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“-. Interregnum 580-581, Day 10 .-“

Emerentius promised to keep a proverbial eye on the blizzard, so I went back inside. I found Dad in the kitchen, standing with his arms crossed near the pantry and staring unblinkingly at the table. Since he didn’t look up when I entered but this was his conversation, I set about making tea while he sorted his thoughts out.

No words were spoken while I filled the tea pot, while I waited for it to boil, while I laid out some cookies – mother stress baked a lot more than she used to – and not even while I finally poured tea for both of us. Dad just stared at the table, and then the tea and snacks I set on it. On the inside, he was a rattling whirl of too many emotions to bother picking apart. Ugly ones.

I finished pouring the tea and waited. Nothing happened, so I decided to take the tea pot back to the stove to keep it hot.

Dad pushed away from the wall, grabbed his mug and hurled it at the wall with a scream of rage.

The glass shattered to pieces in a spray of steam and hot water.

Silence returned again, with just the whistling of the blizzard cutting into the speechlessness now filling the room to bursting.

So much for that birthday present.

I glanced at my father. He was staring at the mess on the floor, completely blank.

I walked by him into the pantry and brought out the broom and dustpan.

Dad slumped where he stood with a look of shame.

I said nothing and began to clean up. The shards were everywhere, I should have used the wooden mugs instead. The tea was everywhere too, I’d have to get the mop out after this and then-

“I hate that we’re such a burden to you.”

My hands stilled. Even with everything Mom had gone through this year, I’d never heard Dad sound so bitter.

Then I continued sweeping.

Dad laughed even more bitterly at the sight of me. Almost madly. “Oh, what a sight I must be. The world’s great walking miracle and here I have you sweeping floors – how have you not washed your hands of us in disgust?”

“Dad, has it ever occurred to you or Mother that you’ve already done all the work needed to earn your happiness?”

“Don’t give me platitudes when the only reason we have what we have is all you.”

“A case could be made for me being the cause of all the bad too.”

“Hahaha!” Dad’s laughter this time was like a frenzy. “Oh, we all know why all this ill is really coming down on us. Wealth we did nothing to gain, honors we never earned, worshipful eyes we sure as hell don’t deserve, your mother – your brothers…” Dad pulled the nearest cupboard open, grabbed the first bottle in reach and took a long swig of firewine. When he spoke again, it was in a hoarse rasp. “This is heaven’s punishment for keeping you from your holy path.”

“I’m sorry, who’s the enlightened saint in this house?”

“YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN BE IN THIS HOUSE!” Dad roared.

Then he slumped with a face full of pain. He hauled the bottle to the table and finally collapsed in his chair. “You shouldn’t be here. You should – you should be out there.”

“Doing what?”

“Blessing, smiting, healing, founding your own kingdom, I don’t fucking know! What am I next to kings and princes and assassins and the fucking Archbishop coming on a literal pilgrimage to see you, I don’t know shit, I’m a fucking cobbler!” This time it was the bottle that flew across the room and smashed to pieces against the pan rack. The dripping liquid splattered over the palls and kettles like dripping blood, even over my face despite the distance.

Dad stared at the new mess, at me, then dropped his face in his hands. They were rough and callused from work, but not spotted. His physical health, at least, wasn’t backsliding.

My own kingdom, huh?

I wiped my face clean with a kitchen towel, finished sweeping the mug shards, swept what I could of the bottle too, and emptied the dustpan in the bin. Then I went into the pantry and back to get the mop.

When Dad spoke again, his voice was a hoarse rasp. “You can’t languish here, son.” He didn’t dare speak louder than a whisper as if his own words damned him. “You have to leave the nest. I thought we could – you’re still not sixteen but – we’re not kicking you out! We don’t want to – you’re our son but – you can’t waste your life here! Not because… You can’t waste your life and your blessings, son, not… not because the two of us can’t get our shit together!”

“Mhm, as opposed to what?”

“Damn you, it doesn’t matter if we’re worse off without you! Everyone is worse off without you, the hell are we so special? You’ve already – we already have – we don’t matter, fuck, it shouldn’t even matter if we die. The Light, the Gods, the ancestors all damn me, I should’ve spoken up when the Archbishop was here, we should’ve – we could’ve left with them to Lordaeron and then you wouldn’t-” Dad was all but pulling at his hair now. “Sometimes I wonder if the world wouldn’t be better off if you’d been born to literally anyone else.”

“Then Falric and Marwin would grow up to become undead zombies.”

Dad twitched, then he looked up to me in confused grief.

“Were I not part of the picture, Falric and Marwyn would have been born only to be separated before they were old enough to remember each other’s faces. I don’t know if one or both of you died, or you went properly blind and what else, or just gave them up. But Falric grew up on a farm only to run away and join some foreign military. And Marwyn grew up an orphan street urchin before running off to also join the same foreign military.”

I found a few loose shards, so I switched back to the broom for those before I switched back to the mop to wipe up the last stains.

“They reconnected many years later, as captains under the same leader, just in time for said leader to fall to the manipulations of a demon triumvirate and become the slave of an evil undead abomination of near godlike power. Falric and Marwyn then got killed by their sworn commander, only for said commander to immediately raise them as undead too. Falric and Marwyn then proceeded to lead a nigh-endless horde of walking corpses to overrun the continent in the name of their undead master.”

I squeezed the mop in the bucket and wiped up the last spots.

“They never knew each other for siblings, they never had the joy of family, they never got to form their own legacy, and their stories ended at the sharp end of a blade both times.”

