“Yes. Yes, they could." Was my smile reassuring? Surely it was. "Let me give you an analogy. Mr. President, you have leprosy.” I flicked a tube into existence in my hand, and set it down in midair. “The cure for leprosy is right here. You can just walk over and take it at any time, and fix your leprosy.” I took a finger, and pushed the tube around behind me. “But, you, Mr. Mother Land, must let your leprosy heal itself, because I said so.” I wagged my finger at him, grinning very sincerely ear to ear.

Their faces all fell again.

“Gods want mortal Free Will. They don’t particularly care about Nature Spirits and Fey and Elementals and whatever at all. Mortal Free Will, the thing which drives Creation. Nature Spirits are finite, fixed, limited entities that do not have Free Will, merely Elemental desires and motivations. True Divinities don’t have such restrictions. The Elemental Spirits do not have the power to defy them.” I fixed my eyes on his, my shit-eating smile getting even wider. “Suffer your leprosy. I’m sure it will clear itself up in time. You cannot just go ‘fix’ it, sorry.”

Surely the Land wouldn't resent the gods for that, no, no.

High Justice Emil Brosk, the dwarven Patriarch of Harse, finally rose to his feet. “You paint a dire portrait, Lady Traveler, but, there is a catch to all this.” He paused for emphasis. “That is time. We have until the Shroud is gone, do we not, to put all this into effect? Could we not just... go slow?”

“Mmm, that is a very wise, pragmatic, and practical view of things. We can take all the time we want, as long as we can live with the Shroud. Forever, right?” And I let that trail off, and let the ominousness of it grow.

The dwarf sighed, which seemed like a signal for everyone there to slump slightly. “We do not have that much time, do we?” he asked softly.

I smiled brightly. Beamed, really. “Why, no. No, you don’t have that much time at all.”

“Can you clarify that for us?” he asked quietly, pressing.

Two points flipped up behind me in Holo in reply.

* The Curse of the Dawn will expire before the Curse of the Shroud.

* The Undead aren’t going to wait for you.

They all groaned softly. Of course, of course!...

“The Shroud is at least an order of magnitude more powerful than the Curse of the Dawn. Probably four. The only reason the Curse of the Dawn has endured is that the Shroud here was cut off right at the beginning, and has been unable to grow... and that its power is diluted over thousands of worlds.”

The layers of lost worlds rose up in counterpoint, this world blinking among the Blue.

“The Shroud will overcome the Curse of the Dawn. How long that will take, I don’t know. You don’t know. When it happens, that horde of incredibly powerful undead, the elites of Pentara, slaughtered and Animated to serve their Dark Cardinal master, are going to move out, kill everyone, Animate them, and add them to their Dead March.

“It would probably be a really, really good idea to kill them before they can break free of their cage.”

“Yes,” the dwarf agreed somberly.

“Two, do you think that Dark Cardinal is just going to sit around and wait for true death?” I asked archly. “This was a heroic, mighty figure of another world, a great legend there, now an undead horror. It is neither stupid nor weak.

“And it has sensed the Shroudzones, the demesnes of its competition, start to go away.”

They all winced. “Yes, that’s right. It knows the Shroudlords are all Cursed, just like it. It knows they aren’t fighting one another over the bones of the living, consolidating, and gathering to face it. It wouldn’t care, because if they could get free of the Curse, so could it.

“But now, it has felt them vanish, and they are going to keep doing so!

“Has anyone come for it? Nobody is that stupid... yet. But what happens when all the other Shroudzones are dead and gone? Obviously, we managed to kill them. Obviously, we will come for it... and perhaps we do have the power to threaten it, fight it, and kill it...

“It will go looking for solutions, and you are talking about a thing that has demigod levels of power at the least! It will find a solution, and it will enact it, and at that point, if the Shroud is still up, the Divine cannot save you, and our whole world is going to die.

“Of course, once that happens, it need only wait for the Curse of the Dawn to finally wither and fail, and our cold, dead world and our souls belong to it. Congratulations! You bought yourselves time!”

Nobody responded well to my hearty encouragement, strange.

Camilla, the queen of England sent here by king Charles, rose next. “Tell us, then, what do you expect us to do?” she asked me directly. “These... changes will be quite great, difficult to implement...”

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“I expect that you’re going to have to fight, and fight hard for them. There are many, many factions invested in the current balance of power. They simply don’t want to change, and will not do so willingly.

“They are going to get you killed, or they are going to make life miserable and hostile for everyone. But they won’t care and won’t believe it until it is stuck in their face, and even then, it will be someone else’s fault.”

Despite themselves, they nodded. It was what it was, it was how people were.

“First of all, you need to Level up armies of individuals. No, not just one or a handful of powerful people you think you can control. The opposite will happen, and they will control you, and try to eliminate threats to their power, making you all collectively... weak.” Their eyes flashed, and hesitant nods agreed with me.

“You all have the tools to Level your populations, and I have given you the route to do so. Racial Levels or Class Levels, I do not care: Level them up!

