The Sorjekgons stayed overnight at Taisach's house. It was a big house, built with the intention of recruiting like this, and it had a bunch of guest rooms for exactly this kind of thing. A few didn't report in that evening, but Praoziu said they were sleeping outside under the stars, and would be just fine.

The next day, there was a gathering for breakfast. Praoziu filled the table with summoned breakfast foods. They had cinnamon rolls and honey-glazed grains, sweeter than any breakfast served in the hotels of Theoma. They had eggs wrapped by crepes and pancakes that had been cooked with crumbled meat and onions for the lovers of more savoury foods. The open room from before had been by Praoziu's magic converted overnight into a dining hall, and the vrash sat at tables to eat together this time.

Taisach and Aleicree sat to either side of Praoziu at the head of one of the tables, and Aleicree had invited Azosta to sit next to zirself. Aleicree started with eggs and pancakes, but followed it up with sweeter fare, pushing zirself to eat more than usual. Zie was self-conscious of zir scrawny tail... and wanted to take advantage of the free food, too. "Are you going to keep summoning foods forever?" Aleicree asked Praoziu at one point during the meal.

"Oh, probably," said Praoziu, who wasn't eating, but sat smiling at the table. "It's such a luxury. I understand that there are dragons who enjoy cooking, but unless we host quite a lot of them in Nidrio, I think I'll keep appreciating that I can bring forth foods from anywhere in space and time." She giggled. "You don't know what meat you're eating in those pancakes."

Several nearby dragons gave her worried looks, and Praoziu hurried to add, "Don't worry! It's nothing bad. It's summoned, so in fact it didn't come from anything that ever lived. I just mean I picked the most delicious meat I could think of, and I didn't have to worry about sourcing it."

Taisach asked, "You said, 'unless we host a lot of them'. Would your preference to summon food change if we recruited a lot of chefs in Nidrio?"

Praoziu nodded. She said, "Everything in this place is my substance, and everything that changes a land god's substance changes the land god." She frowned with a thought, then smiled again as she said, "Of course, you literally can't take away ALL of my affinity for summoned foods. Chefs will never bring back foods from prior worlds as exactly as I can."

With a gesture of a cloven hoof, a colourfully wrapped candy bar appeared in the air over the table near one of Rettle's friends. It fell to the table. "That's a gift," called Praoziu to the surprised farmergon.

"I've seen you eat before," said Aleicree, looking at Praoziu's empty place and then up at Praoziu. "Why aren't you eating today?"

"I am the biggest glutton in this room, you can be sure," said Praoziu, sitting dignified as a statue. "I know these flavours intimately."

Azosta asked, "If someone brings food into Nidrio, do you immediately know what it tastes like?"

Praoziu looked at him with some surprise. He'd been quiet through breakfast. She shook her head. "No, not automatically. I can duplicate it and try it myself, of course. I suppose that's one advantage to encouraging non-magical cooking. In theory, I can still be surprised with new flavours."

"If you let me," Azosta said gravely, "I will do my best to encourage non-magical everything."

Praoziu frowned at him, repeated that hoof gesture from earlier, and a large chocolate ball suddenly appeared in the air over Azosta's plate, which sat empty having held two pancakes earlier. The chocolate ball crashed down into the plate. On impact, it broke into a bunch of regular slices. "Eat that," Praoziu said.

Azosta looked appalled.

"It'll do you no harm. I just wanted to remind you that there's only so far that you should take your opposition to magic."

Azosta dipped his head. "Of, of course," he said, picking up a slice of chocolate. "I wouldn't challenge your summoning of food in your own household. I just... hope you can understand how much more... coherent the world is, if it runs more like in the Missing theomes, where most processes have no land god interfering with them."

"No observable land god," corrected Praoziu.

It was hard to tell on Azosta's white scales, but Aleicree thought he looked ashen. "This may be a difficult relationship."

"Oh, please get along," said Aleicree. "Azosta, Praoziu is paying your debts. I think she wants your counsel."

Azosta sighed and shook his head. "Debts that were inflicted by Vesset's will. I feel bounced along between land gods. Passed from one to another. At least it's apparent that there is a plan for me, I suppose."

Aleicree swiped a piece of chocolate from Azosta's plate, and then licked his cheek before pulling back and devouring the swiped chocolate. He started and then laughed, touching his cheek.

