous and Sin­is­ter aether re­in­force or weak­en body and soul, [Truth] can cre­ate or re­in­force an ex­ist­ing [law], while [Con­tra­dic­tion] weak­ens or re­moves a [law], or cre­ates an ef­fect [sim­i­lar] to a law be­ing re­moved. }

Ki'el... had felt, be­fore, when oth­er peo­ple felt shock at her words. And she had felt, at the Sect, the strain on her qi when she forced her­self to speak a whole thought into oth­ers' minds, when do­ing so changed how they thought, fun­da­men­tal­ly. Now... the words that Kuli spoke rang so com­plete­ly true, and some­how still man­aged to get tan­gled up in Ki'el's mind... and Ki'el was sure it was not only her. From the sud­den snap in the aether around her, she thought that Kuli had done some­thing to off­set the strain on her when pro­vid­ing that in­for­ma­tion to the spir­i­tu­al de­ity.

Even so, Ki'el felt an in­tense pain shoot through her merid­i­ans... and also, through her mind.

The con­cept of a spir­i­tu­al [law]... it tan­gled through Ki'el's thoughts and mem­o­ries in a strange way. Such a law was a thing both true, and some­times fake; it could be made true, with pow­er, but if it was cre­at­ed, then its cre­ation was a part of its own law. And law, both true law of the uni­verse and false law cre­at­ed by peo­ple... all of that could be bent with spir­i­tu­al pow­er... but they wove through cre­ation it­self, or they could. But...

Ki'el did not un­der­stand. And she did not mean to un­der­stand, did not de­sire it, or not ex­act­ly. She un­der­stood that this was all far above her, things that she nev­er should have been ex­pect­ed to un­der­stand. But some­how, with but a few touch­es to her mind, Kuli still man­aged to pull her tan­gled thoughts into fo­cus, guid­ing them into or­der.

Qi ef­fects were cre­at­ing and en­forc­ing laws; they start­ed very small, but could be­come very pow­er­ful. Ki'el's sword qi and fire qi had been sim­ple "laws" that had spe­cif­ic, de­ter­mined ef­fects. That was a frame­work that she felt Kuli cre­at­ing.

Ki'el's thoughts, with the help of her aug­ment, straight­ened out the rest in mo­ments. If qi was a 'sim­ple cre­ation', then a 'sim­ple re­sis­tance' would be sim­i­lar­ly unim­pres­sive--just a re­fusal to be af­fect­ed by some­thing. The in­tent might need to be phrased a dif­fer­ent way, and there might be dif­fer­ent con­se­quences, but both pow­ers could ac­com­plish the same over­all goal--just as Ki'el might win in com­bat by strength­en­ing her­self or weak­en­ing her en­e­my.

The true pow­er of such laws, Ki'el un­der­stood, was that they could tru­ly set what the uni­verse un­der­stood as 'true'--if giv­en enough en­er­gy to per­form the task. Some­how, Ki'el's mind drift­ed again to Sobon's de­scrip­tion of his home­world, of the idea that all the peo­ple in that world were a part of a grand ar­ray, a work­ing that con­trolled the civ­i­liza­tion as a whole. Per­haps they did, or per­haps they did not, make use of such aether, but... Ki'el un­der­stood that the pow­er to 'de­ter­mine what is true' changed the fates of not only peo­ple, but cities, na­tions... worlds.

As soon as Kuli let go of her mind again, Ki'el felt the pain re­turn, if much more weak­ly, and she felt her thoughts scat­ter, the strange vi­sion of an­oth­er world fad­ing but not dis­ap­pear­ing. She sat up with­out much of a strug­gle, hold­ing her head... and looked ahead of her, to see the large spir­it beast guardian de­ity also paw­ing at its head, as though nurs­ing a sim­i­lar headache.

[ You don't do things by halves, ] Meix­an com­ment­ed, though the fox was also up­right and look­ing at Ki'el... or at Kuli. She might have thought, to look at him, that Meix­an had re­ceived no sim­i­lar shock or break­through, but Ki'el had been close enough to him and for long enough to tell that he was ac­tu­al­ly in spir­i­tu­al tur­moil as well, and sim­ply re­tained his poise. [ A fas­ci­nat­ing in­sight, though I won­der how prac­ti­cal it is. In truth, does it change any­thing? Do we treat ei­ther qi or spir­it en­er­gy dif­fer­ent­ly now? ]

{ Let the oth­ers re­cov­er first, } Kuli chid­ed, though a mo­ment lat­er, an­swered. { It was re­quest­ed that we pro­vide proof that we--the Ri'lef, not Ki'el--are be­ings of great knowl­edge and wis­dom from the heav­ens. With this, there should be no doubt of that. }

[ No. ] Rotan re­moved his paw from his head and looked at it, grouch­i­ly, as though the mas­sive thing had some­how been the cause of his pain--or as though he ex­pect­ed to find blood on it. But the beast sim­ply sat up a mo­ment lat­er. [ But you said that spir­it en­er­gy was cre­at­ed by this law-re­mov­ing pow­er. How does one cre­ate with re­moval? ]

