The crunching of boots in hardened snow and the shadow cast by the looming, black-garbed presence drew Zephyrin’s attention from the newspaper he held in hand. “What’s that you have there, young sir?” Master Verénus’s tone was pleasant, his manner inviting of confidences.

“Ah, I found this lying in the snow,” Zephyrin answered, a trace of unaccountable awkwardness in his voice as he passed the proscribed item to the instructor. There was no falsehood in his answer or reason for him to feel guilty, yet it was difficult not to feel that he had been caught red-handed. Only now the thought crossed his mind that it would have been very easy for ill-intentioned student to leave literature forbidden by the academy in the vicinity of his usual outdoor seat, to then alert a master the moment he thoughtlessly took it up.

However, supposing the newspaper had not been simply mislaid and was actually part of a ploy, Master Verénus seemed little inclined to fall for the schemer’s wiles. Zephyrin watched as the instructor’s gray eyes roved over the sanguinary speech of the deputy who would soon play a determinant role in Gaulyria’s future. When he was finished, the fresh-faced teacher—surely little older himself than the newly elected Amédea dy Réz—raised his eyes from the newspaper, his face betraying nothing that would allow him to form an idea of his thoughts. “Dy Valensis, you’re to see the Grand Prefect in his office after dinner.” A smile flitted over Master Verénus’s chilled blue lips. “For a matter other than that sorry rag, let me reassure you.”

“Yes, master,” replied Zephyrin, nevertheless remaining cautious. Shouldn’t the master confiscate the newspaper, or ask him if he know how it had wound up on academy grounds? As he extended it for the master to accept, Master Verénus simply shook his head. “Keep it, young sir. You’re still at the top of your year, are you not? With marks like that, an Emperor cannot very well be reproached for his reading habits.”

“… Thank you very much, Master Verénus,” Zephyrin said, resolving at last to stow it away in his cloak. Master Verénus glanced to the side as if to ensure they hadn’t been overseen, then regarded Zephyrin head on once more, a touch of sardonic good-humor twisting his lips. As a rare breeze rose and swirled powdery snow around them, he said lightly, “You’d best come along, Emperor. Linger here too long, and you’ll catch your death of cold.”

“Please take a seat, dy Valensis. I’ll be with you shortly.” Having looked up long enough to acknowledge Zephyrin entering through the heavy oaken door, the Grand Prefect looked down again and resumed scritching at an administrative form.

Zephyrin crossed the creaking floorboards and pulled back the worn chair waiting in front of Father’s Athand’s desk. As he lowered himself into the chair and it uttered its own protestations, he couldn’t help comparing the present moment with his first time in this room at the commencement of the school year, which may as well have been over a year ago for how remote it seemed.

The day I first saw my father.

How different his thoughts had been then, and how little he had suspected that matters would turn out like this! Zephyrin still held out hope that Narcissin’s departure from the capital wasn’t definitive, but daily his hopes dwindled like the decline of each short winter’s day. The March equinox was still more than a month off, and that thought attracted his eye to behind the Grand Prefect’s desk.

His study had no view to speak of. Its single window gave out eastward and directly onto an adjacent building. Whether summer or winter, rain or shine, only a slice of brilliant blue or patch of tenebrous cloud scarcely visible in its upper right casement relayed an approximation of the conditions besetting the smog-spewing capital.

Now, as a jaundiced shaft of light weakly filtered through to highlight slow-drifting motes of dust, it was with a curious sense of atemporality, of being far removed from the outside world that Zephyrin waited for the Grand Prefect to raise his head and address him once more.

It was taking rather longer than he expected. Save for the scratching of the quill, the room was utterly silent, and not even the low rumble of the city streets beyond the window disturbed the quiet. Almost he could think the elderly cleric had forgotten his presence entirely.

At last, Father Athand laid aside his quill and raised his long, distinguished face. “Dy Valensis. Would you like me to write to your guardian to consider a return to your hometown?”