I finished cleaning and returned the mop, broom and dustpan to the pantry. I returned to the kitchen and washed my hands. As I wiped them, I looked at the unfamiliar bar of scented soap and my mind drew a blank. I didn’t know what ‘tribute’ this came with. Or when. I must not have been there for it, we had an entire system for it now. Good god.

When I turned around, Dad was looking at me with glittering eyes. “You… really do know the future, don’t you?”

“Some parts, and they’re all obsolete now.” Except for those that weren’t. It was on the tip of my tongue to say ‘don’t presume to tell me what my path is again’, but I decided it wasn’t the right time. “Drop any notions of heaven’s judgment or self-flagellation, unless you’re willing to apply it equally to me too. If we’re just going to judge everyone by different standards, then you could just as easily say I’m most at fault for provoking the king into coming down on our heads. In that vein I’m more guilty for Falric and Marwyn than anyone.”

“That’s horseshit!”

“Yes it is, I’m glad you agree.” I nodded. “There is no deeper explanation for this than the fact that the king is an asshole.” And the molluscs of yore were even bigger assholes because they started out as the biggest assholes and only got more petty from being thrown in prison.

“… I had-“ Dad’s voice wavered, thick with emotion. He coughed to clear his throat, but it didn’t help. “I wasn’t supposed to start blubbering all sorry for myself, I had this-this whole speech...”

I snorted and walked over to put a hand on his shoulder, because now was the right time. “Never underestimate the worth of a good man’s life. And don’t presume to tell me what my path is aga-“

Dad lurched from his chair and hugged me tight around the middle. He sniffled in my chest. I could sense his tears now, feel them soaking my shirt. “You’re such a good son.” I felt his whole body tense from struggling not to let any more out. “I-I don’t know that w-we deserve it b-but… i-if you say so, I won’t question it anymore.”

I hugged him back. “I do say so.”

Dad wrestled with a sob, lost, then lost again and barely won after two more. His whole frame coiled to the point of snapping with his effort to regain his self-control. I held him until he finally did.

When I let go, though, he didn’t. He clung to me, as if trying to pull strength from me for… for what?

“No, no, son, wait, I…” Reluctantly, he pulled away, wiping his eyes as he did. He blew his nose in his handkerchief. When his eyes met mine again, they were red but surer than I’d seen them in months. “That eye thing you do… do it on me.”

I felt like I should have felt a glimmer or disturbance or something in the Light, but nothing came. “… Are you sure? It’s-“

“I know what it means!” Dad snapped, then cringed at his own outburst, averting his eyes and forcing them back to mine the same moment. “I know what it means, what it does but – I…”

I waited for him to find words, because I didn’t know what he wanted to say either.

“I can’t believe son,” Dad admitted as if it was some horrid shame. “I tried, I keep trying but I just can’t. This – if you – at least then I’ll believe something, right?”

Believe what? That he’s – that they’re not a burden? Worthless? “I can’t control what you see,” I warned him. “I’m told it’s a lot.”

“I don’t care,” Dad said bravely. It was a lie. “Please.” That wasn’t.

I complied.

I experienced the most honest humility, remembered the sour distaste of self-deprecation I’d left behind an eon and a lifetime back, and then a yawning, wretched hollowness swallowed everything and nearly overwhelmed me completely.

I staggered, shocked and dizzy from the sheer amount of self-loathing my father somehow managed to function under. To hide all this time. Hide from me. “The… s-strength of mankind-“ I groaned, cradling my head as I stumbled back. “M-manifests in the most troublesome ways.”

“Ohhhh,” Dad moaned in a daze. A chair toppled out of his path before the caught himself on the table. I didn’t have the presence of mind to catch myself, never mind him. “Oh… oh… What – a heady feeling.” There was a shiver in his tone that was… exultant, and his eyes on catching mine again were the same. “To know you brought forth the most important thing in the world... how empowering this is.”

Dad’s eyes. They glowed.

“The Light… It feels…it’s… is this what it’s like for you? Is this… how you feel all the time? How you live?” Dad’s wonder somehow rose above even that all-abiding self-contempt. It sunk back far too quickly, but I had the oddest feeling it had filled more than gotten lost in the dark void beneath. “It’s… Rapture…” Suddenly, Dad snapped out of it and gave me a look of borderline alarming intensity. “Son, explain this Soulgaze thing to me right now.”

“Well-“

“How does it work? What’s the process? Tell me how it’s done!”

I watched my father, and the Light that now abided in him but… also didn’t. It was there, but it didn’t come from him. It had gone from me to him. It was like one, single sunbeam had settled within him for a singular purpose still pending, but nothing more. Not growing. Or replenishing. Just…

Waiting instead of fading. “You remember how I explained it to Richard?”

“Perfectly.”

“Alright, then you should get it easily.”

I explained in the best terms I thought he’d understand. As I did, the Light began to glow more and more out through Dad’s eyes, and his skin too.

“The Light – I never understood what you meant whenever you said…” Dad mumbled in a tone that made me worry I’d have to stop him from falling again, but it didn’t come to that. His eyes seemingly had trouble staying locked on any single thing, but his thoughts shone clear. “It really is all Revelation, isn’t it?”

Dad straightened where he stood, turned around, marched downstairs to the basement, ripped the locked door to the storm cellar right off its hinges, stomped in and hauled mom up from where she’d huddled down in a corner to cry. “Look at me, woman.”

Mom looked.

Before my eyes, my father soulgazed my mother.

And as I stood in the door, leaning against the frame, I watched in amazement as all the Light in my father went into this one, single miracle. A debate of the mind and an embrace of the spirit lasting years condensed down to a single moment.

