Gentle Repose

The party emerged from the Necropolis as night began to settle over the desert.

Fern hung lifeless in Fable’s arms.

Vincent’s necrotic magic had already begun working through his body, but Behzad placed a hand upon him and cast Gentle Repose. Divine light filled the desert. The decay stopped, leaving Fern suspended in an unnatural stillness while the party tried to decide how quickly they could reach someone capable of bringing him back.

Before they could return to Dunedrift, the wind began to rise.

Sand whipped around the party. Their hair and robes were pulled into the air as a small tornado formed around them. Fable braced herself while still holding Fern.

Then the wind vanished.

A massive scroll dropped at Behzad’s feet.

The Speedy Courier had returned with Titus’s response from Wolford.

Behzad broke the seal.

The scroll rolled past his feet and continued unfurling across the desert. Pages upon pages had been hastily attached to one another, forcing Behzad to wind the beginning back together as he read.

Titus had answered his letter.

Completely.

The Legally Disputed Regent in Wolford

Titus addressed Behzad as Lord Altassi, Lord Regent of Wolford, bearer of the Three Rings, defender of the Sapest, and friend beneath the radiance of Corellon.

Then he delivered the bad news.

Representatives of the Charmed Cove had arrived three mornings earlier carrying lawful authority from the Dukedom through the feudal offices of Azmar. Wolford’s diamond mines had been placed under temporary ducal administration.

Every resurrection gemstone currently held in reserve, and every future diamond suitable for sacred use, was to be transported to the Charmed Cove.

The Cove intended to establish a defensive resurrection reserve against the Mincer.

Titus assured Behzad that he had not taken the seizure lying down. He reminded the officials that the mines were the foundation of Wolford’s treasury and one of the only means by which miners lost beneath the earth could be returned to their families. The people had already endured demonic occupation, economic collapse, civil unrest, and the awakening of an unspeakable entity beneath their homes.

The ducal representatives agreed that this was unfortunate.

Then they took possession of the mines anyway.

Titus admitted that he had briefly considered resisting. He possessed enough power to snap his fingers and turn the Charmed Cove into glass in the desert.

But the officials carried lawful authority from Wolford’s rightful suzerain. Opposing them would have forced Behzad, his companions, and the people of Wolford into a war over diamonds merely to demonstrate the firmness of Titus’s temporary stewardship.

Behzad conceded that Titus had made the right decision.

Titus instead entered a formal objection into the parliamentary record and demanded that Duke Nightfeather bring the matter before the Economic and Commerce Committee. Every confiscated stone would be weighed and documented. Wolford would receive a written guarantee of fair-market compensation. The miners would continue receiving their wages, and Titus had frozen rents so that no worker could be removed from their home while the Charmed Cove stole their means of production.

He retained five copies of the inventory.

Three remained in the manor.

One had been sent to the Emperor.

The fifth was hidden beneath Titus’s bedroll in the garden, where no ambitious clerk would think to search for an official record.

Titus had considered informing Behzad through Super Express. However, he could not justify spending seventeen gold merely to avoid waiting. A ruler who spent that much for personal convenience had not purchased speed, he had purchased comfort using bread taken from the mouths of children.

He therefore mailed a duplicate through the standard post for one copper, which he paid personally and did not wish to be reimbursed for.

Behzad could expect that copy to arrive in two to eight business months.

The letter then turned to Behzad’s question about the people of Wolford.

Titus believed anything less than a complete accounting would be disrespectful.

Martha’s Morning Crust had reopened beside the eastern wall. Martha originally planned to sell only rye loaves until the flour supply stabilized, but her niece discovered six sacks of barley flour hidden behind a false wall in the old windmill. Titus declared the flour public property and transferred it to Martha on the condition that no loaf cost more than two copper.

Martha objected that she would make no profit.

Titus reminded her that service was itself a form of profit.

After further negotiations, they settled upon three copper.

The barley rolls were dense but filling.

The well beside the eastern wall had also begun producing discolored water. Titus initially feared infernal corruption, but the problem proved to be rust from a damaged chain. The blacksmith repaired it and refused payment after Titus blessed his anvil.

Titus paid him anyway.

The blacksmith returned the money.

Titus left it beneath his door.

The blacksmith donated it to the chapel.

Titus used it to purchase nails for a loose floorboard and returned the remainder to the blacksmith’s wife.

She used it to purchase two barley loaves from Martha.

Thus, Titus reported, the local economy continued to thrive beneath his rulership.

