It was, perhaps, a sign of how our life would go that it was about an hour later that a burning meteor struck the top of my tower. It was, I would later learn, not a falling space rock. All I cared about was that it didn't seem to damage the tower, and then I continued following after Miun, as I had been doing for a while.

Now, obviously, I could have reached her in a moment, but after everything that just happened to her, I wasn't going to deny her the chance to wander off and contemplate things on her own. Despite that, I also wasn't ready for her to potentially get killed by demons out in the wilderness--or worse, recruited. So I followed her, keeping my distance, but she seemed uninterested in stopping until at last, two hours later, she stumbled into a rock and collapsed onto it, crying.

I followed after her at a walking pace, until I was close enough that she couldn't ignore me being there. She turned and stared daggers at me--or so I thought, until I realized that her eyes had been touched by black flames, and Alice's light had burned that out of them. Like all the places the flames had been purged... yeah, she was blind now, I thought as I knelt down next to her, saying nothing. If I'd really understood that, I might have stopped her sooner, but she hadn't acted blind. Perhaps she had some special sense?

One way or another, I think she still knew it was me, even if she didn't look quite at my face.

"You had no right," Miun said, angrily, her voice wavering with pain, and with betrayal.

"You don't need that power," I said, quietly. "There are other ways--"

"The other ways are not the Way!" she hissed at me, tears pouring down her face. "The other people will not listen. This is the story that is passed down--that those with the mark of the Zeh'la will lead our people to prosperity."

"You had the mark," I said, "and we can lead your people to that future."

The quiet after my words left me thinking that she didn't agree. I let the quiet hang there, then spoke again.

"There are many people where I come from who won't listen even if it would be for the best," I said, quietly. "Because they have been told that outsiders are not their people, and that there are only some people that they should trust. As I watched them, growing up, I saw that sometimes they were right, and sometimes they were terribly wrong."

"The truth is always that you have to discover what people really are. And in truth, as much as I'm well meaning, I don't know how to lead your people to prosperity. I don't know what you--what they--would wish. Perhaps the--the mark of the Zeh'la was also..." I paused, understanding what I was saying before I chose to go ahead and say it. "...not merely about power, and the courage to use that power, but also a source of wisdom. Perhaps it would have led your people to greatness. But I fear that it was also enslaving your people to a future they could not escape."

"Is it really necessary, after all, for your people to fall into disgrace again after every battle against the darkness is won? It's one thing that you are promised great things when the time comes around again, but do you have to suffer for centuries in between?"

Miun closed her discolored, disfigured eyes for a moment, and I could sense, again, that she was listening, and thinking, but I... I wasn't sure she agreed, so much as maybe she didn't think she had a choice.

So I stayed quiet, and watched her, and hoped she would respond to that question.

"Your friend, who burned me," said Miun after a long pause. "She said that the mark was a curse, and that it contaminates us. Contaminates me." She opened her eyes, looking almost at me, but not directly. "Now you say that perhaps we did not need to suffer. I do not know. But I can speak of this, plainly: my people are warlike, and in times of peace, it is best that we are not strong. When the last war has been fought and all our warriors are restless, they will sooner go collect treasures from their former allies than grow shaslik kipear trees and pretend to be common men."

I wasn't sure what shaslik meant, but I got the impression from my divine artifact that it was an obscenity that simply didn't translate by default. In another mood, I might have poked to see what it meant, but I didn't get distracted in the moment.

"And that's a reason for your women and children to lead hard lives for centuries?"

Miun shook her head. "Women are not harmless, and children become adults," she said. "The hard times only ensure that we will be ready when the next war comes. The Zeh'la are a symbol of that. The darkness that has befallen our people becomes the source of their power, and that resonates with the darkness within us all."

I made a face. That made a certain kind of warped sense, but it did make it harder to argue for saving her culture.

"You can't lead by resonating with their desire for prosperity and peace?"

"The Naishi do not wish for peace. We wish to conquer."

I shook my head. "And is that what you wish? A woman who fled her people to become a potter?"

Miun drew in a breath, but it caught in her chest. She pursed her lips, her unseeing eyes moving away from me and staring into the distance, who knows where. For a long time, she didn't speak.

