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“I can Commune with Nature in a swathe ninety miles across. Nature happens to include the oceans and the seas.” Circles spun up around those lights. “Sahaug canyon-cities. Eel-folk drift-shoals. Probably a Rift-nest of the Demon Rays.

“Deep One undercities.”

Areas on the Pacific and the Atlantic lit up in pale green. “I intend to map the seas. It is not something that will be done overnight, as I can only move two hundred or so miles an hour while doing so.” A swathe of magenta moved down the east coast of America, swung out into the sea, swung back... and more question marks began to pop up here, there, everywhere...

“Gentlemen, if you allow the hostile undersea races to stay intact after the Shroud goes down, you are utter fools. Now, while you have the technological edge, is the only time you are able to engage them on superior footing. You simply have been unable to find them.

“I am going to find them for you, and then I want you to blow them to Hell.”

Admiral LaSalle’s eyes were almost glowing with fervor. “You can find their cities?” he blurted out, and I looked at him, tamping down his enthusiasm.

“Yes. Probably fairly quickly, too. They need to be shattered and broken before the Shroud falls, or the people of the world will literally get chased back from the oceans, and never dare to venture out onto them, save to fight.

“The more of them you can kill, the better. If you can shatter their major dwellings, the tritons and the mermen may be able to do something against them.

“You are going to lose all your atomics to wild magic eruptions, unless you Disintegrate the core material. Using them before that happens should be a no-brainer.”

The generals were looking at one another with barely restrained excitement, and turned to the President and Prime Minister there, who were also very intent.

“We have been wanting to strike back against the Sahaug and the Deep Ones for a very long time,” President Havier breathed, and even the Druid there didn’t voice any opposition to the idea. “But...” he hesitated, “won’t the deaths of so many generate another Shroud?”

I shook my head before he even finished. “Not if we include simple vivic flames in the eruption. The environmental effects will be no worse than an underwater mudslide, and the Land does not care about either species in the slightest. Neither have natural origins.

“If you like, I will even pay the goldweight costs to add Vivic to every one of your atomic weapons.”

The two national leaders looked at one another, conferred for a moment, and then turned back to me, eyes gleaming.

“Lady Traveler,” Prime Minister Tioz smiled, “I can say that we would be very happy to bomb the total shit out of those bastards who have been preying on our ships and our coasts for so many decades. You will have all our cooperation in dealing with them.”

I nodded at them, and at the various generals all looking eager to get in on this. “I have a great deal of Cultivator slaughter to still undertake in Pakistan and points west, as well as in Nepal. When that is done, I will be doing some very long rides on and across the ocean.

“I would like you to start getting those atomic assets into place, under cover of operations to dispose of them, as you are doing your nuclear fuels for civilian power plants. When it is time to drop the bombs, it should be done as close to simultaneously as possible, instead of one by one, which would give the enemy time to disperse into the waters and flee.”

They all nodded at the idea. The absolute bloodthirstiness of it was totally appealing to them.

I wanted them dead, or we’d never sail the seas. Granted, we wanted the skies more, but the point was there.

The meeting didn’t take much longer after dropping that bomb, as it were...

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I turned after the Blackfoot Medicine Man called out to me. “Hierophant?” I answered.

He was clad in fairly traditional Native buckskins, feathers and beads and all, and the genetic lines of his heritage gave him an air of wisdom that helped in dealing with politicians. The occasional feather, bear claw, wolf fangs, and ornamental scrimshaw on his garb were actually talismanic Tools, although their true power as potential focuses for Animal Summoning spells naturally didn’t work under the Shroud.

“Lady Traveler...” I hadn’t really spent any time talking with any of the Neutral Faiths, and really didn’t have a lot of respect for them. They were survivors who didn’t want to commit, in the end, and that included most Druids.

He had paused to center himself, feeling the Aura of magic around me, which naturally reverberated on the wavelengths of Natural magic. If my Blighter effect was active, I would have repelled him in terror at the depths of the corruptive magic I held, but since I could access all the Druidic magic via ki or Arcane paths, the only time I used that power was when I actively Blighted something, and that was for special cases only.

I lifted an eyebrow to prompt him, and he chuckled despite himself. “My apologies. You are... extremely imposing for your age, Lady.”

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“The benefits of doing good deeds, no doubt,” I replied calmly, and watched his eyes flicker. “What do you want, Hierophant?” That he was the highest-ranked Druid in North America, a true Seven on his own merits, didn’t impress me beyond the fact that he was truly devoted to the Land and had pulled off something special to break Six without the Double Helix Method.

“I have seen the videos of you in Detroit, and what you told the world of the Mother Lands.” His dark eyes studied my face reluctantly. “Are the Mother Lands truly so condemning of the ways of white men?” he asked me.

My eyebrow lifted further at the implications. “No. The Mother Lands don’t like anyone putting arbitrary borders on them in number. ‘This is the territory of the Blackfoot, it ends at that creek over yonder’, when framed by sapient minds in terms of ownership, is no different than arbitrary lines on a map in Their eyes. If you think that forcibly reverting the world to the old tribal ways is going to save you, all that it would do is justify to yourself having to slaughter many people to make that happen. You would have to engage in continuous, ongoing culling of the sapient populations to stop such a thing from happening again.” I leaned towards him slightly. “That would require all the Druids to become mass murderers, because people have a lot of children, Shaman.”

He paled slightly at the image I was painting, and the contradiction between those roles. Shamans were supposed to speak on the behalf of the tribe, and mediate with the forces of Nature, not cull their own people!