“Oh Domar…”

Mother embraced Father. It was a tight, fervent thing but not… desperate. Somehow, all the wounds on her soul were now healing over, the entirety of her own self-loathing completely scoured clean, leaving just raw but clean grief behind.

I turned away and gave them their privacy. Left behind the place where I’d just watched my father use all of his Light to carry my mother through the equivalent of a lifetime’s worth of couple’s therapy. In a literal blink of an eye.

I guess the rest of Father’s commitments don’t need the Light’s help to achieve.

That was fine. That was the sort of future I wanted to create, wasn’t it?

I eventually stopped in the den. Looked out the window at the late winter night. The Blizzard had stopped. The Soulgaze…

It was the best idea I ever stole.

A streak of light cut through the night.

Wait, meteorites fall down, not up.

There was a boom. A crackling. Sparkling lights in the sky bloomed like a giant star.

I gaped.

A second flew up and erupted in a glow, red instead of green. Then a third, colored gold. The fourth was blue.

I stood rooted to my spot and stared in wide-eyed astonishment as I looked out the window to behold fireworks.

What the hell?

I stared, dumbstruck. I ran outside. I stared some more. The fireworks continued. The first fireworks that ever existed on Azeroth, fireworks which I’d had absolutely no hand in, were exploding in the night sky right outside my window.

Oh Holy Light, can you bring Common Sense back from the grave or not?

I only realized just how long I – and Emerentius over there – had been standing and staring at the exploding lights when my parents tromped out to join me.

“What the devil?” Dad balked. He looked normal again, no golden glow in sight, inside or out. “What the hell is that? Are we under attack again?”

“… No.” I finally found my voice.

I rushed to pull my boots on.

“You’re going – of course you are, what am I-? Should we come too? Stay? Bunker down?”

My first impulse was to say ‘damn right you’re not going anywhere’ but… It was not that kind of occasion. While I’d not say that ‘not acting on my first impulse’ has been my greatest strength, it was still been pretty high up there. I calmed myself and gave Dad’s question the Reflection it deserved.

The Light had precisely nothing to say. It shone extremely brightly from the source of the disturbance though. About as bright as me.

“… I sense no danger, so do as you like.” I finished pulling my shoes on. “Do pardon me for not waiting though. I’ll send word either way.”

Just as soon as I got answers to my many questions, like what, how, why, when, why here, and how the hell this still wasn’t important enough to register in the Light as more than an afterthought next to everything else that hadn’t happened yet today.

"-. .-"

Because I didn’t want to cause a panic, and there was nothing but cheers being heard from below, I chose not to swoop down on dragon back. Instead, I made my way to the base of the mountain at the fastest sprint I’d ever run in my life. Either life. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were left behind in the first ten seconds. Emerentius himself could barely keep up with me, even with his human form practically peak human.

When I finally cleared the last bend, I had only enough time to scan the crowd for the spot where the fireworks were shooting from. Even that I only managed thanks to my superior height. Then Orsur Kelsier, of all people, the man I’d brought back to life in the middle of the public square in Alterac City, shoved his way into my path.

To grovel.

“Lord Wayland, I am so, so sorry about this! I didn’t know he’d followed me, I don’t even know how he did it with that entire cart of devilries ricketing every which way, I certainly don’t know where he got those… whatever they are! I didn’t think – never imagined he’d – I didn’t know he was here! If I did, I swear I’d have done something, told someone – I’d have gone to you first thing!”

I rubbed my face. “Slow down and use proper sentences please.”

Orsur opened his mouth -

“And that’s all you’re getting!” A voice I must have heard at least once before boisterously bellowed from beyond the now quiet fireworks cart over yonder, at the middle of the gathered throng. “Empty lights for empty hearts!”

What’s this now?

“Don’t give me those looks, you brats! And don’t you go fake-crying to your parents neither, it’s not gonna work! What’s that, boy, you think that poor sod that calls himself your father can do anything to Greatfather Winter?! Isn’t it you who always tells your friends he’s so big and fat he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t trip over his own navel? Isn’t that why you’re such an ungrateful little hellion and always making his life a living hell?! Don’t you glare at me neither, old boy, it’s the truth!”

There was much laughter and jeering from the throng of humans, and even the mini-humans before they belatedly realized they couldn’t tell if it was the fat man or them that were now the target of the unexpected flyting. I didn’t hear the comeback over the ruckus, but the first voice only got louder and more rumbustious.

“Don’t you get it, Fred? They don’t care! You're not important to them! You never were! You’re just something to poke at! Something for Brat, Scrat and Hooligan here to bounce off of for a while until something else comes along! They could easily find other ways to amuse themselves, but they don’t want to! Children are devils, ‘specially these ones! That’s why I’ve not brought them any presents this year!”

“NO!” Came the cries of dismay from waist-high. Well, my waist-height.

“You see, they cry in pain as they attack you! Devils, all of’em!”

There was a cacophony of childish outrage at that, then an even bigger one when the little ones realized the adults were all laughing at them, or pretending not to. Or scowling. It was a miracle that I was still able to make out the ‘but that’s what all you grownups do!’ amidst the chaos.

“What kind of reason is that?!” Balked the man in red. I could see his sleeve above his overloaded cart as he shook his fist in the air. His coat was a deep crimson with white fur at the wrist. “Those are all bad people! Don’t pretend you don’t know that, you can’t fool the Snowfather! Devils like you aren’t devils just because you’re naughty, you’re also smart!”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“Not smart enough, clearly,” grumbled the man I assumed was Fred, I was finally close enough to make out his words too. Wonder of wonders, despite how everyone got out of my way the moment they realized who was tugging them aside, they didn’t cry out or give me a wide berth like they usually did. Instead of drawing attention to me, they went back to crowding the spectacle.

