“Viscount Lethster has managed to scrounge up another eight hundred from the towns in his realm. He claims he will find another two hundred more.”
“Viscountess Quincy already supplied well over two thousand men for the invasion of Evestani. She is unsure if she can amass a meaningful number of additional conscripts.”
“Baron Bombast sends kind regards and a request to cease attempts at conscripting his miners. At least so long as you wish for the Kingdom to be supplied with his iron.”
Abe Lafoar, King of Chernlock, let a weary sigh escape into the air as he listened to the reports coming in. It had been thirty years since the last war. Thirty years since his father abdicated the throne and left him with one simple command: Do better. Thirty years of relative peace and prosperity, minus the incident in Vaales. For the last few years, in which Duke Woldair had been courting the daughter of Evestani’s sultan, Abe thought his father’s rule might have been the last of the animosity between their nations.
That he could end his reign content in leaving a legacy of peace.
“Fifteen hundred beasts of burden have arrived at the Chernlock-Mystakeen border. Production of transport carts is moving according to schedule. Supplying our men will not be an issue as long as they are well protected.”
“So long as this year does not end in a lengthy drought like last year. It would be disastrous. I petition for a cabal of spellcasters to rotate between our largest farmlands, ensuring they are well watered.”
“We can’t spare good casters on the possibility of a drought. They will be needed for the fight. The Oracles of the Abbey have foreseen no complications in food production this year.”
Abe continued to ponder the reports, eyes sweeping over the members of his court as they each spoke, while mentally adjusting his strategy for the impending escalation of the conflict. Evestani on their own was bad enough, but they were a familiar foe. One whose tactics and strategies were a topic of study for those militarily minded within the Kingdom. The balance between maintaining a strong military presence and ensuring the stability of the kingdom’s infrastructure was a delicate one at the best of times during war. With the addition of the Eternal Empire, they had a new threat, one unknown but dangerous.
The king’s mind was a whirlwind of worries. For most decisions, he would consult with the Abbey if they could share some of their insight, but he was still the one in charge. Each choice he made carried weight. A single word from him could sentence entire townships’ worth of people to their early graves.
A peaceful legacy was out of the question.
Abe shifted in his seat, feeling the weight of the crown more heavily than ever.
If his people couldn’t have peace, he would do everything in his power to ensure their future.
He leaned forward, preparing to issue the edicts he and his advisors had agreed upon before this meeting.
The tall doors at the opposite end of the chamber flung open, admitting a young woman with mousy features and brown hair. One of his aides. Her eyes, wide and far too innocent—reminding Abe of a younger version of his late wife—searched the room with a hint of embarrassment. At her intrusion, all the members of his court stopped, looked to the door, and stared.
“Rebecca,” Abe said, waving her forward with a kindly smile on his face. He had to keep smiling. If he stopped, he might let the despair he felt upon seeing his aide’s face show to his court.
There was only one reason for one of his aides to interrupt this meeting. That was news. Given the state of things, Abe did not expect good news. He tried to analyze Rebecca’s face as she skirted around the round table and its various dignitaries.
She was nervous. Tense. There was a tightness to the muscles around her eyes. Her breathing was heavy and, from the slight sheen of sweat on her brow, Abe guessed that she had run here from wherever she had been. In her hand, she clutched a long bit of parchment. A letter? It was open. She had read it, as was her duty so long as the letters lacked the confidential signet.
Rebecca stopped just a step away from his chair, stumbling slightly as she wanted to close the gap but remembered at the last moment that etiquette required a bow. Abe simply waited patiently, partially because dismissing the notions of etiquette would take longer than her bow and partially because it delayed him having to hear whatever news was on that letter.
Sadly, the delay did not last forever. She stepped up alongside him, leaned over, and whispered in his ear. “It’s over. The war, Sir. It’s over!”
Abe blinked over and over again, trying to process what she was saying. It couldn’t be over. He was seated upon his throne. If it was over, his head would be resting in the cradle of a guillotine. Aside from the early response army they had sent initially to support Duke Woldair and, after his death, Prince Cedric, there were no forces on their side that could have advanced forward to deliver the same fate to his Evestani counterpart. The last he heard, Evestani and their allies had engaged with one of the leading mercenary companies in Mystakeen.
“Over?”
“Prince Cedric sends word,” Rebecca said, holding out the letter in a trembling grip. “Evestani’s army has surrendered. Evestani’s palace is under our control. The Eternal Empire’s army is in the process of being rounded up. He is going to venture out to Evestani to take the helm personally,” she said, licking her lips. “It’s over.”
