image [https://imghoster.de/images/2024/05/13/Solar-Large.png]

“-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 11 .-“

Arrestor, Brumean, Foamgust, Phaseshift, Snarldraft, Terminal, Windflurry, and…

Roilbroth.

Roilbroth. Soup stirrer. Because once upon a time, a baby elemental lounged on mom’s stew and thought her off-hand joke about turning into a broth elemental was the grandest idea.

I watched in shock as the flying soon-to-be-spaghetti monster swooped off to… be today’s breakfast? Become? Beget? What?

I pinched my nose.

This is it.

This is my life.

“I hope you don’t plan to turn out quite this ‘special,’” I told the last of the nine, the only elemental that had held back and still not emerged from the cauldron. “Clearly, hoping that Granodior might impart some amount of his good sense unto you lot isn’t in the cards.”

Those turned out to be the magic words.

So why did I suddenly feel uneasy?

I didn’t have time enough to contemplate the echo of dark and bitter irony that I somehow knew was my own from the future.

The last of the nine arose more purposely than the others. When our spirits connected, I recognized him as the one who’d instigated their attempted merger in the first place. When he descended upon the feast I offered, he was steady, almost reluctant… but not because of that. Even through the soul-aching malaise of having my spirit devoured, I could feel that he was… concerned?

For himself, but not really. He had something he needed to do, something he’d been preparing, preparing for, and he worried this would derail him like the first time. Hoped for it too, was afraid of what he’d do if he succeeded, while at the same time determined not to. I couldn’t understand him at all.

Despite this, he fed. Of course he did, he was as famished as his siblings had been. The little spirit had barely gorged on half a core’s worth of spiritual mass when he began to metamorphosize. His core, like the others, grew to be as large as two, then three, then six, then twelve, and more the further he ate of the nine I’d conjured from past experience.

But even as he accumulated matter and energy enough to become literally anything he wanted, he didn’t grow. He didn’t turn back to a purely spiritual being either, unlike his siblings.

He declined and resisted all my attempts to play intermediary for Revelation. Where Granodior had arisen to offer his own aid with the others, that didn’t happen either. The little puff of mist didn’t change, he just… got denser. Denser and denser, clearer, brighter and brighter until the shimmering colors in him seemed to gain their own gravity, drawing inward as much as he shone out.

That suddenly changed when the infusion of growth and nourishment finally started to lag behind self-attainment. The little spirit coalesced in front of me into a small, rippling, glassy face with eyes that were the window to its soul. And another soul.

Beyond him but still part of him was Granodior. His vast presence was woven into the little one in a manner not much different from how he was with me. He looked at me. Through the little one he looked at me, like how I’d looked at Richard through the nine when I soulgazed him the first time in the mountains.

The rejection of Revelation suddenly inverted. The little one pulled through me on the Light I’d called forward, burned himself on it to force Revelation on all three of us, and died.

What-agh!

My spirit convulsed as all my Light was suddenly ripped out. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground gasping for life while I retched blood and bile. I could feel my blood spilling out, flowing from my eyes, seeping out through my skin in a thousand places, rips and tears smearing the ground red as I struggled to stay aware.

I-this-such p-pain, what-

I reached for the Light by reflex, only for that to be sucked away too, my body seizing further, tearing further as it was ripped by a… a…

This weakness, the drain, so vast… s-so dark, familiar, like – !?

The Light came ever stronger, but struggled to stay ahead of me breaking down to base elements.

P-protect me-

The Divine Shield formed around me, solid and impenetrable but doomed to die young because all around and above and below was the Void.

What-

I reached for all the Light I could grasp in a panicked frenzy, unable to think of anything except heal, heal, heal me please-

My body stopped feeling like it was coming apart at the cells.

My head stopped feeling like it was about to crack open.

My heart restarted. I hadn’t felt it stop.

Agh…

“W-wh…” I struggled to speak. I struggled to move. My body still bled and all of me convulsed. The most intense golden gleam seeped out of me through a thousand bleeding gashes as my muscles and tendons and blood vessels tried their best to reform from the tatters they’d become.

I died just now.

My mind scrambled in two directions at once, one half trying to comprehend, the other running my diagnostic spell the deepest I’d ever gone only to – my body – I’d just experienced chaotic failure of my covalent bonds. My tissues – no, my cells had almost broken down at molecular level, I’d very nearly been disintegrated.

I literally died just now.

“W-“ I coughed blood. I could barely breathe, and not just because of my injuries. “What the – hell is this?” My words were dust and nothing else because there was nothing to breathe, the void had eaten even the thinnest matter by the time I cast my shield. Everything beyond it was coming apart in a dirge of dark sizzling arcs of annihilation. The air was being unmade faster than it filled in, there was nothing around me and above and below but the Void.

~ Repression, Want, Desire Ours ~

The little spirit. He’d changed. Shockingly, fatally, before I even knew what happened he had died. It somehow killed me too, but there was nothing like a life bond, why? If my spirit hadn’t grown as strong as it has-

~ Resolve Ours, Resolve His, Resolve Mine ~

Granodior helped him – helped him do the spiritual equivalent of mindmeld on me so he’d read from me where to aim when… committing ritual suicide as they’d been planning and preparing the little one for the last few months – “You did what?!”

~ Desire Ours, Desire Yours, Mutuality ~

“You don’t decide what I want!” My snarl was more mental than voice, there still wasn’t enough air. “You do not make decisions for me!” The Void had eaten the air like it now ate the Light my shield was made of, incredible, even the perfect defense was mere food, was this the Light’s weakness or mine? No, my mind – I can’t get distracted, my brain – I was still having a stroke heal that right now!

~ Desire Ours, Resolve Ours, Outcome Thine ~

I tried to rise only to slip, and not just because my whole body was one mass of pain. The snow at my feet – no, not snow, the earth… Not earth either, the dust… Dust was what I crawled in, all I could see around me, a bed of grey and lifeless powder at the bottom of my forcefield and around and away, rising up as the vacuum pulled and twisted it round itself.

I crawled back in a bid to escape the pull of annihilation. I could feel the ground shifting and dropping beneath my feet as the earth continued to disintegrate. Like I almost had. More and more every moment that passed.

Outside my shimmering golden shell that lost strength faster than I could fuel it, I could see nothing. The darkness swallowed up the Light leaving nothing to see by, save too few motes that vanished in the widening gap. There was only dust, roiling at me and around me, a dust devil made of destruction and ending centred around a predacious dark star.

Dark Star, the disjointed thought pulled at my anguished mind as I crawled away. The wording, why is it important-?