As was so often the case, the sacred had clashed with the entertaining and lost terribly.

“You can’t just keep your sack for yourself!” Some kid or other was shouting. “Why even bring it then?!”

“To make your lives a living hell in return for all the people whose lives you make a living hell, why else?”

I practically felt the long-term change in the children’s morality and critical thinking, it was breathtaking.

“Honestly!” Not-Santa-Claus was still talking. “Poking and prodding and laughing at this poor creature, why, the sheer nonsense! Having so much fun at the fat man’s expense and then holding him in contempt at the same time, that doesn’t make any sense! Either you like that he’s fat or you don’t!”

“STOP CALLING ME FAT, YOU – You -” Fred exploded, then tried to un-explode himself when he realized he was about to curse Greatfather Winter in public, and call him all manner of names in front of the children and everyone else. “Like you’re one to talk!”

“What’s that got to do with anything?!” Greatfather Winter hollered shamelessly. “How’s that an argument?! Just because I’m also a fat fuck doesn’t mean you’re any less of a fat fuck!”

But he barely has a beer belly in comparison-

“Light save us,” Orsur pinched his nose as the cries of dismay turned from general mayhem into distinctly more womanly outrage at the foul language. “Bad enough the nobles keep foisting him on us every year, he just had to decide this was the year when he goes off-script instead of being his regular nuisance back in the city, Tyr damn you, Blindi!

But didn’t the nobles say it was actually the guilds who always-?

My hand snapped out to seize Orsur tight by the scarf. “What did you just call him?”

“Oh, don’t you start with me woman!” ‘Blindi’ scoffed from the eye of the storm of motherly outrage. “I just told you how devious these brats are, you think they don’t know better than to say such foul things?! Oy, you imps, listen up! If you dare use such dirty words where anyone can hear you, you won’t get any presents next year either!”

“Nooo!” The children cried in dismay, falling over each other to swear sideways and noways that they’ve definitely been good and not naughty, honest!

“How’m I supposed to believe any o’ that?”

I sent Geirrvif a mental prod. That was when I realized my Valkyrie minder was conspicuously just far enough away that she had deniability if she claimed not to have noticed me try to communicate with her.

I covered my mouth to smother my sudden urge to laugh.

Nobody realized what was happening here, did they? The strength in his every movement, the authority in his voice that no one moved to silence or do violence on him for, the way the blizzard itself seemed to have halted just to hang from his every word, the two ravens that came down from the sky to land on the eaves of the longhouse. As I came to a stop where I could see him fully, it looked like they were on his shoulders instead of the roof across the square. There was something meaningful in the birds’ eyes, every bit as much as his, and there was a glimmer in their crops before the glint passed.

They didn’t know. None of them knew. They didn’t realize, didn’t know, didn’t see.

Nobody had a clue who this was.

“Beg pardon, good sir,” Uther’s voice came from somewhere – oh, there he was, I was wondering where he was in all this. “But surely you can’t mean to punish all the children for the crimes of this handful. That wouldn’t be justice!”

“Well,” Greatfather Winter harrumphed sceptically. “I suppose I might potentially imagine my cold, iced-over heart thawing a little bit if they apologize to this poor man. And they’d better mean it! And no more cursing unless it’s for a good cause!”

“How bout no more cursing period?” A gimlet-eyed matron was saying with a glare to one of the bigger boys. “I’ve a mind to bring out my soap.”

“Good luck with that!” ‘Blindi’ scoffed. “No, really, I mean it! Every time they lie to your face that they promise not to do it again, that’s one less present I have to lug over!”

“This is a conspiracy!” One of the scrappiest little lads caterwauled. “A conspiracy! Conspiracy!”

“No duh,” Blindi said. “You made a gang so the people you’re tormenting are making a gang. What did you think would happen?”

“But – but that’s not fair, you’re…”

Greatfather Winter waited patiently for the boy to dig himself a deeper grave. In fact, his patience was only less heavy than everyone else’s judgment. “…Yes?”

“You’re – we’re just kids! You’re grownups! You can’t do that!”

Change a couple of words around and you’ve got what the King and his thugs liked to say to every Alterac citizen of they tried to revolt.

“Bah, it’s the only thing in your little lives that is fair right now! Madam, you hear that, the little devil thinks you dames and men are supposed to be all helpless and hopeless, the cheek!”

“Yes, I heard him, unfortunately.”

“Well, that just won’t do! Bad enough he doesn’t realize that means he’ll be just as hopeless when he grows up, to hear such an insult to your good name – at least I assume it’s a good name, what’s your name? What’s her name, young miss?”

The positively plain daughter of the seething matron blushed as Greatfather Winter swooped down on her and clasped her hand between his large ones with a beaming smile. For all that his eyes were blank with cataracts, his teeth were perfect and his white beard was the most finely groomed object in a hundred leagues. And real. “I-I’m Glinda, sir – I mean Mira! My mum’s name’s Mira.”

“Mira? No, it can’t be, not Mira Deniau! I swear I know that name from somewhere – oh!” The old man let go, turned away, clambered up on his cart, kicked a bunch of dangerously crooked rockets out of the way and hauled a huge red sack from beneath the rest of the pile of fire hazards. He then untied the top and reached into the sack all the way to the elbow, then the shoulder, then he stuffed his head inside before - “A-HA!”