At the Bent Pickaxe, innkeeper Doran had introduced a new stew made from turnips, salt pork, and what he insisted was beef. Titus declined to investigate that final claim because the meal was affordable, nourishing, and had yet to cause any illness his divine intervention could not cure.

Doran attempted to name it The Holy Father’s Humble Supper.

Titus forbade him.

They compromised upon The Humble Supper, provided Titus received none of the proceeds. Doran nevertheless hung a small wooden likeness of Titus’s gauntlet above the bar.

A dispute had also arisen between the owner of the soap store and her neighbor Bram, whose goat repeatedly ate the lavender hanging outside her window. Bram argued that the lavender extended four inches into the public lane and was therefore available to the public, including his goat.

After hearing testimony, inspecting the property line, and consulting Azmar’s Planning and Zoning Council, Titus ruled that livestock did not possess an unrestricted right to graze upon commercial displays.

The goat was formally trespassed from all public roads.

It returned the following morning.

Titus therefore ordered Bram to repair the window box and provide enough manure to support the next lavender crop. Both parties appealed the ruling, which Titus accepted as evidence of its fairness.

The goat’s name was Bissip.

Titus had requested that it be renamed in light of its bowel deeds.

Bram refused.

The southern road remained damaged from the explosion beneath Wolford. Titus’s first attempt to repair it personally caused a riot when residents gathered to request prayers, each of which he stopped to grant. He therefore authorized paid municipal repairs from the tax roll.

His morning prayer services had attracted twenty-five new residents seeking pilgrimage. To avoid burdening Wolford’s taxpayers, Titus carried stones from dawn until midday and built homes for them himself.

Unfortunately, the new homes altered the drainage. Two wagons became trapped in the road after the next rain.

This was unacceptable.

Titus reassigned the miners displaced by the Charmed Cove to construct Wolford’s first sewer system. Every night, after completing his other duties, he descended into the earth and helped dig it by hand.

The ducal administration attempted to eliminate Titus’s mandatory ten-minute prayer before entering the mines. He negotiated it down to five minutes, ensuring that the entity beneath Wolford remained forsaken and the miners remained protected.

The Cove also began weighing every worker’s tools and satchels before and after each shift to prevent the theft of diamond fragments. This added forty minutes to the workday. Titus negotiated inspection by work crew, reducing the delay to twelve minutes, and required that the miners receive overtime for every one of them.

Titus continued living beneath the stars in the manor garden. The people objected that it was undignified for Wolford’s Regent to remain unbathed beneath a bedroll.

Titus repeatedly explained that he was not the Regent. He was merely the humble servant entrusted by Behzad to exercise his authority and protect his land during his absence.

The ducal officials showed him the law defining that exact person as a regent.

Titus petitioned the Emperor for an exemption.

That petition became the first official decree of Regent Titus.

Mortified that his name might now appear beside Behzad’s in the history books, Titus swore to issue no further decrees. He would instead act as Wolford’s head cleric and issue completely different pastoral directives.

Wolford now had its first elementary school. The eleven students unanimously voted to name it Titus Rothschild’s Institute of Education. Titus proposed Lord Altassi’s Public Schoolhouse as a more modest alternative.

The children voted against him.

As a humble man of the people, Titus accepted their democratic will as a lesson in civic participation.

He did, however, sentence one student to twenty consecutive detentions for writing an essay claiming that Behzad defeated Tharizdun in single combat, appointed Titus King of Wolford, and departed upon a golden dragon.

Titus also worried about Fable.

Recognizing how difficult life must be for a creature of the night, he organized Wolford’s first annual blood drive. The people donated more than one hundred liters, now stored in the manor’s wine cellar. The wine had to be distributed among the townspeople to make room, but Fable would never go hungry in Wolford again.

To preserve her privacy, Titus told everyone the blood was intended for the Charmed Cove hospital.

A goat had recently wandered into Wolford from no identifiable place. Titus concluded that it must be an emissary from Fern and instructed the guards to treat it as a visiting dignitary until its legal status could be determined.

It was now the only occupant of the manor other than an odd Goblin named Parsnip, whom nobody had been able to evict.

As for himself, Titus remained healthy and unworthy of the trust placed upon him. He rose before dawn, prayed for the people, inspected the city, assisted with repairs, reviewed the mine accounts, taught evening scripture, and extinguished the magical streetlamps by hand each night so that Wolford could observe his new dark-sky directive and pray beneath the stars.

He concluded:

If any part of my service appears admirable, the glory belongs wholly to Corellon. If any part appears foolish, inefficient, excessive, or overbearing, the fault belongs to me.