“The Shroudzones are there. They are worth monstrous amounts of Karma. Each one can Level thousands of individuals to Seven or higher, as New York proved. Progress steadily, do not be greedy, spread out the Karma, improve your Weapons, Level your people.

“If you want to survive, you need to dissolve your countries and your unnatural borders.” The national leaders started to protest, and the bleeding map of North America hove into view. I focused in on Michigan, and knives began gouging out more on the map along the county lines, and they swallowed their words.

“If you want a nation, you must have a True King. End, stop.” I made a cutting chop. “Whoever has a King will not merely survive, but prosper. Who does not... good luck, you’re going to need it!

“Your places of power will be based on your cities. Cities are Place Spirits. They dominate the lands upon them and around them. Cities will Acknowledge a Leader, but Cities do not accept the authority of other Cities that are not direct relations. Boston cannot dictate to Atlanta. Houston will ignore Detroit. Portland doesn’t care about Columbia.

“This will be an era of city-states. Some will be dominated by Religions. Some will have Allegiances at the top. Some may be commanded by lesser Nobles who are not Kings, Mayors to their cities. The most vulnerable will be led by councils or elected officials, and will suffer and fall, in the end.

“If this sounds like the end, like a return to warring city-states and conflict and intrigue and tests of mortal will and character... well, duh! If you don’t want to put up with that shit, get a King!

“If you can’t unite and get a King... tough shit, it’s all on you!”

I refocused on the queen, who was a bit thin-lipped. “It is very, very unlikely, Your Majesty, that your line will continue as royalty, and definitely not as Royalty. The Land does not care about your lineage, your heritage, your traditions, your culture, and most certainly not your desires.

“You are a dust mite. If you want to be a Queen, that Crown must be seized and won, it is never inherited.

“If you want to be the High Queen of the British Islands, then you must furthermore subjugate the Kings or Queens of the other islands. Good luck! If they don’t have a King, then it is impossible to Reign over them, if they’ve a different Land Spirit... and Mother Ireland is not Mother Britannia.”

Camilla slumped back slightly, clearly dejected, and wondering what to do. As I recalled, the whole royal family of England was Landbound to Britannia. However, they were not warriors by any stretch, although the younger princes had at least some exposure to combat. Their chances of becoming a King were miniscule.

But... England had a bunch of smaller Shroudzones, including London...

“Cheer up. You’re still the link, along with the Druids, between the Land and your people. If they say you have to tear down the government, abolish the royal line, find a True King to lead you, and make the common man higher Level so they can face what is coming when the sky opens up, maybe they’ll even believe you, Your Majesty!”

She did not seem to get any happier at my words.

“Regardless, I will state with absolute certainty that the remains of the British Empire and Commonwealth need to die with every bit as much certainty as America, Canada, and Mexico need to dissolve.

“Also!” I raised a single finger, before anyone else could complain. “The Land favors those born of its soil, but that is not absolute. Power enough raised in its defense will sway it completely, such as a foreign-born Druid or Landbound sworn to Her. I, for instance, have an excellent shot at being acknowledged as High Queen were I to submit myself before the Mother Land of America.”

President Havier flinched outright at that, and yet couldn’t keep the image out of his mind, because I did indeed have the aura of a High Queen. Pursed lips around him indicated that a lot of the other attendees were imagining what it would be like to follow a Queen like me...

If they were in The Jet and Silver, they would know already...

“Very pointedly, the Land does not care how long your family has lived here at all. Come from a tribe that’s been here for ten thousand years, fine. Born here from an immigrant couple who came off a boat, same exact thing. You are born of Her soil, She will recognize that about you. You are a Native child, for all that most of the time She won’t even know you exist, because you are so very small.”

Dust mites...

“Furthermore, and let me be very, Very, VERY clear on this. I will be clearing absolutely zero more Shroudzones.”

A couple of the politicians there tensed. Certainly they had intentions for me to wipe out this or that troublesome place in their lands if I could spare a few hours to just stop by and do so, there’s a generous girl...

“Those Shroudzones are vitally necessary for you to Level up as many people as possible. You have the Double Helix Method. Within a year, your people should have hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands, of post-Sevens. There should be tens of thousands of Tens worldwide.

“I will not be taking that Karma or the Glory away from them, or their strength from you. You need to raise them up by the thousands, and that is how you are going to do it.”

Their breaths came out in the cool air, realizing that I wasn’t going to do the work for them... because doing so would cripple them if I did.

“The sole exception is the Dark Cardinal. When every other Shroudzone in the world is down, and when the forces of the world gather to take down the creature that cut you off from the sky, I will be there to start burning it down with you.

“Until then, I will be helping to set up Allegiances, laying the groundwork for Kingdoms, advising... and I will be ruthlessly butchering every Cultivator who raises their head upon this planet. That, in fact, is what has occupied me recently.”

I lifted up a map of southeast Asia on the Holo behind me, and painted it in shades of black and white, Buddhist orange, and green.

“Both the Daoist Creed and the Buddhist Mantra have found their way to your world, and you have been sealed in here with them as they have expanded relentlessly in the Orient.”