I had not the slightest urge to facepalm when ‘Blindi’ pulled himself out of his bag, cursed his own beard to high hells for tangling with the sack rope, and finally produced a gift box on top of a smaller gift box on top of two bigger giftboxes and a giant wool sock filled with candied fruit hanging from his thumb.

“I was right, but it makes no sense!” The bushy beard seemed to complain, because you couldn’t see anything above it from behind the gift pile. “I’ve got gifts here for the two of you, and even your man daydreaming over there about brutally murdering me IF ONLY HE WEREN’T SO FAT!”

“SCREW YOU!”

“But I have no idea why these other boxes are here, read the labels for me will you, miss, I’m blind don’t you know!” Greatfather Winter stumbled and lurched to the edge of his cart and wobbled one of the boxes at the younger woman. “Look at these name cards, what’s that they say miss? I knew it! Those are devils’ names they are, I ain’t giving gifts to no devils!”

I’d have called it a fair act back on Earth, but…

This wasn’t an act at all, was it? He’d really meant it that he hadn’t brought presents for the bad children. And that he wasn’t going to give gifts himself to the bad children. The sack was full of gifts, but over half of the ones he’d just pulled out hadn’t been there until just now. Those boxes had only just appeared in his sack from somewhere.

The woman and girl had to scramble a bit to catch the boxes and stocking, and the mother made a long show of reading the labels in a snit too. “You’re right, Snowfather, these are the names of complete hellions. Why don’t I hang onto these boxes, and when I find whatever children share these names, I’ll maybe pass them on. If they aren’t devils of course.”

“Do as you like!” Greatfather Winter shrugged. “I sure ain’t gonna lug them back all the way, it takes energy to get all over the place at my age you know! Give them, keep them, use them as kindling, it’s all the same to me.”

I watched in wonder as the dark fate of three children, and many others besides, shifted Light-wards right before my eyes.

I kept watching as, one after another, one gift after another, one merciless roasting after another, Greatfather Winter lightened the fates of almost every single one of the people, big and small, for whom he pulled a gift from his huge sack. Every time, their expectations were shattered, their darkest beliefs fractured, and their self-interest became that tiny bit more enlightened.

I can’t bring myself to wish I was more gregarious, I thought privately. But I’m glad there are those who are.

Hopefully it wouldn’t always take a literal god to achieve.

For the rest of the time it took the old motor-mouth to dispense gifts, I just watched and stood there. First with Orsur. Then alone when he volunteered to collect my parents so I didn’t need to double back, when they appeared on the path. Then I stood with him and my parents together, when they finally caught up in confusion.

For that entire time, the children who hadn’t been singled out swore up, down and sideways they’ll be totally good, just like they’d been totally good this year too, they were nothing like those guys, honest, so please won’t you give us our presents now pretty please with milk and cookies on top?

“And where’s this milk and cookies, or are you lot just lying to the Snowfather too?” Blindi demanded, scouring the area with his blank eyes as if he could actually see.

Blindi. The drunkard who infuriated everyone in the throne room before tearing the mask off that entire farce at the end. Blindi, a name I knew from Earth.

The Blind One.

A name of Odin.

“YOU!”

Who, me?

Greatfather Winter pointed a finger at me and crowed happily. “THE PARTY POOPER!”

Eh?

The old man jumped out of his cart with his ever-full sack over his shoulder, sunk up to his shins in the snow to crack the earth beneath without breaking his legs, then stomped over with his aforementioned sac digging a groove in the snow in his wake. “Your Saintliness!” He beamed joyously when he finally reached me. “Your creation is most merry!”

You don’t say, I thought vaguely with a pointed glance at the distressing pile of explosions waiting to happen. It teetered. “Some might also say very dangerous.”

“Dangerous, traitorous, warlike, pah! Just now it put more smiles on people’s faces than it’ll make graves for the next ten years. It’s a shame I can’t say the same about you!”

“… I must be quite the bad man if you say it twice.” Did he figure out what I was going to do tomo-?

“Bad, pah! Feh! Fie, even! You’re not the slightest bit, that’s the whole damned problem! How’s a man supposed to make a good flyting if he doesn’t have anything to complain about? You’re not arrogant, you’re not close-minded, you insist on not controlling anyone, you play the elusive sage so much that I can’t even accuse you of fostering a bad atmosphere! You even came here in the middle of my performance and didn’t interrupt me like some joyless tyrant! You have the sheer gall to not have any of the usual faults for me to lampoon, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Good job to me?”

“Good job? GOOD JOB?! How am I supposed to rag on you not fostering the right atmosphere when you don’t provide any atmosphere at all?! You don’t even inspire these people to go out of their way for you, they just do it on their own, the sad saps! They’ve got themselves wound up so tight, it’s a wonder there’s any joy in anything! How can you live with yourself?! Oh hello Orsur old boy, I didn’t see you there.” The old blind man suddenly turned to my business partner. “Is your significance sense tingling yet, or are you going to miss the gods’ omens for the entirety of this new life too?”

Orsur Kelsier gaped at the old man. His eyes widened in confusion, then shock, and then they outright bulged in disbelief. “You – how do you – are you saying – it can’t be! Not you! There’s no way-” The ravens on the roof gave a couple of very loud caws. “… I must be dreaming. This is a nightmare!”

I’m missing something here.