{ Spir­it en­er­gy, like qi, is aether that re­stricts its own use. Qi 'cre­ates' seals on its pow­er, while spir­it en­er­gy 're­jects' its own pow­er, un­til cer­tain mile­stones are met. You are cor­rect that it is more com­pli­cat­ed than that... but that is a mat­ter that should be left alone. Those who are wor­thy can reach the cor­rect heights in time, while those who are un­wor­thy... should not be giv­en a path for­ward, or not com­mon­ly. }

[ Per­haps so. ] Rotan stood up ful­ly, and then stretched his mas­sive back, his fore claws ex­tend­ing as he also stretched his legs out. [ Very well. This Ban Molu Rotan will en­ter­tain the idea of join­ing the Ri'lef [web of fate]. But I would still pre­fer to un­der­stand what it does, its pur­pose. ]

{ [Sa­cred] en­er­gy con­nects across time and space, sim­i­lar to how guardian de­ity wor­ship is per­formed, } Kuli an­swered, im­me­di­ate­ly. { Those deities who need strength to de­fend their charges may bor­row from those who have enough, at the times they have enough en­er­gy, while those who of­fer their en­er­gy will not be asked to suf­fer in or­der to strength­en some­one else. }

Ki'el con­cealed a frown. She un­der­stood--or had been told--of Sa­cred aether, and also its mir­ror, Cor­rupt aether. But... Ki'el stopped her thoughts af­ter a mo­ment, un­will­ing to wor­ry about some­thing that should be asked of Kuli in pri­vate.

[ This much we are aware of, ] Rotan ad­mit­ted af­ter a few mo­ments of think­ing about it. [ It is the role of a guardian de­ity to over­see the fates of those in their do­main. How­ev­er... your an­swer gives no in­di­ca­tion of what fates you think are go­ing to be too great for us to con­tend with in­di­vid­u­al­ly, of when the pow­er will be used or why. ]

{ A com­plete con­tract will be pro­vid­ed to you. The terms of when it may be used, and when it may not, are laid out care­ful­ly. }

This time, Ki'el was sure that she sensed Kuli send­ing a mes­sage, per­haps to the [Tidal Coro­na], and al­though it was faint, she was sure that she sensed a mes­sage in re­turn, one that she thought Rotan re­ceived. The large crea­ture tilt­ed its head and closed its eyes, fo­cus­ing on its thoughts.

[ I will con­sid­er the terms. You may go. ]

This time, Ki'el did not mis­take the words for a mere in­vi­ta­tion, even for a mo­ment, and bowed and turned away im­me­di­ate­ly. She was sur­prised, when she got to the door she had come in through, when she re­al­ized that Meix­an had stayed be­hind... but when the door opened in front of her, she stepped through with­out hes­i­ta­tion, trust­ing that the fox was more than wise enough to know what he was al­lowed to do... or at least, what he could get away with.

She felt slight­ly more con­cerned when the door shut be­hind her, with Meix­an still on the oth­er side, but she forced her­self to walk away de­spite that. Ahead of her, an­oth­er door opened, show­ing a stair­case, though Ki'el was... un­sure whether it was the same stair­case she had come up.

{ I am sor­ry. }

Ki'el paused in her steps only for a mo­ment, but found that the sim­ple words from Kuli did ease a ten­sion with­in her, a frus­tra­tion. Tell me, she said, leav­ing the words open. What ex­act­ly the aug­ment felt sor­ry for would change how she felt about it.

{ I have not for­got­ten that you wished to be a part of de­ter­min­ing your own fate. In a way, this meet­ing has changed your fate in ways you can­not un­der­stand. Molu Rotan will watch over you, and it will be for the best, but... I did not ask, or in­form you. } There was a pause. { I also wish to thank you. For not speak­ing the ques­tion that came to mind. It would have been safe to think about--Molu Rotan does not read minds--but the un­ease in your heart would have caused him con­cern. }

What lies above Truth and Con­tra­dic­tion? Could I pos­si­bly reach it? But Ki'el was no fool. She could bare­ly be­gin to touch on Space aether, let alone Time, Fate, or Con­se­quence. Even so... she yearned to at least know the name. What great pow­er was there above Con­se­quence Aether? A pow­er so grand that every use of it must in­volve the use of both Truth and Con­tra­dic­tion at once? Ki'el shiv­ered, just think­ing about a be­ing whose aether could cre­ate or de­stroy whole qi na­tures as an ac­ci­dent, as it per­formed some oth­er task.