The thought slipped past me as I hit against an almost solid wall of wind. For a moment, I didn’t know if I should be amazed or horrified that the other elementals were charging in to be unmade and devoured like me. I shouted a warning through my own spirit, through the Arcane, in my own mind. Stay away, get away, don’t come near here, that and a dozen other things howled out without sound, before I realized that wasn’t what was happening.

Vacuum effect, the nearly useless revelation came instead of what I’d almost grasped. As the air is swallowed up, more rushes in.

But for the wind to implode at such speed had to mean that the rate at which it was being consumed by the void was truly-

The earth beneath me lurched like a snapped whip and tossed me out of the yawning gap, into the sheltering sheen of an arcane forcefield that rose to bar the way from whence I fell.

“He’s alive!” “Thank heavens!” “Grab him, move him back, quickly!”

Arms grabbed me, pulled me. Richard. And Uther. They dragged me away. Past Antonidas who was holding up the protection spell.

Arcane forcefield, I thought dimly as I gasped for air. My own protection had failed and I didn’t notice. It can’t hope to… no… It’s… working? Better than the Light?

The wind whistled in my ears as it was sucked in with the speed of a hurricane. I could feel Phaseshift envelop me, and the others around us too, dampening the worst of the shear. My feet dug a deep groove through the squalling snow as the others never stopped dragging me. Not until we passed outside the forcefield, and then further still to shelter from the gale behind Emerentius’s dragon form.

How are they all here? I tried to comprehend as the healing Light – mine and theirs – finally started making a difference in my brain. How long did that all take, how much time did I lose? Again? When?

“Antonidas’ alarms triggered on his quarters here, and your workshop as well!” Richard shouted over the wind once he propped me against the dragon. “He teleported over, assessed the situation and contacted me immediately. We coordinated and decided to treat this as a hostile area. Per your prior instructions, I first evacuated your parents to my keep in the south, and the new household additions as well. My Lord, what is happening here?!”

“If the fake-blind man is behind this, I apologize for leaving you alone with him!” Uther said from where he looked around the dragon back the way we came. “As soon as we find a way through that, I will show him the back of my hand! What is this magic?”

“I don’t kno-“

~ Disclosure, Deferral, Revelation ~

I hunched over as my mind threatened to splinter again under a deluge of new information. My inner havoc was swept aside by memories of the far past. Mankind’s past. And Granodior’s own, when crystalline beings from across dimensions bestowed his kind with visions that promised new beginnings as surely as the Light conveying them burned him from within.

The humans – Lordain’s sister Mereldar – they weren’t the only ones the Light’s avatars reached their hand to. What they offered humanity was not the same as what they offered the spirits of the world.

I reeled under the weight of conflicted feelings reaching back nearly three thousand years. Disbelief, hope, mistrust, longing, refusal, regret, want, want, want, want just barely not enough to overwhelm the fear, but if another could do it for him-?

“-ourself said you had to leave Dalaran before you found out about the imprisoned ones,” Richard was arguing with his hand firmly clasped over Antonidas’ own. And his transmission stone. “Even that just by happenstance!”

“I said they didn’t confide such sensitive information to me, not that they didn’t have it!”

“The decision is not yours to unilaterally make!”

“The decision is anyone’s to make, whatever that is almost killed him of all people! I will not jeopardize the safety of everything because your loyalty is greater than your sense!”

“The Light-“

“Has failed!” Antonidas wrenched free and pointed at Uther. “Your second highest clerist is here, and he doesn’t know anything either! Dalaran are the only ones with a hope to handle an attack like this now!”

“Not an attack,” I said as much to them as to myself. I felt around for a grip and hauled myself up by Emerentius’ scales. The next words tumbled out before comprehension caught up. “They’re birthing pains.”

The other three were the face of incomprehension.

“It’s not an enemy,” I explained, though understanding was just now slotting in for me too. “It’s the last steam elemental, the ninth, he and-“ I stopped just short of revealing Granodior’s existence, even as I questioned if I should bother anymore.

“One of those steam creatures?!” Richard balked. “It’s doing that? How? They’re minuscule! They can barely put out kindling on their own, how is it doing – it just tried to kill you!”

“He didn’t,” I realized in astonishment. “He’s trying to reincarnate!”

I dashed out into the open and stared at the great sphere of nothing slowly expanding to draw in the world. My shredded clothes flapped fiercely as the wind tried to suck me in, but I stood firm. The other eight spirits – seven, soup was of no use here – were all around me, aghast, dismayed, conflicted at what they let their sibling do in their ignorance, confused but ready to help me.

I couldn’t think of a way they could. “Void metamorphosis,” I muttered. The Dark Star, I knew this was familiar! “But why? That’s the death stage of their lifecycle, not the birth – unless I’m wrong? Perhaps the process was flipped because he started it through suicide – no, not important. Uther, Richard, Emerentius!”

“Yes?” “Your order.” “Speak.”

“I want you to call on all the Light that you can and shoot it!”

“What?”

With a deep breath that hurt my lungs, I reached towards the origin of creation as far and deep as my spirit could go, and used all of it at once to call on the Light. All the strength I had, to my limit, then to the limit I could imagine my limit becoming. When I felt like I could pull no more, when it felt like I was trying to move a mountain on my own, when I was more a gate than a person, I held out my arms and unleashed everything in a great, blinding, continuous beam of radiant gold into the Void.

At first there was no effect. Then the expansion of destruction accelerated. There were shouts of protest and dismay, but I didn’t relent. “We don’t have time!” I yelled over the clangour. “Help me or stand aside!”

Emerentius took to the air. Richard dashed to the right. Uther dashed to the left. Antonidas stepped up beside me and pointedly, defiantly activated his transmission stone.

It didn’t work. There was too much disruption to the Arcane so close. He’d have to flee and try from farther away. Abandon us.

“It’s alright,” I rasped, my every breath a monumental effort. “You have – good judgment – other loyalties – no hard feelings.” Even if he chooses his own best judgment over mine. “Go.”

He didn’t go.

A second beam of Light joined mine from beyond the devouring darkness. Then a third. Then a fourth. The darkness was boxed in and assailed from all the four cardinal points. The more Light we fed it, the greater it grew. The greater it grew, the stronger the wind blew. The more time passed, the more the Void encroached outward until it was almost on top of us, a looming, large, perfectly spherical space filled with nothing while the wind pushed itself and us at it with the force of a hurricane.

The void gained colour. A swirling vortex of golden shimmers became visible through the dust at its core, waves and motes of light spinning like the corona of a star around it. It was more dark than bright. Potent, but failing. There was purpose within it, and want of life and will and determination. But its thoughts reached out past the yawning gap with something barely short of desperation because its form was unstable and unfinished. It was dying even as it struggled to Become.