Which naturally led down the thoughtline of culling other tribes, not one’s own, which was basically nothing other than war... and a tool of Conquest and Evil, but he didn’t think in religious spheres like that...

“I am not a Druid, be it a Shaman or a Shifter, Elder Pinewhisper. Druids tend to have this unhealthy belief that their Patron is all-important, all-powerful, and so everybody should obey and revere the land.

“Tell me, Elder, how long are you going to live? After that, how long are you going to be dead?”

His mouth opened and closed, trying to answer that.

“Save for the rare cases of reincarnation... you are going to be dead until your soul loses all individuality, and dissipates into the Realm of your afterlife. I don’t think I need to tell you that such can be a VERY long time.”

He could only nod silently.

“Thus, from a purely practical perspective, which life should you consider most important: this one, or the one to come?”

These were not questions Druids generally faced, as the afterlife was not a concern of the Land. Druids dealt in the here and now, the real and physical world.

“Secondly, just how powerful is your Patron?” I let that hang in the air as he weighed that, and I held up a single finger. The illusion of a single golden coin spun into existence atop that finger. “A world entire, all the mortal souls and precious Free Will upon it, is but a coin gained or lost in the endless exchange of the War of Alignments.

“While a World is a great and grand thing to us dust mites living upon its skin, in the eyes of the Divine, and of the four Profound Forces, it is merely a single coin. And you know what is even more relevant?” The coin enlarged, displaying fantastic artistry before his dark eyes. “The coin itself has no value whatsoever. The value is in what those with Free Will have engraved upon its surface, and made of worth, be it demonic Evil, or holiest Good.” Different engravings on the coin fought and warred with one another as he watched.

The metal it was made of? Exactly as valuable as the illusion, no more...

“In the end, you and I are dust mites to the Land we live on. It could decide to extinguish us all tomorrow, and there is nothing we could do about it.

“However, we are mortals with Free Will, and the Divine and the Alignments consider this world a useless hunk of rock, atop of which grows a precious resource. We can mistreat and abuse that rock to our heart’s desire, and the Divine will not let it wipe us. It can only get angry, and make our lives miserable, and the way we overcome such trials will generate more choices, and more Free Will.

“This is the existence we live in, Elder Pinewhisper. Tell me, then, what is a Druid’s role in this life? What is a Druid supposed to do?”

I didn’t let him speak, continuing on. “There are five main paths Druids take when executing their beliefs and roles. Oddly enough, they conform to the Alignments... or they run from them and try to ignore them.

“Good Druids try to get their people to exist in harmony with all facets of the Land and its spirits. This makes their people stronger, does not invoke the anger of the Land and get them wiped, and doesn’t involve forcing it to confront the Wills of the Divine. The wild and the civilized are just passing trends, the key is harmony and mollifying the Land... and defending it against those who would despoil it.”

“Like the undead?” he spoke up, eyes flashing.

“The undead are but one aspect of Evil. Sewage, pollution, negative energy, famine, Taint, Corruption, disease... these are natural tools that are conscripted by Evil to work its Will. These are the forces that Good Druids oppose.

“Lawful Druids want to break things down and organize everything, fitting it all into some great natural scheme, which in its own way is no different than an imperial bureaucracy, a militant army, or a hivemind... it is all Axiom, trying to impose laws. Step out of line, and be punished for not being part of the cycle. Everything in the cycle, everything in place!”

Despite himself, Pinewhisper winced and nodded. The most dogmatic of the Druids were often like that, thinking they knew the best way to run everything, and anything outside their views was just sacrilegious and had to be brought under control... or destroyed. They thought they were spurning the Alignments and ignoring them, and instead they were just fulfilling them.

“The Chaotic Druids believe that they are elemental forces of the Land, and any attempt to tame the wild, big or small, is to be fought. There is no order, there is only Nature, and what happens, happens. They are the forces most opposed to civilization, for the works of mortals attempt to tame Nature and reduce its glory and threat, and that is an affront to all!”

He nodded again. The radical elements of the Druidic faiths were like that, especially among the Shifters, who continuously pushed for a wilder and more primitive lifestyle, leaving aside the trappings of society and going back to the ‘old ways’. That they as shapeshifters would only get stronger if the arts of the civilized realms were lost, and they were most ideally suited for living in such a place, was naturally unimportant.

That the Werefolk clans almost universally backed this line of thought didn’t help, and many, if not most of, the Fey also agreed with it.

“Evil Druids are, in effect, megalomaniacs wielding the power of the Land as an excuse for their own desires. They claim to be wielding the will of the Land, when they are just projecting their own desires onto it and enjoying the feeling of the power they control, taking the opportunity to do openly with their Faith as an excuse... just like so many other religions do.”

He winced. There was indeed a red-fanged aspect to Druidism, often dominated by their relationship with the bloodiest of the ancient Wereclans. They were indeed full of themselves and willing to go to murderous lengths to do what they wanted, only held back by the knowledge that their blasphemous opponents would come for them instead of cowering in fear as they might once have, and they weren’t all-powerful, only powerful. They used the power of the Land with scarce more reverence than a master used a slave, not realizing they were slaves themselves...

“And lastly, the Neutrals, who just want everyone else to leave them alone and ignore the greater truth of reality while they try to contemplate the power of Nature and the Elements, thinking that’s the way things ought to be.” I rolled my eyes. “Sheep, not realizing that Free Will is the treasure that drives Creation.”