He signed the letter as Holy Father Titus the Benevolent, Last Cleric of Corellon, Bearer of the Hand of Radiance, Protector of Wolford, Temporary Pastoral Administrator of the Diamond Mines, Acting Regent Under Formal Protest, and Servant of the People.

Then came the postscript.

On an insignificant personal note, while writing this letter, my magic seems to have completely and utterly faded. This must be a sign that taking the time to respond to personal correspondence has caused Corellon to lose his faith in me. I will now pay penance all night to regain his love and, hopefully, my magic.

The party stopped laughing.

Nys slowly looked toward Fern’s body.

Titus was Corellon’s final cleric.

If his magic had disappeared at the moment Fern died, then they may have unknowingly lost the final remnant of Corellon’s divinity.

A Diamond in the Charmed Cove

Fable and Nys began cleaning Fern while the party considered its options.

Only Rosenhall City and the Charmed Cove possessed full cathedrals dedicated to individual Gods, each led by powerful clergy capable of high-level resurrection magic. Rosenhall City was too far away. The Charmed Cove was closer, but its newly centralized diamond reserve was being rationed against the Mincer.

Fable possessed enough gold to purchase a resurrection diamond at its normal market value.

That did not mean the Cove would sell her one.

Nys bitterly explained that when a ship began sinking, nobody thought about the lowborn creatures trapped below deck.

Fable handed Fern back to Behzad, walked to the nearest sandstone wall, and punched it.

A crack split through the stone deeply enough for the streetlamps on the other side to shine through.

She returned with deadly calm and held out her arms.

The way things were had begun to agitate her.

Nys understood. She had once been one of those lowborn people simply placed into the ground.

Then she remembered Turbulence.

In Azmar, the Genasi outlaw had explained that a man named Taurion hired him to steal a resurrection diamond from Wolford for his wife. Fern and Fable freed Turbulence from prison. Fern later honored their agreement and allowed him to leave Wolford carrying the gem.

Taurion still had it.

Nys could no longer use the diamond intended to restore the woman she had once been.

Fern could.

The party finally had a destination and a path forward.

They would travel to the Charmed Cove, recover Taurion’s diamond, and find a cathedral capable of restoring Fern.

The Prophet Arrives Too Late

The party returned toward Dunedrift’s war camp to retrieve their cart.

Before they reached it, they heard shouting, collapsing tents, and soldiers drawing weapons.

The Prophet stood in the center of the camp arguing with Trinity.

He had foreseen Fern’s death and rushed to Dunedrift to stop it. Trinity had already warned him to remain outside the city and wanted nothing to do with the Prophet’s definition of adventuring.

Two guards attempted to restrain him.

The Prophet flicked his foot.

Both men flew into the air, slammed into one another, and dropped into the sand with their bodies bent in unnatural directions.

The remaining soldiers stepped backward.

Trinity rested a hand upon his pistol but did not draw it.

Then the Prophet saw Fable carrying Fern.

He fell to his knees.

“I was too late again.”

Nys looked at the dead guards.

“That was wholly unnecessary.”

The Prophet insisted that he had needed to reach them. The guards were trying to stop him.

Now two more people were dead.

Trinity pointed toward the bodies.

This was exactly why he had not wanted the Prophet anywhere near his city.

When Fable told both men to stop squabbling, Trinity threw up his hands. The Prophet had killed two of his soldiers, yet somehow they had become equal participants in a petty disagreement.

“Fucking adventurers,” he muttered before returning to his tent and slamming the door.

Nys and Trinity

Nys followed Trinity while Behzad spoke with the Prophet.

Inside his tent, Trinity counted what little remained of Dunedrift’s treasury. The party had done the city a great service, and he intended to pay them.

Then he wanted the Prophet and everyone associated with him gone.

Nys agreed that Trinity had been right to detain him. As a former guard herself, she understood what it meant for two ordinary soldiers to die because an immensely powerful adventurer considered restraint inconvenient.

She promised that the Prophet would pay to resurrect both men.

Trinity wished her luck.

The Prophet had left him dead in the desert the moment he became inconvenient. Fern later forced Trinity into an unwanted reconciliation and treated forgiveness like another order issued by the city’s temporary commander.

Nys apologized for that as well.

Trinity offered her the remainder of Dunedrift’s gold.

Nys closed his hand around the bag and told him to keep it. The city still had a dragon to fight, and the Prophet had come there because of them.

Trinity looked toward the Tesla Coil.