Taisach gestured across the table at Azosta and said, "Your idea that we were proposing to use too much magic isn't one we'd considered, but given that we're recruiting non-geomancers it makes sense. Of course, that means you're signing yourself up for some hard work. We'll want you to design a waterworks to supply a fair-sized settlement with clean, running water."

"You're still offering unusual luxury, just now you're reducing the magic you're using to offer it," Azosta said. "Most theomes don't have any waterworks at all."

Taisach nodded. "Most places are also dirtier than anyone enjoys thinking about, even if they're used to it. Someday every theome will have waterworks, and Praoziu wants us to lead the way." He leaned forward across the table and swiped a piece of chocolate from Azosta's plate.

Azosta didn't actually eat very many pieces of the chocolate Praoziu gave him. Everyone sitting nearby had at least a slice. It had a citrus flavour!

Aleicree sat back nipping pieces off a cinnamon roll and listening as Taisach and Azosta talked plumbing. It wasn't as interesting as listening to Azosta talk about magic, but that topic was a bit fraught in Praoziu's presence.

Soon breakfast was over, and the farmergons were all prepping to leave. Even Azosta and Limist were readying to go. The whole flock gathered on the lawn outside. Aleicree wasn't going with them on the way back. Zir vacation from the Serene Chordalite had another twelve days to go before the Serene Chordalite would be back in port at Griolor, and zie was staying with Nidrio.

Zie said a lot of farewells to dragons zie hardly knew, and mostly felt a bit stressed and empty. The odds were pretty good that zie'd never see any of them again. The farewells were just a gesture.

But then Fiata, Wrevaskel, and Medem shared a glance with each other, then all nuzzled on Aleicree at the same time, and Aleicree laughed and retreated from them with a grin, hoping that zie'd see at least a few of them again.

The flock soon departed. Aleicree watched from the ground as the dragons who'd come with zir all flew away. Only Rhis stayed behind.

Taisach flew away next, saying, "I'm going to go invite Taltios to visit while you are here. I'll be back with zir, or with zir apologies."

It was a short flight, and Taisach was back before too long had passed. "Taltios can't visit. There's a sickness in zir livestock, and zie's caring for them closely. In fact, I'm going to go fly back with some herbs I think will help, and I'll be overnighting there."

That left Aleicree, Praoziu, and Rhis as the only souls in Nidrio. Although zie hadn't spent twelve straight days here for decades, Aleicree still felt an obligation to be entertaining rather than entertained, and zie wasn't sure how to entertain someone for several days in this place. What could zie do with Rhis?

Zie ended up inviting Rhis out to swim in the great lake of Nidrio, which took up most of the theome's largest valley. They swam for a while, and spent hours afterwards exploring by foot and wing, and Rhis said at one point, "Is Praoziu s-sure sh-she wants to invite settlers into this place?"

To which Aleicree knew the answer at once was, "She's convinced she can invite in only the most beautiful of settlements."

The next day, there was a much-anticipated conversation between Praoziu, Aleicree, and Rhis. Aleicree found it strange to attend. Praoziu had already told zir that Rhis was going to get his catch.

They met over another breakfast the next day. It was a weirder breakfast held in the dining room of the upper house. They had dry, sweet red pastries with a dry, sweet white paste filling them, and fizzy brown beverages to wet the thirst that the entree induced. Praoziu had summoned stuff they couldn't make, as though feeding only her own family, though Rhis was at the table. Aleicree didn't think this one was a masterpiece of prior worlds, though zie didn't say so. The food must mean something to Praoziu for it to be summoned, zie thought.

Rhis was the first to broach the topic. "I-I think I can help you with the, the recruitment process."

Praoziu smiled. "I would appreciate that. What are you offering?"

The question surprised Aleicree, who knew that Praoziu knew Rhis was a necromancer.

"I... I can cast a spell," said Rhis, his words tumbling out. "It'll fray social connections in Sorjek. Some of the dragons it hits will start looking for somewhere else to be! They might come here!"

"To clarify," Praoziu said, "This will happen outside of Fate, breaking Fated bonds in order that dragons might join us in Nidrio?"

"Y-y-yes," said Rhis, crouching down before Praoziu.

Praoziu stopped and beckoned Rhis 'up, up' with a hoof. When Rhis had stood again, she said, "There are so many theomes you could live in where I would reject breaking Fated bonds. So many of the land gods would be offended by that spell. Fortunately, you live in Sorjek, where such things are expected. I accept. What do you want in exchange for your spell?"