The proposition and its abruptness caused Zephyrin to tense in his seat, but he quickly schooled his features. “No, sir,” he replied steadily. “I intend to pursue my studies here in the capital, and hope you will write to Monseigneur Puch to that effect.” I should have seen this coming. The unrest… of course the instructors are concerned. While he knew that the Father Director’s imminent apostasy would spare the institution’s faculty and students from the worst of the persecution to come, no one else—perhaps including the Father Director himself—had reason to expect the same.

“Are you sure? While tensions have cooled after His Majesty’s concession to the commons, the situation remains volatile…”

“I’m completely certain.”

A silence established itself between them, which Zephyrin took care not to break by shifting in his seat. The words ‘is that all?’ were forefront on his mind. But the one who spoke them was Father Athand.

Taken off-guard, Zephyrin stared at the priest’s expectant face for a few moments, his mind working to no avail. “Is that… what do you mean, Father? Is there another reason I was called here?”

Faint frown lines briefly deepened before smoothing out once more. “I think you know without my needing to say more, dy Valensis. The asterite. Why did you give it to Her Majesty?”

His face a mask and letting slip nothing of his inner confusion, Zephyrin kept his composure so perfectly that he surprised himself. “For the preservation of the royal family. I was afraid that an attempt would be made on Her Majesty’s life.”

“Recent developments have certainly substantiated that fear. But you gave the asterite weeks before the first signs of an uprising: why? How did you come by your knowledge that the royal family would be targeted?”

“That’s… I’m sorry, Father. I can’t answer that question.”

“Indeed you cannot,” the priest murmured, before continuing methodically, “You gave the asterite. Tell me, did you think that absolved you of all responsibility?”

Zephyrin was baffled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, Father.”

The Grand Prefect wore a little smile that could not have been calculated to infuriate Zephyrin more. “If a man knows that brigands lie ahead on the road and a lady will be waylaid, does he fulfill his office by handing her his pistol and bidding her safe travels? Is that really what the Goddess expected of you? Should you not have confided in me, or another member of the faculty?”

The sensation Zephyrin felt at that moment had only one comparable in his combined lived experiences, that of being thrown off a horse in his first life. “I…”

Before he could attempt to justify himself, Father Athand overrode him smoothly. “Dy Valensis, were you aware that Rojèr dy lé Prah had his first Joining?” The Grand Prefect studied Zephyrin for a moment as he sat mutely. “Young dy lé Prah was most insistent. The day he was finally able to offer himself to the Goddess, he told me afterward, was the happiest of his life.”

Zephyrin’s hands clenched at his sides. Where was the man going with this?

“Now, you attend all the religious offices, no less than him—yet not a word did you breath to the same effect, when I would have been fully disposed to grant you an exception for a first year, as I did for him.” Father Athand appraised Zephyrin with a placid look. “And yet it is you, not he, who seems to be the recipient of especial favors from the Goddess.”

“Favors? Father Athand, I—”

“Dy Valensis, listen to me. If a boy so intimately united to the Goddess as young dy lé Prah came to me and told me he had been honored by the Goddess and granted special favors, I would have little difficulty believing him. It is to such humble souls that the divine is pleased to communicate itself.”

The Grand Prefect’s visage was tranquil, his tone equanimous, the movements of his hands rare and sedate as he spoke. For all that, his next statement fell upon Zephyrin like a bombshell. “But as for you, dy Valensis… or should I say, Your Highness…” Father Athand studied Zephyrin’s speechless air with folded hands. “Yes. In truth, you are no baseblood, no uncommonly gifted peasant. How, I know not, but you are a highborn—a very highborn—prince. But, more importantly…”

The Grand Prefect paused to consider his words. Zephyrin tried and failed to swallow the lump in his throat. As if oblivious to the inner turmoil manifesting through his pupil’s clenched hands and increasingly agitated posture, the Grand Prefect continued in the same deliberate tone. “You must not take offense, dy Valensis, if I tell you that for all your conscientiousness in your studies and piety during the spiritual exercises…” Locking gazes with the priest’s mild, faintly apologetic hazel eyes, Zephyrin found he couldn’t avert his own. “… You give the impression of a perfect pagan.”

Darkness. Endless, circumferenceless darkness from which there was no escape. The vision of the Goddess had sustained him, for a time. For several months, perhaps.

Or had it been one month?