He hoped the party would return to finish the fight against Asherdalon.

Preferably without the Prophet.

No Harm Done

Fable walked directly to the Prophet.

When Fern was restored, he would reach into his coffers and purchase two more diamonds for the soldiers he had killed.

This was not a discussion.

Nys added a second condition: he was never to return to Dunedrift or shadow Trinity’s door again. If he did, Trinity would call the Lords’ Alliance.

The Prophet objected. Trinity was important to the resistance. Surely everyone could look past a minor transgression for the sake of the larger cause.

Nys stared at him.

Leaving Trinity to die was not a minor transgression.

The Prophet insisted that Trinity had survived. He was an Elf. Even if he died, he would have reincarnated. The resistance could not constantly place individuals ahead of the greater struggle to save Rosenhall.

Nys pointed toward the guards, then toward Fern.

“They are not pawns. We are not pawns in some bigger, mightier game than us. We are people. You are a person.”

If they continually decided that other people must make sacrifices for the greater good, what would remain for the survivors to inherit?

Piles of corpses and burned ruins.

The Prophet grimaced. He had not intended to kill the guards. He used the same telekinetic spell to retrieve his morning tea and did not realize it could cause so much damage.

Nys addressed him by the name Saedor had given Fern:

Aywin Qinfina.

The Prophet pretended not to recognize it.

The party loaded Fern into the wagon and left Dunedrift while the surviving clerics dragged the guards’ bodies away.

Aywin sat down awkwardly.

“So, you aren’t mad at me, right?”

Fable was.

Aywin insisted that he had used a minor spell and everything had simply gone wrong. Fable told him it was always a minor spell. He had killed people repeatedly because he did not understand his own power.

This was not a game.

Aywin believed resurrecting the guards would leave no harm done.

Nys asked whether he understood what it meant to return from death. The restored still remembered pain, terror, and the final moments of their lives.

Aywin was an Elf. He remembered the deaths of his previous incarnations.

Nys shook her head.

“Memory without emotion, you might as well be reading a story.”

Aywin accused them of hypocrisy. Behzad had committed terrible acts. Fable had left a mess involving Cecile Addison in Azmar that Aywin had been forced to clean up. He had not pointed his finger at any of them.

Nobody took the bait.

Behzad admitted that he had done terrible things and needed to atone for them.

Aywin still did not understand why everyone insisted upon treating him like a monster. People died whenever adventurers entered a room. That was the unfortunate reality of what they did.

He simply accepted it with more flair.

Nys answered that trust had failed on both sides. Aywin did not trust Trinity to restrain him without harm. Trinity did not trust Aywin to enter the camp without leveling it.

Two guards died in the escalation.

The wagon continued into the desert.

A Question of Divine Obligation

After Behzad drove the cart into a ditch, Fable wordlessly lifted it back onto the road.

Aywin took the reins and cast Find the Path. The wagon began guiding itself toward Little Ridge while the Prophet placed his feet up and rested his hands behind his head.

Nys asked Behzad a question about the divine.

Commoners paid taxes and tithes to their lords. In return, those lords were expected to protect them, mediate disputes, and answer their needs. If a ruler became apathetic to the suffering of the people, the people possessed a right to rebel.

Mortals also offered worship to the Gods.

Yet people like Fern still died.

What consequence existed when the Gods became deaf to the people beneath them?

Behzad agreed. Even the divine could become overwhelmed by the constant voices of those calling upon them. J_On had grown cold to the world. The Dawn War itself was the consequence.

Aywin looked back from the driver’s seat.

Who was J_On?

Behzad explained what they had discovered beneath Wolford: the Rings of Light, the true shape of the Dawn War, and the possibility that the Gods had distorted history to preserve their authority.

Aywin listened.

Then he tore the holy symbol of Corellon from his neck and threw it into the sand.

“The Gods, just like the Empire of Rosenhall; tyrannical, lying to us, keeping their boots on our necks so that we pray to them. Consider me in.”

The wagon struck a bump.

Fern’s body bounced in the back.

The party insisted there had been considerably more nuance in Behzad’s explanation.

Aywin had heard everything he needed.

Eight Gold and Three Silver

Little Ridge had once been a thriving mining settlement. Then the assay houses were centralized in the capital.

What remained was a single dirt road, a sheriff’s office, a general store, a bank, a saloon, a hotel, and a collection of condemned mine entrances disappearing into the desert.

Aywin assured the party that his personal banker remained available at all hours for clients of sufficient prestige.