Slowly, hardly believing what he was hearing, Abe took the letter from Rebecca’s hands. His eyes skimmed down the lines, moving back and forth. It was only when he reached the end that he realized he hadn’t processed what he had been reading. With a slight shake of his head, he snapped his gaze back to the first lines and began again.
Cedric had done it, utilizing the preposterous walking fortresses created by Company Al-Mir—reports of it had reached his round table, but hardly anyone believed such a thing could exist. Yet his son had gone forward, analyzed the situation and available resources, and accomplished everything. In a scant few months, no less. The Duke had been killed mid-winter and it was barely mid-spring now.
An entire war, opened and closed before they could even transition the Kingdom into a war economy.
He looked up, somewhat dazed, and met the eyes of his court. They were waiting. He couldn’t help but snort. Just like him when he first saw Rebecca enter the room, they were steeling themselves to hear the terrible news he had just been delivered. He let out a small laugh, looking over them.
They must have thought he lost it.
He had half a mind to send them all home. A simple goodbye, get out.
But, unfortunately, there was more work to be done. The efforts they had gone to in preparing weren’t going to go to waste. Not completely, anyway.
Cedric, as stated in his letter, was on his way to Evestani. It was to be the fifth province of the Greater Kingdom of Chernlock. He would need support, both in maintaining whatever peace existed and in securing Evestani’s borders to prevent the Tetrarchy or the Tribes from swooping in to take bites from the territory like vultures.
“Verify this,” he said to Rebecca. “Send letters. Meet with the Abbey. Whatever is needed to confirm the veracity of this letter. Now.”
“Sir!” she snapped, turning and practically sprinting from the room.
He turned back, pulling himself to his feet. “Lords. Ladies. I have good news…”
Darius Vrox moved down the narrow corridors of the old archives, his gait uneven with the limp in his leg. He wasn’t using his cane at the moment—his arms were too full of old tomes—forcing him to move a bit slower than usual. It was something he had grown used to, not being able to bend his knee the same as before.
“—killed the Empress? Really?”
He slowed further, coming to a stop just outside the open door to Lyra Zann’s room.
“I knew he had some heavy hitters—Agnete among them—but I’m still surprised. Was she being careless or overconfident? Or is he that good? A combination of the two, I imagine.”
Slowly, he peered around the corner. Lyra was draped across her desk, lying on her stomach with her cheek flat against the wood and her red hair sprawled out, flowing over its edges. She did that sort of thing often, he had realized. Her lazy, lackadaisical attitude didn’t mesh well with his image of a head archivist, an avatar of the Holy Light, or potentially the main driving force behind the Abbey.
Sitting on the desk, just a short distance from her face, was that old basin. Lyra had a finger in it, idly swirling the water around. A small pulse of light lit up its edges, just the way it did when she was speaking to someone with a matching basin—either her fellow avatars or the basin she gifted to Arkk—but this time, Darius heard no noise.
A light, almost melodic laugh slipped out from Lyra. “No. It’s a weight off my back. I just feel it is too soon. We have no alternate solution ready. If we can’t get one ready in time…”
Another pulse of light from the bowl with no accompanying noise.
“I imagine time isn’t something you consider much of a factor. For us humans, time is an ever-present concern in the backs of our minds. If only—”
A pulse interrupted Lyra, resulting in another light laugh.
“Yes. I know he is there.” Lyra lifted her head, ignoring the way her hair now hung over half her face, and locked eyes with him. “Come in, Darius. You don’t need to hide away.”
Darius jolted, surprised that she noticed him, but more embarrassed than anything. “I didn’t wish to interrupt your conversation,” he said as he stepped fully around the corner. Taking three limping steps, he set down his collection of tomes on top of one of the shelves on the side of the room.
“Liar,” Lyra said with a faint grin, no real heat in her tone. Her eyes held his gaze for a short moment longer before she slumped back to the desk. “You’re a snoop and a spy. As expected of someone with your background.”
“I admit some curiosity.” He glanced at the bowl. She hadn’t removed her finger from the water. “Others you have spoken with have had audible voices. This one…”
Lyra lifted her head, staring for just a second before a pulse of light in the basin made her laugh. A real, true laugh that sounded like the chiming of bells. “I am not speaking with the Holy Light,” she said after taking a moment to calm herself. “None of the Pantheon are… Well… They aren’t the kind of thing easily conversed with, even for their chosen.”