This last question really surprised Aleicree quite a lot, because zie knew that Praoziu knew Rhis wanted a catch. Was Praoziu simply listening through the conversation despite having augured it in advance?

"I want a catch," said Rhis. He took a deep breath before continuing. "Up front," he said emphatically. "This spell could, in theory, with a miniscule probability, actually kill me. I want the catch before I c-cast it, a-and I want to keep it as my p-payment if all goes well."

The risk of death from necromantic spells was a big mystery to Aleicree, who had no idea how it worked. Zie didn't exactly look forward to learning, but if that was on the path of lore...

"Granted," said Praoziu. Zir tail flicked, and zie glanced over at Aleicree. "Auguries describe the self as well as others. Self-conforming is the path of least resistance, as the augury itself defines a Fated path."

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Aleicree's jaw dropped. "You read my mind!?" zie asked.

"Always, my dear. But you will be doing auguries yourself, someday. I think." Praoziu blinked, and looked about the room for a moment before her gaze fixed on Aleicree again. "Oh dear, I'm not sure! I can't peer into any future where you learn those spells. I can only see the start of those paths, but there are so many of them."

Rhis looked across the table at Aleicree. He spoke slowly, "That's how land gods look at necromancers. Many paths... no predictions."

"Am I already a necromancer, then?" asked Aleicree.

Praoziu smiled and shook her head. "No, Allay. Not yet you are not. There is a bright, clear strand of Fate that directs you back to the Serene Chordalite."

Aleicree nibbled on a pastry in silence, pondering Praoziu's words. Zie was baffled by all this talk of precognition. At length zie said, "How far can you predict, mom?"

Praoziu grinned as zie said, "My current predictions estimate that Taltios will outlive Theoma itself. I can predict Taltios indefinitely... although if I talk about zir, I can foresee my error rate rising, because you start to want to change some aspects of Taltios' future, and I can only predict you for... four decades? I can't even tell. There are lots of branch points in your future that remain predictable for centuries, but you might not take any of them."

Rhis asked wonderingly, "Is this fun to talk about?"

"It's a highly chaotic subject," Praoziu said. "Oh, you should just take this now."

She clicked her hooves, and a token appeared in front of Rhis. He grabbed it at once. "My catch!"

Praoziu sat primly, with her tail curled around herself. "Let me talk about chaos. Land gods can be aligned to order or chaos. Idsemper of Sorjek is chaotic. I am chaotic. Dessor, if you remember the god of Qianjek's homeland, is an orderly god. So is Vesset of Shibanyet. This assignment is not an essential trait, but it's something that changes with circumstance and experience."

Aleicree leaned forward, breakfast forgotten. "Why are you chaotic?"

Praoziu smiled. "Right now, Nidrio's Fate is highly simplified. I want to change the future, so I need to inject chaos to create more complex futures. Contacting a necromancer for support is, by the way, simply wonderful for this. Thank you so much, Allay."

Aleicree thought about all that zie'd heard from Praoziu. I really could've been learning more from Praoziu than from a geomantic academy, zie thought. Aloud zie said, "I'm starting to understand how lucky I am to be born into this family."

Praoziu giggled. "You three have been amazingly humble in your first careers. Taltios, farmergon. Aleicree, seagon. Denziu, mudgon. I think you'll all be very quiet immortals at this rate."

Aleicree glanced at Rhis, then grinned at Praoziu. "I don't know... The seagons I knew weren't quiet dragons, and some of the farmergons in Sorjek weren't very quiet either," said Aleicree.

"Do tell," Praoziu said, and she looked so interested that Aleicree almost forgot, as zie was talking about the farmergons who had been affectionate with Vrekant or even tried to sniff at zir own self, that Praoziu was something like omniscient. Almost.

Zie didn't talk about that night with Fiata, but zie didn't doubt that Praoziu knew.

What drove Praoziu to be sociable when all the conversations were Fated, everyone's mind was open to her, and she already knew all the answers?

The rest of Aleicree's vacation was spent on a mixture of nature exploration and paired meditations. The bulk of the nature exploration was with Taisach, who ranged the forest tending to plants of unusual value. The bulk of the paired meditation was with Rhis, who spent the days in Nidrio largely holed up in his room.