"I could not stand to watch my mother," she said, finally. "She was once a warrior, but she was broken. She believed she could simply stand again one day and become a warrior once more, but she could not. She raged against her family for imagined failings, blaming us for a fate we could not save her from."

"When I felt the flames within me," Miun continued, "I could feel her. I could feel the flames telling me that I could heal her, and that she would rise again. I thought that I could free her from that pain."

I frowned at her. "You would reward her for abusing her family? For abusing you?"

Miun turned to look at me, and this time, somehow, her eyes truly did lock on to me, as though she could see me, somehow. "She is my mother," she said, sharply. "One must be loyal to their family."

That got me mad. "Or else what?"

Miun blinked, unshed tears knocked loose. "What?"

"You talk about being loyal to a person who was not loyal to you. If you are due punishment for disloyalty, then so is she. If she is not due punishment, then neither are you if you abandon her."

Miun shrunk back against the stone she was still collapsed against. "No."

"You hold yourself to a standard that you won't hold her to," I said, old bitterness creeping into my voice. "She deserves to be held to that standard."

"No."

"You needed her!" I reflexively started to stand up, but realized that I didn't want to tower over her, whether she could see me or not. I settled back down. "And what she needs isn't you. She needed to live in a fairer world, and you couldn't fix that."

"With the power of the Zeh'la--"

"With power you could cheat the world in her favor," I admitted, "but you can't change the past, Miun. Nobody can, not even the gods."

"I can undo the damage done to her," she hissed.

"Not even the gods can change the past," I repeated.

"Then your gods are weak!" The Naishi stood up, stumbling when she misjudged the rock's curvature, which she hadn't seen or explored with her hands. "With power, anything is possible!"

I sneered at that. Under these circumstances, though she wouldn't know it, those words were a hell of an insult, and I'm sure my voice carried that. "Even bringing back the dead?"

"I--" She faltered, tried to step back, and fell onto the rock again.

"Power cannot change the past, Miun," I said, my voice firmer than the rock she was trapped on. "It may heal, and it may change. But scars are not wounds, they are a reminder of the truth of the past. If you will not accept the truth behind your scars, then..." I wasn't sure exactly how to extend the metaphor, and after a moment of being tongue-tied, shook my head and gave up on it.

"You could lead them," I said after a long moment. "You could have come back with black flames and led them. But think about what that would mean to you, if you had stayed and someone else went out, came back, and led you all. You would be trusting them to have the great wisdom of the gods, to know everything that's coming, to bear all the burden of your people on their shoulders. And all the great warriors, whether you were among them or not, would go with the great hero of your people to wage war, and the rest of your people--perhaps you among them, and perhaps your mother among them--would be left at home waiting for their return."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Miun was sitting, now, if not comfortably, her face pointed more or less towards me, but also turned deliberately away.

"If you were at home," I said, "and your people marched off to war, many never to return, how great was the legend of Zeh'la then? Even if they come back with stolen riches, even if they come back with food and slaves and whatever else they could possibly want, if it wasn't happening to you, don't you think you'd doubt the prophecy? Doubt that it was the one true Way for your people? How different is it from being a tribe of bandits?"

Miun flinched, and started to speak, before hesitating. "The Zeh'la will lead..."

"When the flames appeared in your body, did they come with knowledge of how to create great settlements? How to advance the knowledge of your people in great leaps and bounds, so that they can create a golden age of their own? Or did those flames teach you how to lead warriors into battle, so that you could take success away from others?"

Miun's mouth suddenly clamped down.

After a long moment, I spoke up again, quietly, but I felt firm willpower leaking into my words, an edge like what I had felt in Alice's speech, enhanced by the Bracers. "The opposite of corruption, Miun, is progress. Raising up your people without cheating any of them, and without stealing those gains from others. If those flames only wanted you to take, then they were corrupt. If you wish your people to rise, that is not the Way."

"You could have had an army," she whispered, as though that mattered at all.

"If you believe in your heart that even if I raised up your people, all of them, that they won't fight for me without the appearance of a Zeh'la," I said, "then perhaps there is no saving the Naishi."

She winced at that, and looked away. I reached out and touched her hand, not grasping it. She flinched back at the touch, but did not fight me.

"Miun," I said, firmly. "I am your friend, and I do not wish to see your people suffer."

