“Mortal belief and free will has created divisions where there are none. This has created particular problems along the great border in the northern plains.” The view flashed in there, and the Stelae marching across the landscape to regulate the border scrolled by.

Up in the sky, countless spirits raged and howled at the barrier of belief preventing them from roving freely.

“When the Shroud falls, America is going to wake up. When She does so, She is going to find that She has been chopped up by metaphysical wounds inflicted by mortals.”

Knives of Mortal Will tore across the landscape, gouging and piercing as they laid down more arbitrary borders and boundaries viciously, inflicting bleeding, bubbling, and oozing wounds upon the landscape.

By the times the knives and axes were done, the map was a scarred, wounded parody of the image before... and very, very recognizable as the land upon which we stood now, every state and country in place.

“These wounds are done and inflicted by Mortal Will. They are extremely painful to the Mother Land. And when I say painful, I mean PAINFUL.” They all clutched their teeth, and watched the cuts bleeding behind me.

“The only divisions of land a Mother Land recognizes are Kingdoms, or those occupied by Her Children. That... is... ALL.”

Every single politician there swallowed, looking ghastly pale.

“Naturally, there is a simple way to resolve this problem. That is for the Mother Land to get rid of the mortals who are inflicting such pain upon her.”

They looked like they wanted to vomit blood. I was talking the death of whole nations, from both ends!

“Now, the gods can suppress the Lands from taking immediate and overt action... and they will do so. However, that is directly forcing the Land to bear those wounds. The Mother Land WILL NOT BE HAPPY TO DO SO.”

The smiles that were cautiously rising plummeted back down.

“The Lands that you live upon will be hostile to you as long as those borders exist, and they will REMEMBER what you have done to them, even if in the future your children that you have fobbed this problem off on fix it for you, because you were too weak to do so.”

Their expressions crumpled a bit further. Not only trouble for themselves, but trouble for those coming after them if they procrastinated.

“THIS IS THE REASON I RELEASED THE HUMAN TONGUE TO YOU,” I declared flatly. “There is no language border anymore. Your differences in customs, laws, and mores the Mother Lands DO NOT GIVE A DAMN SHIT ABOUT. You are DUST MITES on their skin. They might not be able to wipe you all away with one slap, but they are going to start itching... and like an itch, long after the main cause is gone, they will keep on itching and itching...”

President Havier was swallowing. He knew the Power he was Bound to, and how ominous and casual it could be. He knew She was essentially dreaming, and did not have a defined will. He wanted to serve the Land because he wanted to care for it, and see it grow, and his family had always lived close to it.

And, he had to admit, he had been given power by it.

He stood up, and those nearby all saw his hands shaking. They knew who he was Sworn to. “My-my Lady Traveler,” he asked, weakly, totally overawed by my presence at this moment. “I-I do not sense such animosity towards us right now...”

I reached out my hand, and an axe materialized in it, all of metal, cold and sharp, a full half-moon Sylune’s Smile with the hammer backer, a tool for killing the undead.

“Mister President.” My voice dropped the air temperature forty degrees, and snowflakes started to fall. “If I buried this axe in your skull, and you were unconscious, would you complain to me about it?”

He swallowed. “N-no,” he admitted.

I raised my other hand, and a carving knife materialized there. “If I cut you all the fuck up, and you were bleeding, and the wounds would not heal, and you were unconscious, would you complain to me about it?”

He swallowed again, trembling. “N-no,” he repeated softly.

“Before you on the table is a bar of goldweight that you brought here at my request.” Said bars began to glow all over the place, and there was motion behind me as a Disk descended from the ceiling, full of sparkling lights.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Life Diamonds!

Dry mouths flooded with saliva on seeing that. They were the most sought-after gemstones on the planet, each one a shot at a new life. The fortune I was showing there was worth billions on the open market!

“I will make a bet, here and now, with each and every one of you,” I stated solemnly. “I will carve you up like you have carved your lands, or I will throttle you like you are throttling the Land.” My eyes turned on the Ælven queen, who shuddered at the baleful stare I gave her. “Then I will bury this axe in your skull, while giving you Revenance, so you won’t die.

“And then, for every minute that you can endure the pain of an axe splitting your skull, of all your wounds bubbling and oozing and burning, I will give you a Life Diamond. Because we all know, that if the Land doesn’t do anything, and if you don’t have to do anything, you will profit, right?”

The contempt in my voice shattered four of the wine glasses still on the tables across the place, making them jump in shock.

“If you can last five minutes, you, and you alone, can pocket five Life Diamonds, and walk away. The Mother Land can bear the pain, and the axe, and you can pocket your profit.