He knocked upon the bank using Thunderclap.

The sound traveled three hundred feet.

An enormous Orc opened the door holding a club and demanded to know who he was.

The title “Prophet” meant nothing to him.

The name Qinfina Trust Fund did.

Aywin requested fifteen hundred gold to pay for Fern and the two guards.

He had eight gold and three silver.

During the previous year, Aywin had spent more than one hundred thousand gold from the account.

Behzad asked whether anything remained under the name Altassi. The banker found a trust containing eleven thousand gold, currently seized by the Crown on charges of terrorism.

After deducting the eight-gold fee for opening the bank after hours, the banker handed Aywin three silver.

Aywin thanked him by the wrong name.

Then he turned toward the saloon.

He intended to gamble his way back to solvency.

Beetle

The Little Ridge saloon was filled with Golden Rat Goblins playing cards and spinning roulette wheels.

A Hobgoblin leaned behind the bar.

The moment he saw Aywin, he pointed.

“You.”

Aywin greeted Big Ears like an old friend.

The Hobgoblin reminded him that Crackjaw had been bombed because of him. When the city collapsed, Big Ears fell one hundred feet into the Underdark. He gathered the remaining survivors and tunneled toward a temple beneath Wolford, only to watch the other Goblins become dominated and slaughter one another.

He barely resisted.

When he finally crawled back to Rosenhall City, the Golden Rats rewarded his survival by assigning him to run the Little Ridge saloon.

Aywin supposed they had both gotten off rather well.

The party told Big Ears that Parsnip was alive and living in Wolford. The Hobgoblin offered him work and a purpose if they sent him to Little Ridge.

Then he asked the fools whether they had come to give him their money.

Aywin announced that he had come to take it.

Big Ears warned him that anyone using divination at his tables would lose their hands.

Aywin clarified that he had come to play fairly.

The saloon offered moonshine in dirt, sand, oak branch, leaf, cobblestone, boot, and strawberry delight flavors.

Fable selected leaf because it was probably what Fern would have ordered. After adding pig’s blood, she created a surprisingly drinkable mixture tasting of pork and evergreen.

The table named it The Holiday Ham.

Aywin ordered the sparkling pink strawberry delight, served in a martini glass garnished with a small umbrella. Big Ears called him Queer for it.

Aywin continued calling him Big Ears until the Hobgoblin finally asked him to stop. The name was derogatory. Crowbar Colin, Parsnip, and the others used it because they had all hated him.

His real name was Beetle.

Nys introduced herself properly.

It was not the first time they had met.

It was merely the first time she had known his name.

Behzad ordered a mixture of every moonshine behind the bar. Beetle rang a bell and served it in a boot-shaped mug reading:

I SURVIVED GOING AROUND THE WORLD IN LITTLE RIDGE.

Behzad drank the entire thing and remained standing.

The mug was his.

We Just Keep Living

Aywin could not enter the casino with three silver because the minimum wager was one gold.

Behzad loaned him thirty.

Aywin lost it on black.

Behzad gave him more.

The party moved to blackjack, where Aywin repeatedly insisted that a hot streak lay within his future. By the time the gambling ended, he had failed to produce anything resembling the fifteen hundred gold required to fulfill his promise.

He assured Behzad that the Charmed Cove branch would certainly contain a more accurate accounting of his net worth.

Before leaving, Fable remained at the bar with Beetle.

She placed fifty gold upon the counter.

She had not forgotten the children who died at Crackjaw. She knew the money could not make the loss right.

Beetle agreed.

He took the pouch and placed it beneath the bar.

Fable wished him whatever good luck might come his way.

“Good luck never comes to Goblins. We just keep living.”

Fable told him that the times could eventually change.

Beetle looked at her.

“Nothing ever changes in Rosenhall.”

The Eldamari Ambassador

The party crossed the street to Little Ridge’s nearly empty hotel.

An elderly Tiefling sat behind the dusty front desk. On the opposite side of the lobby, several red-cloaked Taimavar enjoyed a fine dinner with a familiar Elven noble.

Saedor Arganwin’del.

He raised his glass toward the Prophet.

“Ah, Aywin.”

The Prophet’s face went pale.

Saedor reminded him that they had already been forced to reschedule their dinner at the Guildhall.

Aywin told the party to check into their rooms while he spoke with the Eldamari Ambassador. He assured Nys that he was far more powerful than Saedor could ever hope to be.

Nys withdrew her hand from his arm.

That was not particularly reassuring.