The potter shed hot tears, and I pulled her into a hug that she didn't really want, but definitely needed.

----------------------------------------

Later, but not too much later, I brought Miun back to the Tower. She was tired, now, but she had lost some of the edge in her, an edge that I had known all along was pride, even if I didn't understand. I respected that pride, even now, but... but the fact that it had been based on legends that were... suspect, at best, I also couldn't help feeling like it was right for it to be gone, at least for now.

Hopefully, her people would give her reasons to be proud of them again, when next we met them. I had hope, but it was... uncertain.

I found that Jess and Steve were hanging around the tower, with an unknown person who I was able to identify immediately as a new Hero. There was a lot to that; she was wearing clothes from home, looked nothing like the people around here, and was wearing ruby leg armor that had burned away her pants and shoes.

Her looks were intensely Irish, and she had a head of flaming red hair that almost outdid the brilliant red gemstones of her artifacts. That was offset by a brilliant green scarf, which was about all that was left on her body of what was obviously winter gear; the rest had been shucked into a pile, which Carli was investigating curiously. That felt odd, since it wasn't winter when we left, but I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

"Colin!" Jess shouted and waved when I got within range; I was traveling fast, but not cannon-balling, since I didn't think Miun would appreciate that at all. Instead, I was doing a much slower series of long, low jumps that looked more like I was taking exceedingly long steps, covering thousands of yards at a clip, all with Miun on my back.

Coming to a stop was a little messy, again all because of Miun, but we slid to a stop in about the righ, and the three Heroes at my tower stepped closer as I set the Naishi woman down.

"So. is that the last one, then?" The new Hero looked me up and down, and then over at Miun, no suspicion at all written on her face.

"No," Jess replied, "Alice is still in town. This is a friend of Colin's."

"Friend, ah?" The redhead grinned at me, nodding knowingly. "Right, I'm Bridget, the Hero of the Ruby Talaria." She offered a hand, which I took. "Pleased t'meetcha."

I grinned back, feeling like her enthusiasm was infectious. "Right back at you," I said. "I'm Colin--"

"So they told me," Bridget interrupted, immediately. "You're the tailor, right?"

I put on my best offended face, which she ignored.

"Right, come on," she said, "Gonna need you to get me into something suited to this weather. All this sweat is stinkin' up my pits fierce-like, and I gotta get a proper bra around these girls if I'm gonna be jumpin' around makin' a fool of myself."

I turned and put a hand on Miun's shoulder, supportively, as she looked from the redhead to me, and then to Jess and finally Steve, who she hadn't actually met, before I followed the new Hero inside.

"It's a nice place," Bridget said as the door closed. "Walls are a bit thick. You plannin' on makin' a fort out of it?"

I was already pulling up samples of the materials I'd used before, appraising the redhead's body as I thought about the clothing I'd already made. "I wasn't thinking about it," I said, "but there's no question I'll have to fight eventually."

"Ah bet," she said, looking me up and down, then looking at the materials I'd moved up. "So you do that telekinesis shit too, eh? The talaria are for flying, like the Greek gods of old, so that's a part of my shit now."

I had noticed that there were wings etched onto her leg guards at the ankles, which made sense to me. It took half a moment to remember the right legend. "Hermes, right," I said, then rapidly fabricated a white T-shirt that should be about her size.

Bridget, for her part, pulled off her top immediately and without shame, and gave me an appraising look, even as she took the tee. "Measure em if you have to, but if you get handsy just know I'm gonna beat the shit out of ya."

"I'm not the kind," I said, and after a bit of squinting and moving around her, offered a sports bra.

A few minutes of back and forth later, mostly uninterrupted by anything else, Bridget and I came back out, her in hot pants and a midriff-baring, sleeveless shirt, well shorter than the first version I'd given her. For shoes, I'd fabricated metal sandals that didn't interfere with her Talaria, which was a little difficult since the artifacts had a heel strap as a part of their design. As light as her clothes were, she was still sweaty, clearly unhappy to be in the relative heat. That wasn't an opinion anyone else had shared; I guess she just really was built for cold weather.