“You’re not and it’s not, be glad for it! The only ones you’d be sharing that dream with are mud squids.” As quick as he ambushed my business associate, ‘Blindi’ turned to my parents. “And who do we have here? If it mustn’t be the Saint’s parents! My, that’s quite the bewilderment you’ve got there, old chap. Shame you got it all figured out already, guess you don’t need any of my more paltry gifts. But my lady, what weepy eyes you have, I shan’t countenance it! Here, have a dragon.” Blindi reached into his sack and dumped a gigantic, larger-than-an-ostrich egg into my mother’s arms.

She almost fell over from the sudden weight.

“Legend has it this egg is the most special egg to ever come down from the heavenly fortress of Odyn himself! Granted, the legend is just a couple of days old because the Lord of Hosts only just made the breakthrough, reproduction is really complicated! If this thing hatches, it’ll be an omen that you’ve earned the grace of his greatest milestone of the last thousand years and-“

CRACK.

The egg split down the middle and shattered into a hundred shards, leaving my mother scrambling not to drop two very confused cat-sized dragons. Mini-dragons.

They croaked.

The reactions of all the bystanders defied all attempts at description.

“HA!” Blindi crowed in delight, then turned to point up at me gleefully. “Look at that, you’re not special!”

It was impossible to tell if the silence of all and sundry was more awestruck or mortified.

Then it didn’t matter, because it was pierced by a sharp, whistling sound like a boiling teapot, which promptly broke into the loudest, deepest, most heartfelt laughter than I had ever seen or heard from my mother in my whole life.

Agnes Hywel erupted into literal guffaws, laughed herself to tears within seconds, and continued to laugh while hugging the poor, confused baby storm drakes with no thought left to anything else. Not even to keep standing upright. Dad had to scramble to hold her up and barely manged to prevent her from falling down along with her all-new clingy attachments.

“I suppose this means you’ll be needing the dragon-rearing guide as well, here you go old boy.” Blindi promptly reached in and out of his sack and shoved a positively gigantic tome at my father where his hold on mother was weakest, no by your leave no nothing. Weighed down as he already was with mother, he damn well nearly fell over too.

Dad’s mouth worked soundlessly for a while, then he looked between the man and me, shut his mouth, gave a very strained ‘Thank you’ and turned back to my laughing mother just so he had an excuse not to deal with either of us anymore.

I turned to the man next to me. Greatfather Winter was a full head shorter than me, not even as tall as Uther. But he stood proudly with his hands on his hips, looking eminently self-satisfied. I looked from my laughing mother to him.

“All-Father.”

“Yes?”

“You are the God of Joy.”

Blindi blinked hard, then his blank eyes turned up at me in astonishment. I suddenly knew they were every bit as blind as they seemed. He opened his mouth and actually closed it without knowing what to say. Once. Twice. Three times. “… It’s been over fifteen thousand years since titles and crowns have carried any real power, but I actually felt something just now.”

I ignored the many whispers and stares around us while I thought of several replies to that, but none of them were better than nothing. Fifteen thousand years, that time frame sounded important, but the why eluded me. It felt close at hand, but I would need to think about it.

“Alright, I’m done,” Orsur suddenly said flatly. “By your leave, Master Wayland, I’m going to get blackout drunk. Pease excuse me.” The man promptly turned and left without waiting for leave.

I looked at him until he shoved his way out of sight behind the crowd line. Then I looked at Blindi again. There was something I could do here that I didn’t need to think twice about.

He noticed of course. “What’s that look now?”

I wondered why Odyn would use such a faulty body, but I was content not waiting for the answer. “Since my ‘saintliness’ has caused you such a bother, I hope you’ll appreciate this small infringement on your autonomy.”

“Eh?”

I put my hand over his face and gave sight to the blind.

Blindi staggered back from me, groaning with – I didn’t precisely know what it must have felt like, but I could imagine quite a bit. When he came back to himself and blinked owlishly at his surroundings, he wasn’t filled with the same emotion of ‘par for the course’ that now radiated from the awestruck crowd around us. He marvelled at me.

For a second, but still.

“Drat,” the now clear-sighted man huffed. His eyes were the most unremarkable brown. “There goes most of my act.”

“In all fairness, it would be more suspicious if I didn’t heal you.”

“Don’t I know it,” the god in man’s clothing groused, instead of smiting me for caring about the opinions of mortals without even asking for his. “I suppose I can’t complain about getting exactly what I asked for, just don’t expect me to thank you! Now come, you will appreciate receiving your own gift in a more private setting. I’ve set aside that tent over there. Let’s get your lady mother inside before she really shames everyone into never laughing again on account of them having not a hope of matching her quality. Or lung capacity for that matter.”

This was a rather sudden turn, but leadership was like that. It was obviously going somewhere so I nodded and asked him to lead the way. He hoisted his sack over his shoulder and went first.

I let him and my parents go on ahead while I stopped for a few moments to talk to Uther, who’d clearly caught on to a lot more than everyone else in the crowd.

“I don’t know who or what that man is,” Uther quietly told me after I assured myself he had things covered. The former knight looked more at ease in priestly garb than he used to, though I suspected it was partly owed to the winter drafts making it less torture to wear armor under all that cotton and wool. “But the Light walks step in step with him. Him and those birds, there’s something about them, the only thing here that’s as well defined in the Light is you. I don’t know what they bode, but then, they’re not here for me.”

“Make sure nobody touches the stuff in the cart.”

“Normally I’d say the guards have it in hand, but on this I share your concerns.”

By now, people were back to giving me a properly wide berth, so I was not hindered on my way to catch up to the others, nor was our path barred to the tent. Which was also conspicuously free of any loiterers. Nobody seemed to get within five meters of it actually. Scanning it with my second sight, I noticed some manner of magical weave making it nobody else’s concern besides the caster’s. And ours, now.