I felt the dark star reach out to me, for help and insight and understanding. I gave them freely, but… I didn’t have, didn’t know what it needed. Neither did Richard. Or Uther. Not even Emerentius. At the back of my soul, Granodior was a roil of awed dismay and selfish hope and repudiation.

What is wrong with you?

“Wayland!” Antonidas called me through a spell to let us speak despite the roaring of the wind. “What is that?”

“… The greatest miracle you’ll ever witness,” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the sight ahead and above me. What it told me... “It wants to talk to you, mind to mind, spirit to spirit.”

“You think me mad?” Antonidas balked. “I feel nothing from it save hunger and despair!”

“It’s not trying.” I looked at the brilliant light whose dying end even all our Light couldn’t stave off. “You have protection spells active, it will never disregard such statement of intent. What it’s trying to become – it doesn’t violate. Even when it’s his last hope while dying before he even gets to be born. It doesn’t know enough because I don’t, we don’t know the Arcane enough to pattern-mould a form that can last in the Order of this world. But you might, arcanist!”

“… I don’t understand anything that is happening here,” the mage released a heavy sigh. “But I’ll trust you.”

Antonidas dropped his mental protections.

The dark star’s last sentiment was reverent gratitude.

Then it imploded.

The void winked out. The air finally filled the vacuum that nature abhorred. The roaring of the wind snapped and reversed with a mighty boom. The roiling dust cloud burst outwards, washing over us like a tide so thick it blotted out the light of both moons, which had finally peeked through the clouds again.

I cut off my Light and swayed, light-headed. Beyond my sight, I felt the other three beams stop as well. I pushed forward through the haze, driven by anxiousness and urgency that came out of nowhere. Not to Richard or Uther, though I could hear them coughing. I heard the flapping of dragon wings too, again and again. And more. They blew the dust away, letting me see where I stepped. Where I had almost fallen.

A hole in the ground. Not a crater because there had been no impact. A perfectly curved basin left behind by a sphere of annihilation that had eaten into the mesa until it couldn’t grow anymore. The pit was almost thirty meters wide, as deep as I was tall, and round to the point of geometric perfection. Even where it continued upwards into the space where the rear-most half of my workshop had been.

Everything had been perfectly undone along the curve, except one corner and wall. Unmade. As I stared at where my life’s work had been, a shingle fell down from the last bit of roof still intact.

I jumped down, digging a deep grove in the dust layer as I slid to the bottom, and hurried to the centre where – where…

The newborn Naaru descended from on high.

He was tiny, barely more than a Naaru’s mark, two sky-blue crescents centred around a small disc of golden fractals no larger than my thumb.

“What… is it?” Richard’s voice approached from somewhere I didn’t turn to see. “The power – this feeling…”

I reached out. Up.

The baby Naaru ignored my hands and floated closer to settle on my brow.

My consciousness expanded to what I’d only ever attained during my deepest channelings. I felt strong. I was full of energy. I thought I might be able to extend my senses and awareness for miles, and I did. I knew, with certainty, that I could swing my hand right now and a groove would be dug through the ground at the foot of the mountain, from one end of the enclave to the other.

But the people down there were already spooked enough. They hadn’t missed that something had happened up here, they were out and about, staring up at the sky, speaking in worried whispers. I sketched a message in the snow instead, that all was well.

The thought came, then, like a light flung back to the past from my future, that with us joined like this, even true construct creation and manipulation might finally come within our reach.

“S-“

Just when I was about to say his name, the baby Naaru separated from me, pulsed once with love and sadness and commitment to destined death, and plunged down to disappear into the earth.

What?

~ Desire, Eagerness, Vindication ~

What?

~ Vindication, Thirst, Want of Grace Once Spurned ~

My confusion was drowned under an unease more intense than anything else I’d ever felt in my life, then I saw the small light descend into a deep den far and down, only to vanish inside a waiting mouth of stone and rock.

~ Commitment Mine, Commitment His, Glory Eternal ~ (Thirst, Desire of Eons, Want)

The Light suddenly regained the clarity of the future as if a large part of the past interference was now gone.

~ Forbearance, Assurance, Commitment Ours ~ (Want, Want, Want Overwhelming)

I fell to my knees to dig into the earth with my hands. I reached down as far as my spirit could stretch, but I found nothing. I astrally projected and plunged down, right, left, anywhere. I only found darkness, and always wound up close to where I started – Granodior was corralling me?!

I returned to my body, held up by Richard who was talking to me. I didn’t listen, I was struggling to understand what – how – why – when had this been set in motion? I’d seen no inkling-

It is not a vision, Odyn’s words came back to me. Merely a personal expectation based on lived experience.

Odyn… he hadn’t seen this either. Him. What could have interfered with even his sight? There were no fixed moments in time, there were moments when free will reached critical mass and literally none of the outcomes could be predicted, but this – I refused to just believe this was like that, and the Light rung loudly that I was right.

“It was you,” I breathed. It wasn’t Odyn. It was never Odyn. “The other observer effect – the reason my foresight was impaired, why I couldn’t see anything–“ The Light wasn’t the only means of foresight, spirits were routinely consulted for predicting the future too, the main role of shamans was to cast auguries. “The reason for my blindness to the events of today, it was you!”

(Want, Want, Want) ~ Admission, Confidence, All Will be Well ~

“Granodior…” I – I was wrong. If just any other seer could muddle your foresight, then there could be either one seer or no foresight at all. But if it didn’t just cancel out… then it was down to just the ones with enough ability and will to interfere against your purpose.

Just the ones who happened to look at the same events, by coincidence, by volume, or by knowing exactly what you were looking at the whole time. “You planned this, prepared this – all this time you interfered with my sight – manipulated him to – for months – nestled right next to my soul, you have the gall to claim mutuality you bastard!”

“My Lord!” Richard called me, shook me. “What’s wrong? Who are you talking to?”

I clenched my fists in the earth and barely noticed his futile attempts to lift me up. To talk to me. Talking had failed, astral projection had failed, I couldn’t press the issue when I didn’t even know where Granodior was, I couldn’t travel so far down without digging for weeks, attack… what? Alterac’s whole landmass? I’d be lucky if I got a bunch of gems to glitter underground and then I’d be spent. Spirits were elusive, they weren’t like elementals with a physical core-

I stopped.

“Ferdinand!” Richard called louder. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us-ugh.“

I called down Judgment on myself, on the part of Granodior that had been merged with me, and through it him.