Or one week?

Or one day, in that sensorial void where each minute assumed grotesque proportions?

Nine months. Nine months, of which each day may as well have been an eternity.

Drowning in that all encompassing darkness, he had feared for his eternity.

Drowning in that all encompassing darkness, he had begun to crave death before his rebirth.

A silver-streaked blue aura crackled and swirled around Zephyrin as he trembled. “A pagan? I a pagan, whose mind nearly broke for the Goddess’s sake? I who have done nothing but serve her cause since my birth, nothing but pray unceasingly since before I was even—” Zephyrin choked on his rage. “You dare?”

The Grand Prefect tranquil visage gained an undercurrent of sympathy as he observed Zephyrin from behind his desk, its assorted papers sent flying by the powerful magic inundating the room. Yet he said nothing. He merely waited as Zephyrin grappled with an enemy against which no exterior force could offer assistance. When he finally opened his mouth, it was only to say simply, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Highness.”

“Serene.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your Serene Highness. It behooves the one who insists upon titles to employ them correctly,” Zephyrin said imperiously. Father Athand inclined his head.

“Very well. Your Serene Highness, I pray you will accept my humble apologies.” The baseblood priest had a self-satisfied gleam in his eye, which maddened Zephyrin all the more for being incontestable. “Yes, you saw through matters truly,” he snapped. “I am a prince, and no mystic or visionary. Regardless, I possess an infallible source of knowledge.”

“It is of less interest to me how you acquired your knowledge of the future, than the proper—or improper—use you have made of it.”

Zephyrin exploded. “What would you have had me do?! Attempt to reorient events at my own guise?! Advertise my knowledge to the whole city? Who would have believed the lunatic ramblings of a child—”

“More people than you seem to presume.”

Zephyrin paced impatiently in the priest’s little office. “How easily the words leave your mouth! Will you still lend credence to my prognostications for the future if they depaint a tableau of horrors such as has never been visited upon Gaulyria and her Church in all her history? Will you lend your credence to a succession of images as improbable as they are grotesque, of the Dragon Cathedral converted into a brothel, then an ammunition depot, before being finally demolished? Of the Cathedral of Light rededicated to worship of a ‘Great Monad’ and the apotheoses of murderous basebloods?”

Zephyrin whirled upon the Grand Prefect as he issued his next challenge. “Do my words make these things real in your mind? Lyonesse razed to the ground, Keltia reduced to ashes, the nobility purged and all worship of the Goddess eradicated, Saint Ùwuinaëlle’s bones flung into the sewers, Saints Alanna and Efflam’s relics destroyed, Kaul’s sword, crown, and all the royal treasures melted down for gold to buy crude armaments, along with Lutesse’s great bells…”

“Why?” interrupted the priest with some sharpness, offering his first resistance to the torrent rushing out of Zephyrin’s mouth.

Offered a brief respite, Zephyrin realized he was breathing heavily and still releasing prodigious amounts of mana. As he caught his breath and sought to master himself, he wondered why the priest had singled out the bells. “Cannons. Coinage as well, but mostly cannons.”

For the first time since beginning his recital, Zephyrin saw the Grand Prefect’s face assume a grave expression. “Was there no one to tell them that the dragon-repelling enchantments on the bells are the only reason our lands have remained unscathed for all these centuries?”

“Who would listen? All trace of the Goddess’s teachings will disappear in a few short years. It will take the rise of—of a certain man to reestablish the Church.” Aware that he was saying entirely too much about the future Emperor, Zephyrin reverted back to his original challenge. “Well? Do you find all this plausible? The whole capital is celebrating the compromise between the king and the commons, the convening of the Estates-General. Do you believe that we stand on the precipice of disaster? That the monarchy will collapse, that the queen will be betrayed by her very own brother, and burnt to death alongside the king in less than—”

“I can well imagine all of these things,” said Father Athand quietly.

“Can you? Can you really?” said Zephyrin bitterly. “Don’t you rather think all this a jest, the nonsensical ramblings of a child who can’t even account for how he obtained his knowledge of the future?”

“I believe you.”