“I didn’t say that you were,” Darius said, leading to another short burst of laughter from the woman on the desk.
“Of course not,” she said, still grinning at him. “No. I am speaking with my predecessor.”
“Predecessor?”
“I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this to you, but the avatar of the Holy Light isn’t the same as that of the Heart of Gold or the Almighty Glory. Upon our successful instigation of the Solution, all three of us were granted a sort of immortality. Given that it was directly tied to our power, our deaths would weaken the Solution and cause… this.” She lifted her hand from the basin to wave around vaguely. “Goldy and Glory gave their avatars unageing bodies. But the god of knowledge went a different route.
“A single mind was too stagnant for the Holy Light’s sensibilities. So, we age normally and die normally. But we select successors. We bestow upon them every memory, every scrap of knowledge we’ve managed to accumulate in our short lives, giving them to another who might have a new perspective on some of those old ideas. Thus, we might come to new conclusions, view knowledge in new lights, and generally increase our knowledge far more than a single mind that might find themselves locked into habits.”
“I… see,” Darius said. Had she mentioned something like that before? It was possible, though not in such great detail. Perhaps an offhanded comment, nothing more. The kind of thing he might have thought to ask about at a later time, only to forget with the vast amount of work that they had been doing since his arrival at these archives. “Who is your predecessor?” he asked, unable to stop himself, wondering just what kind of position in the Abbey or Kingdom that a former avatar might hold.
“Was, Darius,” Lyra said, tapping her finger to her temple. “She died several years ago. Now, she lives as nothing more than a copy in my mind. The basin helps me separate her memories from my own, allowing me to look at matters with a perspective more akin to hers than to mine.”
“Ah.” That explained the lack of a voice. She was speaking to her own thoughts. “And her opinion on current events?”
Lyra frowned as a few pulses of light lit the basin. “Arkk’s plan is too risky. We have a proven Solution. With Agnete acting as the constructor, we could repair the barrier and resume our regular lives without much difficulty.”
Darius admitted that he was far less knowledgeable about the Calamity, its effects, and even other worlds compared with Lyra or, distressingly, even Company Al-Mir. However, he had been present for Arkk’s most recent exchange with Lyra. They used a parable of a dam breaking to illustrate their opinions on the subject. They had been concerned about the dam breaking or the dam eventually overflowing even if built properly.
His concern was that three people had apparently been all that was holding back an apocalypse. “She would reconstruct the barrier using only two avatars?”
“Ideally, Agnete and I would have a far less antagonistic relationship than the relations I held with my former contemporaries,” Lyra said with a smile.
Darius considered, a frown creeping across his face. “This relies on the Burning Forge granting Agnete some measure of immortality. Even then, it sounds worse than the previous solution. An apocalypse held back by three individuals has far too many failure points. Two is unpalatable, in my opinion.”
“Certainly a factor to consider,” Lyra said. Her tone of voice likely meant she was already factoring it into her ideas.
“What of your predecessor’s predecessor? You have some manner of collective gestalt in your head. Why not vote on it?”
“First of all, I am an individual,” Lyra said with a glare. “I’m looking at matters with a different perspective, not literally communing with the dead. Second, all their memories are tinged through the lens of my predecessor. I didn’t know any of them and have no references beyond my predecessor’s memories. It might be possible to look at things from their perspective, but I feel that is more of an academic possibility than a practical one.”
“Fair enough,” Darius said, not wanting to offend the avatar further. “I suppose the real question, then, is what is your opinion?”
Lyra hummed, still stirring the water. A rapid series of lights pulsed in its basin, but she didn’t give voice to any of the commentary. Instead, she pulled her finger from the water, flicked the droplets off, and slowly lifted herself from the desk, sitting on its edge. She didn’t speak for a long moment. Her silvery eyes, illuminated slightly, stared at him for several long minutes.
Darius shifted, placing a bit more weight than he should have on his bad leg, and promptly shifted back. “Lyra?”
Lyra drew in a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “My perspective on the situation is… complex. If there is a possibility for a solution that does not involve two people desperately holding the gate closed while an ever-increasing weight presses against it, I would be all for it. The problem is that we don’t know if it will work. Or how long it will take to implement…
“Or whether it is a good idea to funnel mass amounts of magic straight into the maws of waiting demons.”