Granodior flinched. I saw it. I felt it as my mountain shook. I swayed in pain, his and mine, but I judged again. Another earthquake, stronger. Again. Again, again, again- nothing?! No, there was one but not here. I caught barely a glimpse of a rockslide through Granodior’s senses before he blocked his part of the bond entirely, the sheer gall to ignore me-

“Wayland!” Uther hauled up to my feet by both shoulders. “Snap out of it! Whatever you’re doing, it’s-“

I shoved him away as Judgment came down on me with more force than I’d ever called in my life. The tremors were stronger now, but they happened far to the south in the lowlands bordering Hillsbrad. I continued, again and again until the Light’s judgment was one, pulsing, near continuous beam of wrath. But Granodior wasn’t even paying attention anymore, every blast of Judgment merely scorched at the edges of his self. My output…

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

This was the reason why non-physical entities had to be corporealized before they could be vanquished. I was so limited compared to the vast scope of spiritual entities even now, I couldn’t damage him any more than I could have healed him fistful by fistful when we first communed. Even if I could… all I’d achieve is more earthquakes, landslides and avalanches half-way across the country.

My anguish was being overtaken by white rage but there was no outlet, there was nothing I could do. If only I could find where he was – no, the physical form I saw was just a puppet. Just enough of his spirit invested as he needed to eat the little one, that complete and utter rot pustule.

I can’t stop him, I realized bitterly as I shook with abject futility. I can’t stop this, I can’t save my – the-

… There was nothing I could do to him.

My chest barely ruptured under my claw strike, but my incorporeal hand speared straight through and ripped Granodior’s spirit graft out through my back.

I barely kept from collapsing.

My Light faded.

The others cried out at the sight I made, a second, hazy outline disjointed from my flesh like a double vision, goring itself through.

Far and deep in the earth, the Spirit of Alterac was shocked out of his thirst.

“What are you doing!” One or another of the others cried. Or two. Or all three. Four. I was too dazed and my senses convulsed too harshly to tell.

They didn’t have time to take me to task, to demand answers, to grab me.

Dust and earth kicked up so fast that the earthen hand had wrapped around me before they could react.

“What are you doing?!” The earth of Alterac spoke to me through human words for the first time, his voice flanging as the rest of his body formed onwards from his arm. “Stop!”

Uther’s power word enveloped me in a shield, then Antonidas’ severing spell cut the earth’s hand at the wrist just in time for Richard to take his mace to my restraints.

“Go to hell.”

My incorporeal arm ruptured my spirit outright on the way out.

The vaguely humanoid earth vessel drifted back like a landslide. It ignored the follow-up maneuvers and spells to stare at me in incomprehension, all the way until the three men paused in confusion at the lack of hostility.

“Alterac,” I gasped in breathless pain, holding the diaphanous lump in my bare fist. It was transparent, but quickly turning dark. Effusions dripped between my fingers like bloody sand. “The land – of wicked – of cowards.” I began to laugh. “How fitting that the spirit of the land itself should be every bit as craven! Duplicitous!”

“Our Pact-“

“Is worthless!”

My head went light. I swayed. I fell to the side-

Richard caught me, supported me, He held me upright even as he glared at the spirit of his own country. Farther away, now, Antonidas and Uther flanked the creature, wary. All around us, the spirits of wind and water and flame whirled tensely. Farther off, up outside the pit, the dragon stood and watched. Imbued his own will into the ground. Waited.

“The worst part – is that – you could’ve asked.” I panted, regaining my balance through sheer fury. “Just now – the little ones – were practice for the pain. All these months I’ve been cultivating my power, my spirit, all leading up to taking your pain on myself when I gave you what you’ve always wanted. What your entire kind has always wanted. I was waiting. I didn’t want to overstep, I was waiting for you to ask, that’s all it would’ve taken. We’d have discovered how to Lightforge spirits together. Instead you’d rather eat a baby!”

I tossed the spirit core away in disgust. It fell into the earth and out of sight.

The Spirit of Alterac stared at me in incomprehension. “ … … I do not understand you.”

“You are a coward,” I ground through clenched teeth as my senses returned. “To your last whimper.” My strength rose back within me, letting me stand unaided again. “You'd rather act behind the back of your only friend, to gaslight an infant that doesn't know anything. And now that he does know something, he takes responsibility for his past actions, unlike you! Your conviction isn’t stalwart, your gratitude is the opposite of devout, and our pact didn’t endure half a year!”

“You speak of responsibility?” The earth rumbled. “When you fail to comprehend the future boons?”

“He has more worth and potential than you ever will!”

The truth in those words resonated so strongly in the world that even the spirit of the land could not deny them.

“I should have wondered about it before, damn me.” I cursed myself bleakly. “How does a lone dragon, even a black one, incapacitate an entity as vast as you? On his own? When he was so young? Only if you never fought back, never let yourself acknowledge danger, never confronted him. Like you never let me acknowledge you to others, or reveal your existence at all. A creature that eschews hardship to the point of self-destruction, someone like you who’d rather eat a baby than endure a fraction of the pain that your nemesis did, to get the one thing your kind has always longed for most. Why would I ever suffer my fate to be entwined with one like that?”

I stopped to catch my breath. Waited for an answer. Something, anything, everything, this… why did it come to this? Or could I truly claim not to know?

“… … You would impose your own mores on me? On us?”

I almost saw red. “Don’t invoke morality when you’re the only form of elemental life not beholden to cannibalism!”

I waited for an answer. A reply. Any word at all. None came.

As always, the one who said ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’ was the one person not willing to be the egg that gets cracked.

Granodior’s eyes lost their light, the risen earth lost form, and he was there no more.

“A coward,” I sneered. “To your last whimper.”

The last stones and dust from the large earth body crumbled and fell still. Slowly, so did the dust. The silence of the night finally returned. The others watched me, wary, worried and full of questions.

They didn’t get their answers this time either. The earth began to vibrate, strongly, quickly, faster and faster and then it suddenly burst like a geyser in front of me, leaving behind a tall, polished, green staff made of thorium. It was capped with an orrery as big as my fist, and all of it was studded with white topaz gems from top to heel.

I stared at the object in front of me. I stared at the object that I had asked Granodior to make for me. I stared at what he had insisted was a gift but was now being used as a peace offering. A bribe.

I felt just about ready to explode with rage.

“EMERENTIUS!”

Everyone flinched. Even the earth.

The dragon took to the air and landed on my other side.

“We’re leaving.”

“My Lord-” “Wayland, you can’t just-“ “You owe us an explanation-“

“NOW!”