It was the paired meditation that took up most of Aleicree's thoughts. A few hours with Taisach every morning showed zir only forest; it was good exercise in a wonderful place, but zie didn't feel like zie was learning anything from it. The time spent with Rhis showed zir things zie was desperate to comprehend, and that was time zie could not stop thinking about.

Rhis was busy being things very different from the wind. The guest room he had borrowed for his ritual was completely distorted while he was using it. Nothing was damaged, yet everything that was supposed to be in the room had been blasted back from the centre, tripling the size of the room without touching its neighbours, and in that centre stood a black stone platform above a void that emitted a shrouding black mist. Most unsettlingly, the amicus breeze failed on entrance to the room. For the first time since zir hatching, Aleicree was surrounded by an unfriendly air.

The first day that Aleicree joined Rhis, zie got to see the room undergo this transformation, stretching away from the centre as a platform formed underneath them and the floor ripped open to let in the black mist. "Being here is unhealthy," Rhis said, his voice uncharacteristically cool. Steady. "The land gods can't see into this mist. They can't repair your body while you're here. The mist is making your own misunderstandings manifest within your flesh. You can't possibly know enough about fleshworking to gain from that."

"Should I leave?" Aleicree asked.

Rhis said, "You wanted to see this." And that was all. He didn't tell zir to stay or go.

Zie stayed.

All Aleicree knew how to be was the wind. There was no wind here. Meditating on the platform, Aleicree felt the air in the middle of the room and around its edges. Zie felt zir own breathing and zie felt Rhis' breathing. The air was full of a strange energy. Aleicree attuned to it as best as zie could, while Rhis did the real work.

First sporadically, and then with gradual confidence, zie became aware of a kind of connection between Rhis and the black mist. It seemed to be coming from the void beneath the platform, but it was actually more like the amicus breeze than that. It was coming from Rhis himself. So was the platform. Rhis was generating this space that they were within, disrupting the land god's creation somehow.

In a true paired meditation, the two meditants focused on the same becoming. To do this right therefore, Aleicree would have to be the black mist... at a bare minimum. Assuming that Rhis was not also doing something else that Aleicree could not yet perceive.

With a heart of perfect calm, Aleicree focused on achieving oneness with Rhis' strange magic. Zie could not contribute, but zie did not disrupt him, and so he let zir stay with him at length as he worked.

Shapes formed in the void. They could not see them with their eyes, but they could feel them with their shared becoming. The shapes formed and shifted at Rhis' direction, but to Aleicree, the shapes remained alien and meaningless. They were nodules forming in the void and connections between them, some tenuous and others meaty. Here and there a light flared into being in the void, then stretched and broke into a thousand shards of fading gleam.

Whenever Rhis went into this room, Aleicree joined him. Across the course of days, a kind of landscape took form beneath them, a barren earth with a forest of inky nodules reaching up from it, something that could be seen only by becoming one with the void that Rhis emanated into the room. Aleicree could not ask questions, for to do so would disrupt Rhis' meditations; zie had the discipline to watch in wonder, and try to anticipate the fluctuations by which Rhis adjusted the landscape. It seemed less like a crafting and more like something that had always been there, being exposed in the non-light of the constellations of broken shards that increasingly gleamed beneath and seeped up into the room through the torn hole that Rhis had conjured. Whatever its origin, Rhis was changing it as Aleicree changed the wind, adjusting the nodules without adding or breaking their connections, creating a path somewhere to the ground in that place.

On the sixth day, a hole formed in the ground of the landscape far beneath them, and a fox formed from the black mist within the hole. It began climbing the forest of nodules. It stood like a kalla, two feet and two arms, and it was made with a robe of shadow already about it. Where it touched the nodules, they gleamed and rotted, the connections between them fraying. Once one of them lost its connections to the others around it and floated away, gleaming and reaching into the void with new tendrils until it touched another 'tree' and knotted in thickly. The fox did not stop to watch, but kept climbing. Twice it leapt to get higher in the structure that had formed, leapt as the nodules collapsed under it into new configurations, leapt to escape rotting connections that could no longer hold its weight.

Finally, it reached the highest point within the nodule forest, and leapt upwards to grasp at the edge of the black stone platform, hauling itself over. The shadow-cloaked fox knelt before the two meditating dragons, and joined them in their meditation, its hands folded prayerfully.