“But if you can’t last those five minutes without tearing this axe out of your head and trying to salve your wounds, I get to take back those Life Diamonds, that precious representative of your time and efforts, and I get to keep your goldweight.”

I stood there, axe in one hand, knife in the other, my eyes glowing. “Who wishes to make a bet with me, and play the role of the Mother Land? Five Life Diamonds to you if you win!”

President Havier sat down slowly. He couldn’t hide his greed and desire for the Life Diamonds, but there was no way he was going to win them.

The room was silent as I looked over them all. “No takers? Where is your greed? Where is your motivation? FIVE Life Diamonds!” A pentad of the glowing, glittering jewels swirled above my head, fantastically eye-catching, soothing, tempting. “Right here for the taking! All you have to do is ignore an axe splitting your head in two, and your body carved open like an overripe fruit! It’ll all get fixed up when it’s over, nothing for you to worry about, it’ll be someone else’s problem then!”

They all grimaced despite themselves, even the ones who weren’t politicians. I let the silence hang heavy with dread for a full minute before waving the weapons away into nothingness, and they watched that Disk full of Life Diamonds ascend out of sight into the shadows above me with yearning eyes... but nobody made a mention or move for it.

“This is the scale of what you are dealing with. YOU. ARE. DUST. MITES.” I dusted my hands off for them. “You are living on the skin of the Mother Lands, and you are HURTING THEM.

“You will either change, or you will make the very land you stand upon your enemy. And that is an attitude very, very conducive to disaster... and the Mother Lands hold grudges for EONS.”

The word was very specific. They would remember what mortals had done to them long enough for our mortal races to go extinct!

I flipped my hand, and that scene of people rampaging over Pentara replayed again. It was pretty impressive, and they couldn’t help but follow it.

“Ten years.”

“What?” blurted out more than one of them.

I gestured at the scenes. “It took them ten years to learn to be able to do this to an entire boosted, super-powerful undead planet that was invading their Earth.” I looked over all of them. “And you’ve had almost eighty, and a Shroud to protect you from interfering powers looking to have a piece of you.

“You have had it very, very easy.”

“Oh, and I was informed that the remaining population of that other Earth is around twenty million people.”

Their eyes got really wide. That... was a whole lot of people dead...

“When the Shroud comes down, you’re going to have to face everything that they did. You have the people, you have the goals, you have the tools.

“I have told you about Kingdoms and Allegiances so that you can actually organize yourselves when you do this. So that when the Mother Lands wake, they can look around and see that there is nothing wrong with them, and approve of you. So that when you look at the gods, the Divine will know that you are there and willing to do your part of the cycle of Faith and Duty. So that when other Powers come in... they will have to weigh whether messing with the mortals on this world is worth the time and effort and the high and bloody hand of smack-down that is going to be coming upon them for doing so.

“All that is why I am here.”

I let that linger in the air as Point Six glowed.

“You can whine. You can moan. You can complain. The universe does not care.

“These are the Rules that Creation lives by. You don’t get a say in them. You can either use them, or ignore them and pay the price. You don’t get to change them, unless you can figure out a way to send the Earth back where it came from, and hope that every profound Power that knows about us decides to ignore us in the future in that nice low-magic realm our world came from. I’m sure that will happen.”

They could only exhale their combined disbelief.

“The Divine protect us from fiat slaughter, in return for Faith and Free Will. The Divine protect us from individually-inflicted asshattery by said Powers, in return for personal Faith and Free Will. They have no obligation to protect someone who ignores them or avoids them, and things WILL happen to those people. They are your weak points, the ways that outside forces get into this world, and cause potentially massive, horrible problems.

“Atheism isn’t just a bad thing for them, it’s a very bad thing for YOU. It is actually better to have someone pay respect to Rath and unstintingly serve Hell than it is for them to be an atheist and get Possessed by a Starspawn who starts making a Portal to open an invasion route for minions of their master from Outside Creation. While there are some nuts, the gods generally don’t try planar invasions against one another, unless they are going to wipe the planet anyways.”

Faces twitched. It did not feel good being a mite.

“You want to change that? You have one choice. Pick a side, and get strong. That’s it. Sit in the middle, don’t make a choice, be a victim. Don’t whine, don’t complain, don’t moan. You have mortal Free Will, you make your choice.”

“Questions?” President Havier’s hand shot up. Well, he was brave enough. “Mr. President?”

“You say that the gods can suppress the Mother Lands. Would that... buy us time?” he had to ask.