"-. .-"

Emerentius flew us north. With speed and purpose. The thought vaguely came to me that maybe deceit and treachery hadn’t had their full of me tonight, but I refused to let Granodior’s treachery taint all my other friendships. I just leaned forward on the dragon’s neck and let my fury smoulder the whole way.

Sometime later, we crossed over to Lordaeron and further in. There were some lights in the distance, and watchtower beacons. They were faint but many enough to tell me it was a city. I didn’t ask, and then Emerentius turned eastward for another stretch.

When he landed, it was amidst trees atop some rather sheer hills surrounding a sizable body of water. Despite myself, I tried to piece together my location. Was this Darrowmere Lake?

Emerentius lowered a wing for me to glide down.

My knees were so weak when I dismounted that I almost couldn’t walk. I sat on the nearest rock I could find and put my head in my hands. The sound and shimmer of transformation came from where the dragons stayed, but I didn’t look.

My arms, my legs, my whole body shook with… I didn’t even know. Fury wasn’t strong enough, anxiety wasn’t strong enough, terror wasn’t it, horror closer but still not strong enough even then, not when – not when I’d…

If I, even with all my foresight, if I could be used with such impunity – so callously –

“I didn’t see it coming,” I whispered, my black rage finally giving some way to shame. “I didn’t see it coming at all.

“That’s why it is betrayal.”

I laughed bitterly at the dragon’s words. I looked up when I heard human footsteps. I was surprised to see what he held. My bandoleer.

The bandoleer with the bags of holding that I’d commissioned from Madam Tayer some time ago. I thought that had been destroyed with the rest of my things.

“The range of destruction wasn’t so great at the onset,” he explained. “I was able to save some items.”

He walked away to give me my space.

Looking through my bags, I found practically all my essentials there. My rations, my herbalism and alchemy kits, my toolkit, my fingerless gloves, my weapons, my guns, potions, the items I’d painstakingly stacked up on for today, the deed to the mountain. The case of magic eater fish was there too, the ones Antonidas had accumulated far too many of while still on his doomed quest to find the fish I actually wanted.

I also found an unfamiliar package. On taking it out, I found it to be a bundle of clothing. There was a card attached. It was a Winterveil gift that Madam Tayer had sent me through Orsur, as a surprise. I’d created a new tradition, just like that.

It was a gift I hadn’t received yet. Emerentius must have found it, or been given it to pass on when everyone was evacuated.

I looked down at myself. My clothes were a mess of scraps and loose threads. I called on the Light for them to mend, but too much of them was gone. I supposed it was just as well. Just because my biggest ally betrayed me didn’t mean I was going to drop everything else going on in my life.

Yesterday’s shirt and slacks weren’t the attire most appropriate for insurrection.

I put on the clothes. They adjusted themselves to fit me, the inherent self-realized enchantment that was testament to their maker’s skill. One of several. There was a jerkin too, and pauldrons and bracers to go with it. Boots too, done in the same. Someone else had contributed these, Master Keyton? He was a smith though, not a leatherworker. An associate? New guild member?

The clothes were quite luxurious. And distinctive.

This is the image I project to people.

I looked to where the dragon was. Emerentius was still in human form, standing straight with his back to me. He had a hand out, palm-down, and his eyes were aimed intensely at the ground.

I felt the earth begin to vibrate, and then vibrate harder, outright shaking not much different from the end to the events that had just passed. The soil burst allowing for the rise of a familiar sight, an identical sight to the one that had finally sent me into a rage back home.

A thorium staff as tall as I was, capped with an orrery as big as my fist, and all of it studded with white topaz gems from top to heel.

That’s right, the mithril deposits near Andorhal did have some thorium mixed in.

“My abilities may not stretch to the same scale,” Emerentius told me as he approached to offer his creation. “But I have skill enough to substitute for him in this, at least.”

I hesitated, but accepted the offering. “Thank you.”

“I would say you are welcome, if this did not come at the price of you learning in such a painful way, how my forebears won the War of Shaping despite the gap in scope.”

“What’s that?”

“Elementals are imbeciles.”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but bark a laugh.

One more time, I was seized with the impulse to drop everything else and hunt Granodior down no matter what it took.

But I had no way to find him, and no resources to call to help me, at least not in a time window worth a damn. Dalaran, maybe? Even if I did, though, what then? Wage war on a whole country’s landmass? Could he be corporealized? I had his name, assuming it was the full and real one and he didn’t lie about that too.

But if Ragnaros could choose to be summoned without the ritualists meaning to, without them even knowing what they were calling, who’s to say an entity like that couldn’t just refuse? And what if he holds the people on the surface hostage? Did I want to drive him to that point? Could I afford to? Would he use the method of matter recomposition I showed him?

Even if he didn’t go that far, collateral damage might be unavoidable regardless. Every time I harmed him, an earthquake happened. Do enough harm and he would stop controlling where they hit. Might be unable to.

The world doesn’t stop turning on anyone’s whim, let alone mine.

I collected myself. I had a job to do, and a rapidly shrinking time window for it. I was weary, in pain and depressed, my spirit was literally gouged through and bleeding. The Holy Light could heal the flesh and bolster the mind, but the spirit was what was used to move it to begin with. Healing a wound like this, the seat of the soul itself, it wasn’t as simple as just casting Holy Light at the problem over and over. It had to heal naturally. Over time.

But there were cures for everything if you were willing to pay the price. Time cured all ills, but it didn’t need to be of the objective sort. Just a meaningful enough subjective experience. Engagement.

If ageing could be slowed, then it could also be accelerated.

I called on the Light to bear me through what would be, what would become of me if I sat atop a mountain and just meditated for the next three years.

It wasn’t an instantaneous process, but it also didn’t take more than an hour.

My spirit healed over. It was less than before, it seemed that this method allowed healing but at your own expense, and certainly not self-transcendence. Or the technique wasn’t complete.

But I was still strong enough for what I needed, and would be able to rebuild and grow again from here on too. That would have to be enough.

I rose to my feet, feeling like I could face the world once more. I was older, but jumping from the age of fifteen to eighteen wasn’t that big a sacrifice. I was taller too, even as I felt I still had more to go. At this rate I’d surpass the tallest Kul Tiran in short order. Maybe I’d keep growing until I grew as big as the Vrykul of old, the genetics were all there.

Fortunately, my practice and preparations for today’s operation meant I had a good enough grasp of size altering magic, to bring myself back to a height that could still fit through doors.

I was ready, but didn’t feel it.

I looked at Darrowmere lake.

It belatedly occurred to me that being here did not make sense. “How… did we get here so fast?” No dragons flew this fast, how –?