The black mist coalesced thickly on Rhis in this next section, clinging to him on the sixth and seventh day, worrying Aleicree, but zie dared not interfere. The nodules beneath them lit up in groups, Rhis' awareness questing across them. Some of the connections rotted away, sizzling and corroding into nonexistence. Tenuous connections vanished without drama. Surprisingly, a few new connections formed and stood fast, gleaming like starlight in the inky forest. Aleicree watched as Rhis lost interest very quickly in nodules with starlight connections.

Eventually, some of the nodules were worked free of all connections. They rose towards the room, shining grey in the black mist. Still meditating, Aleicree was the room, as the fox stood and grasped the freed nodules and pulled them in under its cloak.

It started towards the door, but Rhis came out of the meditation and said, "Hold. You cannot. We will travel together."

Aleicree opened zir eyes as well. The black mist seeping up from the torn floor around them was unchanged. Zie was almost surprised to see the fox standing there physically before them. The fur upon its face was red.

The room started undistorting. The mist retracted into the floor, and the floor sealed intact as though it had never been torn. The room shrank to its usual dimensions, and was just a guest room again.

Rhis looked at Aleicree. "This is a wolejerrup," he said, gesturing at the robed fox. "It's formed of my substance, like this theome is formed of Praoziu's."

"I think I've seen one of these before, in a painting," said Aleicree.

Rhis said, "Those paintings are illegal in many theomes, though artists get away with it often enough."

"Does it talk?" asked Aleicree.

"Yes, but you shouldn't talk to it," said Rhis, shaking his head. "It casts auguries constantly, like Praoziu, but unlike Praoziu it has a hostile intellect."

Aleicree focused on Rhis with a frown. "How? Do you have a hostile intellect?"

"I understand how a wolejerrup is supposed to think, so I can form that shape with my mind. It's actually an abstract, but formed of my will instead of the will of a land god. This is how necromantic summoning works."

Aleicree had heard the term 'abstract' before, decades ago in geomantic academy. Zie had also done poorly in zir classes, so zie asked, "Wait, what are abstracts?"

Rhis laughed and said, "Summoned entities! It's just a term for a summoned entity."

"Why not just call them a summon?" persisted Aleicree, needling at an old annoyance from zir school days.

"I don't know," said Rhis. "It's just the practice. Maybe it's because when the land gods make them, they can look like anything, even abstract shapes. Necromantic summons are usually more tightly patterned. Varying from the template only makes them more dangerous to their caster."

The wolejerrup walked over to Aleicree.

Rhis glared at it. "Don't speak to Aleicree," he commanded.

"Why? I'm curious what it wants to say," Aleicree said.

Rhis shook his head. "Wolejerrup exist to ease apart the connections between dragons. If it wants to talk to you, it has augured a future where you are broken of your connection with someone."

Aleicree studied the wolejerrup intently. It still reminded zir of a kalla in the way it stood upright. "The principle of Rift starts with the Broken Knife, doesn't it? The world is more peaceful because of the Rift principle, isn't it? So let it speak to me. There's a connection between me and someone else that the world would be more peaceful without, isn't there?"

Rhis stood measuring these words for a few moments, then shrugged and said, "It's your heartache. Speak freely, wolejerrup."

The wolejerrup said to Aleicree, "Taltios' lifespan depends on you. The more of an interest you take in the life of Taltios, the earlier Taltios dies."

Aleicree's eyeridges shot up. "Praoziu said that Taltios' probable lifespan exceeds that of Theoma."

There was a nod from the fox-being, and it said, "That is true if you grow estranged from Taltios. This is a likely future which Praoziu has already accepted, but if you resist it, Taltios will die."

Aleicree looked over at Rhis. "Does it usually just talk directly about what will change the future?"

Rhis shook his head. "No, it doesn't. These things are cast out of most places, even in Sorjek they're considered pests to be destroyed. The wolejerrup works by dream sendings, aching curses, and other necromantic spells. It only speaks when it feels unthreatened."

"Don't send me any dreams," Aleicree said to the wolejerrup.

The wolejerrup said, "I will not." It walked over to Rhis. "Will I be joining you for dinner?"

Rhis thought about this, and then nodded. "You m-may. Let's see what Praoziu th-thinks of you. But let me wr-ite this as a stricture, you are forbidden from breaking up this family."

"I have already broken the only breakable bond within it."

Rhis departed the next morning with the wolejerrup upon his back.