Emerentius had overcome the someone else’s problem field as well, and was waiting for us at the tent flap. He was looking strangely at the baby dragons, who scowled back in suspicion up until he held the back of his hand for them to sniff. He also frowned when I asked him to stand guard outside, giving Blindi a particularly untrusting stare, but didn’t gainsay me.

“Oh, a self-appointed guard for little old me, how auspicious! Since you’re just going to stand here doing nothing, why don’t you watch my sack so you don’t get bored, there’s a nice lad! Oh, before I forget.” Blindi rummaged through his bag and handed me an all-new package. “A Merry Winterveil to you too!”

It was a book. Not as big as the one Dad got but still big enough, bound in whalebone carved in the likeness of a corvid. The runes on the cover read ᛏᚺᛖ ᚲᚨᚱᛁᚾᚷ, ᚱᛖᚨᚱᛁᚾᚷ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛒᚨᚾᛁᛋᚺᛁᚾᚷ ᛟᚠ ᛖᚡᛖᚱᚤᛟᚾᛖ’ᛋ ᚠᚨᛗᛁᛚᛁᚨᚱᛋ ᛒᚢᛏ ᚤᛟᚢᚱᛋ. ‘The Caring, Rearing and Banishing of Everyone’s Familiars but Yours’ by Aerylia Gildedrein, illustrated by Skovald the Ill-Fated.

Skovald, isn’t that-?

Emerentius grunted at the old fogy act, but didn’t move to kick or do any other violence on the bag of gifts. Perhaps it would have been a different matter if there were any hints that the interior of the tent was subject to any space-time anomalies, but it wasn’t.

When we were inside, I was met by the sight of shelves, crates and boxes, and sacks and bags and hanging braids of garlic, onions and various other herbs. I realized that when Blindi said he’s ‘set aside’ a tent, he’d meant no more than that. Seems the local quartermaster had made this into a dedicated long-term storage pavilion, specifically the one where people collected all my ‘tribute.’

I hummed. “I suppose being a place which people already tended to leave alone made it easier to shroud.”

Blindi nodded sagely. “And no Arcane was harmed in the making of this spell!”

Mom’s laughter had finally wound down, which gave me mixed feelings. Much more mixed than the crooning pleasure of the two whelps now enjoying her petting and scratches. On the one hand, laughing until she dropped wouldn’t have been entirely healthy. On the other hand, she’d been operating on a severe shortage of joy for too long, and she hadn’t sounded crazy or anything. I would have been happy listening to her continue for a while yet.

Dad hovered over her, wringing his hands and unsure if he should help her with the unexpected additions to our household or not. Or our stable? No, storm dragons were as sapient and intelligent as any other dragons, weren’t they? “Can they speak?” I asked Blindi.

“Mannish, Draconic, Titan, Earthen, Dwarven, Darnassian, Thalassian, Zandali, Drust, Drogbar, Taur-ahe, Pandaren, Mogu, Kalimag, they even picked up the language of Death from Eyr and I.” Blindi crossed his arms and watched the two baby dragons. “They know a fair amount of the basics of living and honest work too. There’s never any shortage of old sages and warriors with nothing to do around Valholl. Finding the right people to talk within the egg’s hearing distance has never been a difficulty.”

Eventually, the dragons finally began to pay attention to their wider surroundings. They sniffed and peered at my dad critically. They playfully spat crackling bursts of ozone in Blindi’s direction. Finally, they deigned to look at me, only to promptly hide behind Mom’s coat and squint from under her shawl.

“You’re a bit bright for their fresh eyes, such Light as yours they only saw through their shell before this,” Blindi told me. “They will get used to it in a day or three.”

Well, as far as openings went, it wasn’t the worst. “Would you be willing to accept our hospitality, at least until then?”

To my surprise, Blindi shook his head. “For myself I’d be glad to, but I am not alone here, and my companion is not the sort you can house under a roof. He doesn’t have the best notion of scale as he currently is.”

“The blizzard.”

Blindi’s grin became thinner. “If you know so much of me, then you should know of my kin as well.”

I quickly ran through the list of names and found the only on it could be. “The blizzard… It’s Hodir?”

Blindi turned half vindicated, half something else. “Regardless of what Loken or his masters like to delude themselves into believing, one’s nature can only be changed by one’s self. Even tormented and mind-addled, Hodir is still the winter wind. I do my best to provoke him into a chase around the world every year, just so he can see how far you’ve all come and enjoy at least a few day’s worth of sanity. But that’s also why I can’t afford to stay too long in one place. The moment he loses interest is the moment he wakes up from this dream back to the nightmare that is now his life.”

“You’re not Greatfather Winter, it’s Hodir.” The grim mood that had taken Blindi was the only reason I could contain my sudden urge to laugh. “It’s… That – th-ha! Hahahahahaha!”

I stand corrected. I couldn’t, in fact, contain my laughter after all.

“Yes, go ahead,’ Blindi said coolly. And surprised. Confused even, perhaps. “Do indulge yourself.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, really! I’m not laughing at you or him, it’s just…” Greatfather Winter was unavailable on account of being locked up in his own personal hell. Greatfather Winter was as good as dead, yet here is Death playing pretend while the Hogfather’s gone! And I couldn’t even begin to explain any of it, which only made me want to laugh harder, what could I say instead that would – no, actually, now that I thought about it there was something. “Why the hell would you bring him to Alterac?”