“I am able to use the Leap of Faith spell as a continuous effect. The tunnel vision and inertia makes it dangerous enough to be useless day to day, certainly suicide in battle, but for long straight lines with no obstacles, I’ve found virtually unlimited acceleration to be most convenient.”

‘Convenient’ says the dragon about… probably the greatest breakthrough in transportation this world had seen in ten thousand years, actually. “That’s amazing.”

“Thank you.”

I tossed a rock in the lake. I tossed another one. I chose a flatter one next and sent it flat against the surface. It skipped seven times.

I stretched. I tested my range of movement and deemed it good. I stroked my new beard and took a few minutes to trim it into something passable. Then I endured a few additional minutes of Emerentius quietly disdaining my substandard skills while undoing my work and putting in his own, because as an assassin he was well versed in all methods of grooming and disguise.

“Let’s go.”

“As you say.”

Once more, I rose into the sky on the back of a dragon.

“… Do you think it will work?” Emerentius asked as he aligned on the path back to Alterac. “What the spirit means to do?”

“No.” That was the most painful and damning thing about all of it. “It won’t.”

Elementals could self-actualize by devouring the cores of their fellows all they liked, but the Light didn’t work that way.

“So it is all for nothing?”

“I don’t know.” The confession tasted like ash in my mouth. “The little one didn’t think so.”

Ever since I took up my purpose in this world, I’d done my best to choose the actions that made for the freest choices. I never discounted the possibility that I’d regret it later, but I never imagined that I’d have to stand aside and respect the choice of a newborn infant to offer himself up as food.

“Why did he not renege?” Emerentius asked me when we crossed the border again, sometime later. “The pact was in bad faith.”

“He must think his sacrifice will be worth it,” I said bleakly. “He might even have seen it in a vision of the future. He’s a being literally made of the Living Eternal Fire, I can’t guess what kind of insight and foresight he has now. Even if he doesn’t, he’d have made the same choice anyway. This is just the sort of thing the Naaru do.”

“Good has unfathomed depths of its own, it seems,” Emerentius mused as he flapped his wings, taking us higher. “I am not sure I appreciate them, but I suppose it’s not such a bad thing, for good to do the right thing regardless of how anyone else feels about it.”

If it is the right thing, I couldn’t help but doubt.

“It will not be painless, will it?” Emerentius wondered. “Or quick.”

“No.” Days, weeks, months, years, how long before he’s fully digested? And he’ll be alive and in pain for all of it. Alive so he can give and keep on giving all the Light he can the whole time. “It won’t be painless. Or quick.”

We reached Alterac City just as dawn was breaking.

Emerentius drifted into a slow, circular glide far above the capital, where no one could spot us. “Has the plan changed?”

“No.” I took a deviate fish out of my pack and checked with my second sight that it was still the right arcane pattern. “I’ll rely on you for passage through the mountain, as discussed.”

I ate the fish and promptly shrank down to half size. I started taking out vials of pygmy oil and drank those next. Each one shrunk me down to size even further, and I didn’t stop until I felt the other magic approach critical charge. While becoming a pygmy would make for some fair schadenfreude, this wasn’t what I’d come out here to do.

I was so small now that the mouth of the vial took up half my face, but I wasn’t done.

I cast a forcefield to protect me from the force of the air, pulled out the baby spices, sprinkled them all over me and abruptly shrunk down to a tenth of the already small size I had become.

The three magics combined brought me down to the size of a mouse. With a bit of Revelation and tweaking, I was able to further improve the efficiency of all three effects until I was as small as a fly.

Conveniently, the magic affected everything within my aura in a continuous effect, including my equipment and the air.

My weight was still the same, and my density was several orders greater than before, but those were a feature, not a fault.

Also, I could levitate.

“Young ones,” I called to the elementals that I’d helped transcend. They’d stuck by me, followed me all the way here despite my condemnation of their basest nature. Didn’t abandon me even after I laughed when Emerentius insulted their whole race. “Will you help me today?”

~ Concern, Determination, Agreement ~

I jumped off the dragon.

Phaseshift caught me and carried me down in a funnel of wind. The others felt left out, so they linked together in an invisible current to bear me hence, from up amidst the clouds all the way down to earth like on a slide.

I hit the solidly packed snow at a sprint, unnoticed by anyone because of my small size in the lingering darkness. I glided forward, and back and round and forward again. With each skid I formed runes and patterns on the cobbles and earth under the snow. They were imbued with my spirit and actively channeled the Light, but went unseen beneath the white cover, save for the slightest glimmers in the occasional patch of thaw.

With the spirits preventing noise from traveling more than one foot away, I recited the first ten stanzas of the Havamal as I went, projecting it strong and wide through the Arcane. Over and over again each time I reached the end. The same words formed in runes from the lines I left behind with every step and slide. The stanzas were interspaced with passages enunciating the function and purpose of the spell, and those to come.

I left a trail of Lightforged runes behind me in a perfect circle around Alterac Castle, right outside the walls of the keep. Up and down streets, under and through homes when they were in the way.

When an obstacle blocked my path, I moved it. When a building or wall was in my way, I jumped over it, or inside through cracks in windows and keyholes. There I’d inscribe the next segment of the ritual on the underside of the floor. When I had to hide from people, I just stopped in a mousehole or a shadowed space to etch my ritual circle from a distance. Precision got easier and easier every time.

The smaller one’s body was, the greater the accuracy and better attention for detail. More of the spirit was free to use and apply creatively as well, it turned out.

Eventually, I reached a dead end in the form of the mountain. Alterac Keep was partially dug out of a peak, through which ran a number of supply and escape passages. It was where the castle got its independent water supply as well.

Asking Emerentius to use his earth magic to dig a fresh tunnel was the most obvious option, but an unnecessary one. It would have made it much more likely for us to be discovered as well, security and surveillance were quite tight for the occasion.

But he was Fahrad, the Black Blade, once the second in command of the Ravenholdt Assassin’s Order. He knew where and how to sneak without arousing suspicion. More importantly, he and his former master knew where the tunnels and secret rooms in the mountain were. He only needed to open slits no thicker than a trencher through the rock, from one passage to the next until I was all the way through to the other side.

With his sense of smell, tremor sense and my second sight bolstered by the elemental spirits aiding us, nobody saw us.

There were wards and spells here and there, but not many so far away from the castle proper, and none that couldn’t be circumvented. I had quite purposely gone wide for this first stage.

“The First of the Nine is Courage,” I intoned when the first circuit was complete. The entire circle glimmered as it became anchored in place, ready to be cast later.

Then I went on to walk the other eight.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance.