I wasn't sure what to expect would come of Miun while I was gone, but to say I was surprised to find her weeping on Steve's shoulder, as he patted her shoulder, was an understatement. I would have figured that--under any other circumstance--Alice would have been the best one to help heal the kinds of wounds the Naishi potter had gotten. Jess I figured was too stoic and work-oriented to be personable. But Steve?

I gave him a strange look, and the look on his face shifted from sympathetic to offended, and then to mollified, all within the span of a few moments. With his free hand, he tapped the Armory, laying near him, as though that was sufficient explanation, before turning his attention back to Miun.

So I looked to Jess, who was staring off into the distance in front of an arcane glyph that just kind of hovered in the air, I assume doing some kind of reconnaissance or divination, or possibly just working out the details of a spell she would use later on. For all that, she noticed the second I put my attention on her, and the glyph swirled inwards into her hand, her fingers closing as it came in as though she were catching something she'd dropped, though when she next opened her hands, they were empty.

"Alice has been answering the town's questions," Jess said after a minute. "The magic here is going to be off the charts starting... maybe tomorrow. We could really use a way to burn up all that power."

"What, like a massive spell?" Bridget kicked out with one foot, and with a foot and ankle motion that was strangely intuitive to look at, pulled a boulder from more than ten feet away and caught it, dropping it to the ground and sitting on it, all without using her hands. As I parsed it in my head, I realized that it reminded me of soccer players--football, she would probably call it.

"It'll take more than just a spell," Jess said, shaking her head. "Ground zero for the..." her voice hitched, but she moved past it. "...the fight that killed John, the magic power is so great there that normal humans would probably be warped by it just going there. It's messing with the ruins, and the stone in the area as well. I can't really tell what's going on from this distance, but it feels like reality is folding back on itself, somehow."

"What about the nearby cities?" I paused, and frowned. "Do you have that map?"

Jess tensed, and shook her head. I guess we hadn't recovered John's bag of holding, or whatever. I frowned, but she continued on. "The cities in this area might be in danger, yeah, but I'm not sure what to do about it." Jess paused, then looked at Bridget. "How much did... did our God friend tell you about what's going on?"

"He said a bit," she answered, "and also showed me some kinda video of you guys talking with him about the end of the world, and all that."

"What?" Miun's head whipped around, and the three of us turned to look at her and Steve, sitting there together. The potter seemed to have calmed down a bit, at least; she didn't seem so... fragile, for the moment. "Do the gods intend for the world to end if you fail your mission?"

Jess snorted a laugh, and Miun's gaze turned to her. I looked, too, but I wasn't sure what she found funny. "It's not about what any of us intended," she said, "they're just doing a lousy job of managing it all. Basically, the so-called Demon Lord is trying to escape by forcing open eight magical seals, and the gods are letting him try--and putting us here to stop him from actually escaping--because the alternative is worse. That," she pointed to the horizon in the direction of the disaster, "was one of the eight seals opening, and it's bad for the surroundings. Very bad."

I quietly admitted to myself that it seemed like a decent summary.

Miun frowned, but shook her head. "According to the history of my people, the Makou is a great warrior who wishes to conquer the world. They do not speak of what our role is, or what happens, only that the Zeh'la must raise our--my people up and go to war."

There it was again, itching--similarities to Japanese, but bent. I decided I didn't care, and just swept my hands in the air dramatically. "That's all well and good," I said, "but we either have to evacuate the area that's going to get flooded with mana, or we have to figure out a way to use it all up. Jess, it takes more than mana, but what about a huge enchantment? Anything like that?"

She looked at me and frowned. "With the right materials, maybe. We didn't recover mithril, and meteoric steel increases the local mana supply, a little." She shook her head suddenly, and violently. "I'm thinking about this wrong. Doing it inefficiently, just brute force using magic, is fine. We just need an effect we want to power."

"Easy enough." I turned and looked at the tower--my tower, looming over us all. I'd been thinking about what it would take to make the tower itself float using minimal power and cleverness. "What would it take to make that fly?"

Jess turned to look at it. "A stone tower? Not nearly as much power as we'll have. Not enough to prevent a disaster."

I just nodded, and smiled. "So how big do I have to make it?"

Jess turned back, and I noticed the grim smile spreading across her face, as the Staff of the Diamond Mind gave her answers that she, and I, were both going to like.