vanheim 57
You know, we can still finish this thing up in under a year! Just a few more turns to go...
Vanheim 57
In which Pherios asks for Galameteia's sword, and Belletennares ponders the worth of it all
Vethru
"Damn," I swear, throwing the knife onto the table. "Take it away."
I toss the blood-soaked smock on the floor as the corpse is wheeled out. Quellian Ji flutters to my shoulder from the corner he's been hiding in. I should've made him a crow, way back when. Crows don't get as squeamish at the sight of carrion. But no, he was a sailor, and his world had some truly marvelous oceans, so I made him a seagull.
"Hey, boss, I didn't know you could read entrails," he says.
"I can do anything," I reply. "Usually I get other people to do it for me. But it doesn't work right in this world. Bleeping censored dammit, I need a gods-be-damned seer!"
"Are you sure about that, boss? The last four didn't work out so good."
"Shut it, bird."
"Or is that five? Let's see, Pherios, Galameteia, Molly, the lizard, Belletennares...OK, I guess that's one for you. He hasn't run away. Four!"
"Not now!"
Fortunately for him, he shuts up. What do you expect, philosophy from a seagull? He makes his jokes, then he shuts up. It's the only shtick he has.
I don't really need a seer. One of them visited me yesterday.
He'd gotten even sneakier since I hung him. Ji and I were walking back to the castle when he stepped out of the shadows in a small courtyard. There were guards everywhere; he found a way through them to the one place on my path they couldn't see.
"You have something of mine," Pherios said. In the dark, you couldn't even tell what he was. Dead like me.
"Right when I didn't expect you," I replied. "And that, I suppose, is what I should have expected."
"Galameteia's sword," he said. "I'd like it back."
"Your emotions betray you," I told him. I've always wanted to use that line.
"You don't need it. It means something to me. Give it to me, and I'll give you something you do want."
"The world?" I asked.
"The future."
He had me there. "Come up to my tower," I said. I wasn't planning to recapture him, and Pherios didn't ask. I guess he knew it already. He just smiled, and in that smile I saw a maturity that warmed my heart. OK, that's a metaphor. I don't exactly have a heart, and most of the things I use in its place exist on another plane and work best at liquid helium temperatures. But that's really beside the point.
It warmed my heart. I could see it in his smile, in his eyes, in his confident posture. He'd become what I had hoped he could become. I saw that he had mastered life and death, the past and the future. If only he hadn't turned away from me...we would already be ruling this world.
You bet I would trade him his dead girlfriend's sword to hear anything he had to say about the future.
I gave him the blade. He pulled it from its sheath, raised it to his eyes, and watched the thing glisten in the lamplight. For a long moment, I wondered if he had made peace with Galameteia's fate. Pherios couldn't hurt me, but I didn't want to have to hurt him if he decided today was revenge day. But without expression, he returned the sword to its sheath, and, as I knew he would, kept his end of the bargain.
"Ermor," he said. "It all ends in Ermor."
"When?"
"Three months."
Hmm. I guess that splinter sect in Marignon was right after all. Who would've thought it?
Before I could ask more questions, he was gone.
So I really didn't need another seer, or any more animals to cut open. I had it from the horse's mouth. Ermor. It made sense. The source code I was looking for dealt with density. And in this whole world, which was swimming in dead, where did one find the spirits? The insubstantial dead? The incorporeal? The ethereal? The bodiless? In Ermor. Where the Soul Gate lies.
I send word to Belletennares. We're going north.
Belletennares
I can no longer make any sense of this world. The armies of every nation run rampant; if alliances still hold, I can only assume it is due to oversight. We are plunged into chaos, and I foresee no peace for us, those who have survived the turmoil long enough to look upon this, the end of days.
Marignon is dying. We have pushed them to extinction in the north, save for Archbishop Spire and his damned ethereal lions. My scouts say they have few territories left, and they will fall within months. Elsewhere, our armies face other armies across new borders--Tenecheia's demons, Ulm's armored legions...will they move south? The dragon of Ulm, Griffin, has struck our lands and left as precipitously. Will he return in force?
And what of Vethru? His search, for I now know, thanks to the investigations of my brother, sister, and nephew, that he searches for runes of great power, take him north--to Ermor. He asked me if we could defeat the armies of Ulm that besiege Ermor. I told him their forces were vast, that they were a thundering herds whose iron boots trod the earth to dust. That they had iron priests and black Templars. But I also told him, truthfully, for deception in wartime must only be used against one's enemies, that I doubted their skill in magic. He promptly ordered us there, to face this army, so he may plunder whatever riches or knowledge that dead capital contains. It is perhaps the first order he has given me more specific than "defeat our enemies."
I do not know if we have any possibility of prevailing against that steel-clad host, and if we were to prevail, whether we could then defeat whenever forces the zealots still hide behind the walls. But he was insistent; I believe this end-of-the-world frenzy has taken him as well. And at the end of the world, it is best to be sure that god is on your side. So I shall obey, despite what he has wrought upon my nation and my family. I will go to Ermor. I will stand by him in battle. He will not be alone.
Not quite.
My nephew has a plan.
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