Saedor soon approached Behzad and offered his condolences. Fern had been a valued ally of the People’s Democratic Republic of Eldamar, and his continued safety was a matter of national security.

Eldamar would happily pay every clerical expense required to resurrect him.

Nys observed that such generosity always carried a cost.

Saedor agreed.

At the Gala, Behzad would convince Duke Nightfeather to admit an Eldamari embassy into the Charmed Cove.

Fern would return.

Eldamar would gain a much-needed point of diplomatic access.

Behzad refused to commit. Saedor remained confident that they would meet again. After all, he represented the Emperor’s Hand.

As the party walked away, Saedor mentioned that he had only wished to help after learning of the diamond crisis.

Behzad asked how news had reached him so quickly.

Saedor smiled.

“Who do you think signed the authorization slip, Lord Altassi?”

Nys and Saedor

Nys remained behind.

Saedor remarked upon how young Behzad was. Nys remembered being twenty-five herself, barely out of diapers by Elven standards.

She was now four hundred and ninety-six.

Saedor called her life tragically short and asked why she had chosen to preserve it instead of allowing herself to reincarnate. Was it not selfish to keep one life forever rather than allow it to guide the next?

Nys asked whether Saedor had family.

He spoke of his brother Veythras Arganwin’del, a captain within Eldamar’s intelligence service. Blood was the most important thing in the world.

Yet if Vethras died, Saedor would allow him to reincarnate. His absence would permit him to return into a better Eldamar. Death gave life meaning, and sacrifice was always necessary.

Nys could not agree.

She could not bear allowing what happened to her to happen to someone else.

Saedor mentioned his pleasant carriage ride with Fern and expressed hope that the young Lord Fey would be returned in time to complete Eldamar’s unification.

Then he addressed Nys by name.

He knew that her parents had spent considerable political capital obtaining a resurrection diamond for her.

He knew she had served in the Charmed Cove guard.

He knew Fable was a vampire being brought toward the city.

It would be unfortunate if the guard learned they were smuggling such a creature through the gates.

Nys stepped closer.

“Your kind concern has been noted, my lord.”

Saedor wished her luck and advised her to ask Avandra for guidance.

Nys turned away.

Behind her, Saedor added that it would be a shame if she again found herself with a blade in her stomach in an alley.

Nys froze.

Saedor muttered one final phrase beneath his breath.

“Race traitor.”

Nys continued walking.

The Sharpest of Blades

Aywin left Saedor’s table and followed Nys upstairs. He promised that one day he would dismantle the Taimavar piece by piece and watch Saedor burn.

Nys warned him to remain calm. His anger was exactly how the Taimavar gained control over people.

Once they were alone, Nys opened her journal.

She had been thinking about why the Taimavar wanted Aywin alive.

If Eldamar simply needed a powerful court mage, it could choose among countless Elven spellcasters. Aywin possessed something rarer.

His curse.

He could predict death but never prevent it.

Eldamar faced a population crisis. As Elves died within its borders, their souls increasingly reincarnated elsewhere. The Taimavar wanted to restore their dwindling nation and regain control over the Elven cycle.

Aywin could tell them when and where an Elven soul would leave its body.

If they controlled one end of the cycle, perhaps they could manipulate the other. Births could be coordinated around his visions. Elves who rejected Eldamar could be killed elsewhere and forced back into the cycle until they returned inside the nation the Taimavar intended to build.

Aywin was horrified.

Nys warned him that the Taimavar could weaponize almost anything.

Aywin would be the sharpest of their blades.

He immediately proposed turning every Taimavar in the hotel to stone.

Nys reminded him that killing one group would not destroy the organization. Cutting off one head could allow several more to grow in its place.

Aywin became frustrated. If the Taimavar were planning atrocities, why were they wasting time arguing about two dead guards and Trinity’s petty grievances? They possessed the power to kill people like Saedor. War meant people would die.

Nys did not know the correct answer.

Then she mentioned Vulmer.

When Behzad died beneath Wolford, Vulmer threw him toward the party and ordered them to escape. He believed Behzad was the key to everything.

Nys had now witnessed Behzad perform a miracle in Dunedrift.

Aywin sat upright.

J_On.

If Aywin could reproduce his divinations and Behzad could reproduce his miracles, then the resistance finally possessed something greater than opposition to the Crown.

Aywin could predict death.

Behzad could prevent it.

Together, they could save every person Rosenhall intended to lose.

Aywin rushed from the room.

He had finally discovered the calling of their resistance.

They would bring the miracles of J_On to Rosenhall.