The bell tolled noon just as I completed the last of the nine rounds. The steadily brighter glow from the ritual circle could no longer be missed by even the most casual observer. Already there were murmurs and pointed fingers, running children and guardsmen, soldiers gathering in rows up on the walls.

That was fine. Advance warning was the whole point. It meant that the people inside had all the incentive they needed to separate back into their factions, instead of being all lumped together for the second stage.

And third.

I returned to full size at the outer end of the Central Square

I approached the castle gates at a steady walk. The Light shone out of me, casting my face and hands in a golden sheen. The glow seeped through my new clothes as well, and I had no illusions about what kind of sight I made.

A long form-fitting coat split all the way at the front, to let me stride purposely forward. Beneath were matching trousers and a dress shirt and vest. Around my neck was a long scarf, its long end fluttering behind me in the breeze. All were made of a double-layered runecloth so strong even I couldn’t tear it lightly. All were so white you couldn’t tell them apart from the cleanest snow, except for their hems and collar made of brocade woven in cloth of gold.

The armor was a sight to behold too, made of leather from some manner of beast, etched in flourishing patterns and dyed wholesale in burnished gold. The back of my leather vest was etched in a single mystifying pattern, like plant life leaning away to make way for a tree, long leaves sprouting around a central spire of knots and vaulted arches. The design culminated in a flower made up of seven Arathi knots, between my shoulder blades.

No one barred my path. Not even the patrolmen.

My wake was filled with people uttering whispers and prayers.

The castle gates closed by the time I got there, but that was fine because I could levitate. The spirits bore me aloft on wings of wind as I simply jumped over the gate into the inner yard.

Arrows and crossbow bolts pinged off my invisible forcefield, but I ignored them and moved on.

I only stopped when the side entrances to the barracks slammed open and disgorged an entire company of soldiers. They came together to bar may path, one hundred men-at-arms in five rows of twenty, full armor and pikes aimed. A perfect hedgehog formation between me and the doors to the great hall.

Just as the captain was about to address me, I pointed up.

A dragon’s roar shook the air as Emerentius came down from the sky. At the same time, I activated the ritual and caused a golden forcefield to spring to life. The globe encased the entire castle in a sphere of Light, both above and underground. The dragon landed on the top of the golden shell just as it closed. He glowed too, then, and so the burden of keeping the ritual powered was no longer mine.

Let’s go, everyone.

Windows frosted over and hinges froze stiff as Foamgust and Brumean went to work. Snarldraft and Windflurry kicked up a gale so strong that the packed snow flew up like a blizzard. When that wasn’t enough, Phaseshift began to assault the ground with alternating warm and cold extremes, until the older snow, earth and frozen mud broke down to dust and lifted up into the air.

Within fifteen seconds, the entire courtyard had been overtaken by a dust storm. Eyes stung, throats clogged, lungs coughed. It was impossible to see more than a meter in front of you, even if you could somehow force your eyes to stay open in all that.

None of it touched me as I turned to the right and my next destination. Phaseshift followed me, his job done. I bid Arrestor and Terminal to spread through the entire dome, in and out of the keep both so they could actively scan for castings to interfere with. As true spiritual entities again, they were uniquely suited to do that. Mana was a measurement unit, not a resource. The one and only means anyone ever used for unassisted mystical acts was the spirit.

My minions wouldn’t be nearly as good as an anti-magic field, they’d need to choose who to target and would only be able to interfere with one person each at a time. But I didn’t need them to disrupt all magic, not even most magic. I didn’t need them to do it indefinitely either.

Just teleportation, for however long it took me to complete stages two and three. Just any attempts at seeking outside reinforcement.

And escape.

When I reached the entrance to the dungeon, it was locked, so I shrunk mid-leap to pass through the keyhole and returned to my regular size on the inside.

I strode up and down cell blocks, leaving behind more golden glowing runes with every step, along the floor.

Some guards tried to bar my path, so I smote them. A few backed away with heads bowed in fear. A few more threw their weapons to the floor and offered their service. These I accepted after looking into their eyes, then directed to reclaim their arms and disarm the other guards instead.

I soulgazed every prisoner as I passed by as well, the experience nothing compared to Odyn or Emerentius. Some were there rightly so I left them be. Some were there unjustly, so I unlocked their cells and told to wait until I send word that it’s safe. Some were there for true crimes, but repented and were willing to make a try at a more honorable life. These I also freed, but made sure were all denied weapons and gathered in a separate room from the rest just in case.

I only stopped twice.

The first was when I found Narett. The sight of my alchemy teacher on a torture rack stopped me in my tracks. The look on his face when recognizing me was only less soul-striking than him being unable to talk. When he opened his mouth and showed me that they’d cut off his tongue, I had to clench my fists and remind myself that the nine noble virtues included discipline.

I healed him. Regrew his tongue and his pulled nails. I glared at his right arm that ended at the wrist. Regrowing a small muscle was one thing, but lost limbs needed time I didn’t have, or biomass he didn’t have. How long had they been starving him? When had they snatched him up?

“They fed it to the dogs.” Narett coughed harshly as black phlegm clogged his lungs. “Forget it, I’ll be fine once I get to my philosopher’s stone, just get me out of here.”

“Wait with the others until I’m done. You’ll know when.”

He didn’t wait. He salvaged some clothes and boots off one of the guards I’d knocked out, picked up a mace and knife, and followed in my footsteps.

When I stopped the second time, it was to the sight of my farmhand. Howard. Kairozdormu, the bronze dragon of time. Who’d tilled our fields, collected chicken eggs, and grown our turnips with the sort of enthusiasm I still couldn’t imagine being totally faked.

He was huddled in the corner of a dark, dank, windowless cell. He was covered in scars, had only one eye, and lacked his right foot and entire left arm. When I pulled the tiny door window open and looked inside, he didn’t acknowledge the sound. When I undid the lock and opened the door, he blinked slowly in surprise and met my eyes with a grim, smirking grimace.

I soulgazed him without any warning, without any restraint or deliberation. I’d already given him the benefit of the doubt, and like Granodior he’d wasted it. I was sure there had to be people, not just gods who could resist my Soulgaze, who could turn it against its purpose even, but he didn’t even try.

I saw with crystal clarity the future that could have been, the future that Kairozdormu had planned for me. Becoming king, Alterac rising in strength around me, industry, diplomacy, a new order for the entire continent in the east. It wasn’t even a bad idea. I could do an incredible job at kingdom building.

I wasn’t sure what to do with my other realization, that everyone I’d met who could see the future was so much better at it than me.