{ Not only am I un­aware of the an­swer to your ques­tion, my peo­ple are, to the best of my knowl­edge. And... it is for the best. Even the Ri'lef would cov­et pow­er if they had the name of it, just as you have come to wish for the pow­er of Truth and Con­tra­dic­tion af­ter hear­ing how they work. While some­one should un­der­stand such mat­ters, so that is­sues can be dis­cov­ered and ad­dressed... it can­not be al­lowed to spread as freely as oth­er mat­ters. }

Ki'el... would not have said that she wished for the pow­er to use Spir­it En­er­gy, but her mind had be­gun to think about it, to ques­tion whether it would be the right tool for cer­tain things. But even then, she had no idea whether it was tru­ly all that help­ful. Is there any ad­van­tage to qi and spir­it en­er­gy over aether? When prop­er­ly used?

Ki'el had a strange feel­ing at that, and re­al­ized only af­ter some re­flec­tion that it was Kuli feel­ing sur­prised at her ques­tion. { Qi and spir­it en­er­gy are in­tu­itive ways to use aether. Their ad­van­tage is be­ing able to learn them and use them quick­ly and eas­i­ly. But be­cause of their na­tures, aether, qi, and spir­it each make cer­tain tasks more dif­fi­cult. Raw aether use re­quires ed­u­ca­tion, more than you may ever be pro­vid­ed with on this world, even with the help of Sobon and the Ri'lef to­geth­er. Some tasks that would take cen­turies of ef­fort to [re­search] the aether script to ac­com­plish can be cre­at­ed as qi or spir­it en­er­gy ef­fects in decades or less. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, some part of her mind ea­ger­ly en­gag­ing with the com­pli­cat­ed thoughts. Then... when you say that I cov­et Truth and Con­tra­dic­tion, you are wrong, she de­cid­ed af­ter a mo­ment. I am not in­ter­est­ed in fast ways to grow stronger. I sim­ply wish to fin­ish learn­ing, and when you teach me that there is more yet to learn, I find my­self think­ing ea­ger­ly about the day when I un­der­stand enough to see be­yond the next door.

Ki'el felt the aug­ment's aether shift slight­ly. { What if I told you that there are some things you will nev­er learn? }

There are, Ki'el agreed, with only a mo­ment of thought. But I do not like it when you tell me you know, now, what I will not learn. Per­haps you are right, per­haps you are wrong. But to say that I will not sounds like you wish for my ig­no­rance, in fur­ther­ance of a goal I do not un­der­stand. What if my learn­ing things will be help­ful? What if it will be easy for me? What if I can be trust­ed? Will I still not be taught? If there are no teach­ers, no way to learn it, then we will dis­cov­er that at the time, and there will be no one to blame. But my life is al­ready full of strange things. Per­haps life will sur­prise you, as it does me.

Ki'el could tell that her aug­ment was con­sid­er­ing those words for a time, and then that it chose to sim­ply re­main qui­et for a while af­ter that, de­spite per­haps hav­ing fin­ished its think­ing.

When at last Ki'el reached the bot­tom of the stairs and the en­trance to the Tem­ple build­ing, she found the woman who had led her up stand­ing there, with Meix­an sit­ting placid­ly on the floor next to her. Al­though Ki'el did not get the sense that she had in­ter­rupt­ed a con­ver­sa­tion, she still felt awk­ward, as though their pa­tience in wait­ing for her was dis­guis­ing some­thing else, though what, ex­act­ly, she was un­sure.

[ Thank you, cousin, and per­haps we will have that drink soon, ] were Meix­an's part­ing words to the woman, who sim­ply bowed, the near­by door slid­ing open of its own ac­cord. The fox leapt again to Ki'el's shoul­der, and looked at her, and this time, she stud­ied his eyes for a long mo­ment be­fore look­ing away. Know­ing that Meix­an had said some­thing about a daugh­ter... there was some­thing there, a deep re­gret.

"Good­bye, [Po­lit­i­cal Ex­ile] Meix­an." The woman gave a toothy grin, but bowed. "Good­bye, Young Mis­tress Ki'el, [Su­pe­ri­or As­sis­tant] Kuli."

When the doors had shut be­hind her, and they were be­gin­ning to walk down the long stair­case out of the tem­ple, Ki'el fi­nal­ly asked. "Ex­ile?"

[ The Di­a­mond Lord did not keep my fam­i­ly safe, de­spite a promise. I broke our al­liance the day I found out, along with many oth­er things. I was po­lite­ly in­vit­ed to nev­er re­turn, and I agreed. ] Meix­an's thoughts did not con­tain the kind of feel­ings Ki'el might have ex­pect­ed. They were... dry, per­haps. No longer fresh. [ I can feel that in­vi­ta­tion is no longer bind­ing, but some ar­ti­facts re­main, es­pe­cial­ly among those old enough to re­mem­ber. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered those words, and thought long and hard about ask­ing more ques­tions, but her mind was al­ready full of oth­er things, and she found that she felt bet­ter think­ing about aether than about her newest com­pan­ion's painful past. An­oth­er time, she promised her­self, be­fore her thoughts bent once more to the idea of spir­i­tu­al laws, and the pow­ers that en­forced and re­strict­ed them.