Blindi’s irritation vanished, but instead of the clarity I’d expected to see on him, his face instead turned sad. Sympathetic.

“I mean it, why?” I pressed, because now that I’d asked I really wanted to know. “The only way you could do worse is if you went to the Dark Irons or the Trolls. Why would you be in Alterac to begin with, even? To hear everyone else, you’ve practically been living here, barging into everyone’s business and driving bars to ruin for over fifty years, I can’t make sense of it. This is the last place you’d want to bring anyone, never mind live an entire second life. Not if you want to foster sanity.”

Then again, with the scene I’d just witnessed, I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose this place for the entertainment value he was so clearly practiced in deriving. No matter the medium, that was often a theme with godlike beings-

“Because I found no other place in the world that needed laughter more.”

… Oh.

“Is it so hard to fathom?” His tone changed. His words already had. “That is why you are still here as well, no? Perhaps that is why you were born in this land to begin with, when all others would have treated you much more kindly. You have certainly set aside any designs to leave, despite everything.”

The Tribunal of Ages was even more full of bollocks than I thought, if it still made even me misjudge people after so long.

“I will answer one more question, then I have to go set off the rest of the fireworks,” Blindi abruptly told me. “We would not want yonder blizzard to lose interest and wander off unsupervised, I am sure you agree.”

For the first time since I realized what and who I had before me, I felt suspicious of the sudden turn in the conversation. I didn’t need the Light to confirm to me that he was looking for me to ask something specific. Now what could it be?

For all his professed urgency, Blindi didn’t prod or nag me into being quick about it. He patiently waited for me to speak. That only confirmed my suspicion, so I decided to be very thorough in turning over every possible topic I could think of in my mind. Finally, after not too long a time in the grand scheme of things, but certainly more than it might have taken him to steer the conversation himself, I finally found something that made the Light chime in my mind.

Loudly.

It was something I’d wondered about earlier, before deciding to let it be until I could read Dad’s new manual, because surely a mention of it must be in there. “These storm dragons of yours… are twin hatchlings common?”

Blindi smiled and nodded in approval, though the feeling that I’d just passed some test didn’t materialize. If anything, I got the sense that he’d have done what he was about to do anyway. I could feel in the Light how something majorly significant was swooping down on-

“These are the first. It took much care and work, but you have to squeeze the sympathetic principle for all it’s worth when anchoring such an important spell.”

A sudden gust of wind blew the tent flap open, making way for Huginn and Muninn to swoop into the tent and land on Blindi’s arm. He held it out.

I held out mine. The ravens croaked, cawed and hopped over from him to me. Their dark eyes stared into mine. Odyn’s intent conveyed loud and clear to me through theirs. The Light cast many-sided shades upon my spirit. I levied its Revelation fully upon the world so that I and everyone else with me could see.

My eyes shone. So did the rest of me. Everything inside the tent took a golden sheen. The ravens turned almost transparent, except for the contents of their crops.

The Light. The ravens each had inside them a golden sphere, thrumming in rhythm with the heartbeats of the two dragons in the arms of my mother. And within those orbs of Light, two small souls shone like twin stars inside tiny curled up bodies made of lightning and golden dust.

I wasn’t the first whose breath hitched. But, for once, I didn’t find any words to say either.

“I’m afraid we could not entirely eliminate the proximity factor, or I would keep the dragons safely in Skyhold.”

Souls. Two of them. Barely formed. I knew them.

“Just in case the worst happens again, however, I have assigned Geirrvif to you on an indefinite basis. She will let no more harm come to the little ones.”

“Falric,” I breathed, thunderstruck. “Marwyn.”

My little brothers – their souls – were they really here? I brushed their spirits with my own, as lightly as I could. They – they were real.

I’d asked myself how life might have been. I’d been asked if it had occurred to me to do to my lost brothers what I’d done with the elementals… The only reason why I didn’t torture myself over it was because it wouldn’t have worked. They weren’t there anymore when I finally reached home that night, not even a haunting.

There was no pregnant womb to put them back in either, even if I’d figured something out. Manipulating flesh like that was well beyond anything I’d ever done, even before I ran into the other limitations of working the Light in other people. Improvising one miracle would have been a tall order, never mind twice over and a third one besides.

All of which were moot points regardless, because no hint of their souls had been left to my sharpest sight, they’d been dead and gone for hours in a bucket.

“How-?” But I made the connection the moment I asked. “Valkyries.”

“When Eyr swooped down from the sky to aid you in your great battle, it was the second time that day she had been to that place.”

I wanted to reply something. I didn’t. I found nothing to say.

“Is,” mother’s voice faltered out, her hands over her mouth. “I-is this real? This – this isn’t a dream?”

“Madam, no offense meant but you do not have the imagination to make me up.”

My throat was every bit as clogged as my mother’s. I wanted to ask… say… but what?

“I dared not say anything before, for I was not sure if it could be done,” Odyn said quietly. “This is Freya’s domain, not mine. My valkyries certainly weren’t trained for this, and the boys were so small. Unfinished. We weren’t even sure we’d caught everything of them, for a little while there.” Odyn looked fondly at the two lights in the shape of yet unborn children. “They are still unfinished. But now, at least, they can continue. Take all the time you need to be ready, and however long you wish to conceive them new flesh. The only deadline on my grace is my death.”

I brought the ravens closer to my face, closer so I could see… I had a million questions and a million more words to say, ask, shout at hell and heaven alike, but I couldn’t say any of them. My heart was in my throat.

“I’ll let you talk.”

Odyn left us to talk.

We didn’t talk.

We didn’t talk for a long time.