“It can still come to pass,” Kairozdormu rasped as the vision ended, not caring about Narett or anything else outside the two of us. “Give the word and I will make it happen.”

“Now you need my permission?” I began healing his injuries as best I could, but his missing limbs were even closer to hopeless than Narett’s. “Why would you bother? What makes this so important that you would let them do this to you?”

Kairozdormu was a giant time dragon, he could have escaped at any time, could have destroyed the entire castle if he wanted. His entire goal was to divert the flow of events into a new direction, a timeline he considered better than the one Nozdormu stewarded. I couldn’t imagine why he would let anyone do this to him.

“Nozdormu told me I have to convince you to convince him.” The dragon-man hissed in pain as his rib snapped into proper place. “If this doesn’t prove my commitment and beliefs, nothing will.”

“See, this is why lizard brains are nature’s dead end. This isn’t you assuming responsibility, it’s emotional blackmail.”

“If you are only going to-“

“You have to do one simple thing before I say yes or no,” I interrupted him with a last burst of healing light.

“What’s that?”

“Try to leave the castle.”

I left him without another word. Only shook my head when Narett tried to ask questions. My feet took me from the dungeon to the other chambers on this level. The well room, the wine storage, cold storage, the bunker, the escape passages in case of a siege, now blocked by the golden Light like the rest. I traced a runed glowing path from one room to the next along an inward spiral underlying the entire castle until I stood in the middle of the undercroft.

The prisoners had deployed through the entire basement of the keep while I worked, trying up guards, securing supplies and weapons, barring doors against the reinforcements trying to come down while brainstorming solutions. The realm’s injustice was turned to my benefit here, now. The prisoners included some of the most competent and stalwart of all walks of life.

Labourers with grit, a medicine woman accused of being a demon lover by a highborn suitor she’d spurned, a former lawman with the most discerning eye but too many scruples, former soldiers, former officers with the know-how and discipline to get everyone organised.

It was a stark contrast to the chaos that continued up above. The heavy resistance and arcane counterattack I’d been on guard for failed to materialize. I sensed with sight beyond sight that a task force with at least three mages was almost finished setting up outside, but that was dreadful response time. I sensed a second one too, through the ceiling almost right above where I was. Coincidence?

Either way, they were too late.

The muffled thunk of a walking stick heralded the return of Kairozdormu. He stared blankly at me but didn’t speak. I didn’t either. We both knew why he’d failed to pass outside the shield. I’d included an element of Revelation just so everyone who tried to cross it would know why they failed.

Instead, I sat down. Poured the Light into the ritual script, until every room in the Alterac Keep undercellar glowed like sunlight. I poured more of myself until this and the outer dome became a single, synchronized whole.

Then I called Judgment down on the entire castle.

The force with which the Light smote me almost made me lose my life on the spot.

Judgment… was a double-edged sword. Empasis on sword. To invoke it, to commit to balancing the scales between you and your target… it meant that you committed to infringing on the privacy and sanctity of another’s being. It was a direct, intimate, hostile act and turnabout all in one.

To enact it meant that you committed to violence. You committed to being judged in turn for everything ill you did the other person, including being wrong to call down Judgment in the first place. It was a mighty task just to unleash it on a single target. You needed a dedicated ritual circle to do more. Or less.

If I’d done this back when the king summoned me to court, I would have died right there.

There are still some good people, I thought with relief. Even here.

Awareness returned slowly. Achingly. My sight was a torn canvas of moving spots. My breath burned going out. And in. My head pounded. My skin was drenched in sweat. Vaguely, I felt arms around me. Narett, trying his weak best to support my body as it spasmed and seized. Even so much older than most here, he… was the closest to innocent.

More slowly than ever, with more pain than ever, with an effort of will so fragile it was a wonder I could do anything at all, I managed to heal myself one more time.

My flesh mended. My head still spun, but my sight cleared. My body seized one more time and slumped bonelessly.

But my spirit didn’t share that relief. It was a torn and tattered mess of waves, ripples and diaphanous webs quickly breaking apart.

It – still wasn’t as much pain as Emerentius went through. And, at the end of the day…

This was always part of the plan too.

Slowly, painstakingly, agonizingly, I managed to spread my spirit far and wide. Managed to get the elementals to spread it far and wide for me, even as they grew frightened and distressed on my behalf. Farther and farther they took me, until I permeated the entire castle and beyond. Until I was present in every inch of space inside the dome, however faint.

I breathed deep, of prison stench and fear and human waste and dead vermin. Now that the time had finally come, I thought about what I had been preparing to do all these months.

I found that I had no reservations left at all, to deal with purely human evil.

“Beyond the flow of time – and thought of the gods – there springs eternal and boundless the Light that shows the Truth.”

Here, now… with everyone fallen and defenceless, at their most vulnerable… with their spirits wounded, their characters laid bare by Judgment indiscriminate, their souls at their most open… I infused every fragment of myself with the Light, with the clearest expression of my most refined method of Revelation, and then…

I gave all I could of myself as a gift.

“May this sacrifice – be my blessing. Let all who abide here – share equally in it. Let all of you on this day – and as many days as the Light shines in you – see as I do.”

With a relief so sharp it made me feel like I’d just been born anew a third time, all but the core-most part of me broke apart in a myriad pieces. So many pieces that not a single person within the Dome was passed over. Not even the dragons.

There were four dragons in Alterac Castle.

I blinked slowly. I did my best to hold myself upright with shaking arms so Narett didn’t have to anymore. I did my best to breathe. I felt weaker than I ever did, less than I was even before the Light and my memories came back to me. But… The pain was much less, barely a burden.

And the Light was still with me.

In the end, I had no reservations about dealing with inhuman evil either.

No one was getting in. No one who possessed fewer than three of the nine noble virtues was getting out. Not so long as Emerentius maintained the ritual from outside.

And inside this Dome of Penitence, powered by my spirit, fuelled by the Light’s grace and driven by my lingering will to happen without fail, under the watchful gaze of Valkyries flying on wings unseen… The Royal Court and its foreign guests, the most numerous assembly ever gathered in one place by King Aiden Perenolde of Alterac Kingdom, descended into an orgy of violence and blood as everyone began to soulgaze everyone.

I reached into my bag, I pulled out a magic eater fish, and I ate it. In part to see if I had enough left in me to see this through to the end. See if I still had discernment, power and self-control enough to pre-empt, suppress and dispel the wild magic in it.

I did.

I waited a bit more, to see if my stomach turned at what I had just done.

It did not.

For all that there wasn’t any foresight involved, Odyn had been completely right.

I was, quite thoroughly indeed, utterly livid.