Zephyrin lapsed into silence. Baseblood though the Grand Prefect was, and though nearly non-existent the mana he emitted, somehow there was an invisible aura about him that, Zephyrin was suddenly sure, would command the respect of sovereigns.

“Every word,” the Grand Prefect added, in a voice no less definitive than authoritative. Then he seemed to sigh a little, and his demeanor loosened. “Of course the monarchy will fall,” he said softly, almost to himself. His eyes crinkled at the sight of Zephyrin’s incomprehension. “A Manatorine nun,” he added, as if this was fully explanatory of his thought process. Then he leaned over and opened a drawer to withdraw a deeply yellowed sheet of paper. Giving Zephyrin a brief but meaningful look, suggestive that it was incumbent upon him to attend closely, he began reading.

“Make it known to the heir of the kingdom of predilection that I wish for him to enter ever deeper into My affections by pledging his loyalty to Me in a public and especial manner. Let his banners bear the emblem of the full moon, that superabundant blessings may be showered upon him and his kingdom. If he does this, Gaulyria will prosper under My sight, for I shall personally undertake to preserve him and his lineage from adversity. Let him formally dedicate his reign and temporal powers to My service, rather than the furthering of his own ambitions and the pursuit of earthly pleasures. If he consents to receive this favor that I so earnestly desire to bestow, the fortunes of Gaulyria will know no limits, and the nations will be astonished to see the king, the son of My Love, raised to the summit of glory as the greatest monarch of this world.”

Father Athand lowered but continued to hold the yellowed page, a pensive look in his eyes. “This letter—communicating to Rudolf XI the Goddess’s own words—was penned by a visionary on the 28th of February, 883, before being sent to the King’s Isle on the 3rd of March. Were you aware of its existence, young sir?”

“No.” Though populated by a fair number of devout Kosmæans in his original time, no one in the Elysian court had so much as alluded to a prophecy addressed to Gaulyria’s monarchs.

March 3rd…

Zephyrin’s eyes widened. Wasn’t that the same date as—

“As I thought,” Father Athand said softly, seeing the light of comprehension dawn in Zephyrin’s eyes. “You know. You know what will happen on the third.”

Zephyrin quickly shook his head. “I don’t—I know what will happen, but this is my first time hearing of this prophecy—”

“A prophecy? Is that how you understand it?” Laying flat the sheet on his desk, Father Athand leaned in, fixing Zephyrin with an intent look. “Call it rather a warning. On March 3rd, 984, after letting a century pass without heeding the Goddess’s words, a calamity will befall this country, one from which it will only obtain redress after long centuries of sacrifice and toil. This has been my one abiding thought since the day I discovered this text, and daily I find my expectations verified by the degradation of the clergy and the depredations of the roturiers.”

Father Athand’s eyes were keen, and suddenly it was not he who stared across the desk at Zephyrin, but a battle-forged soldier who had challenged drakes and all manner of fell beasts in Primæva’s jungles. “Rudolf XI received the letter. He ignored it. As did his son. Now, even if His Majesty Rudolf XIII fulfills the Goddess’s request, I fear it will be too late. Our monarchs have too long delayed to be spared the storm that grows over this country. Soon the lightning will fall, and all will be dashed to pieces.” The priest’s eyes met Zephyrin’s. “But even if the jar is shattered, perhaps several of its pieces can be gathered up for a future restoration.”

Zephyrin hesitated, hardly daring to put any trust in the priest’s words. “Father Athand, what are you proposing? By now, it’s surely too late…”

“Do you forget that I spent twenty years in the royal army? Tell me everything you know. Our time is limited indeed, but not all is lost. I have contacts in the palace and city.” Father Athand‘s gaze was unyielding. “I beg of you, Zephyrin. Tell me what you know.”

Zephyrin drew a ragged breath. Had he misjudged the situation all along? Had he continually frustrated the Goddess’s desires for this new world...?

There was no time to waste on futile regrets. He had to act. Zephyrin steeled his resolve. He spoke. He spoke well into the evening, and even when all the evening prayers had been prayed and all the teachers and noble students had slipped into an uneasy slumber anxious for the future, again he returned to the Grand Prefect’s office to divulge everything he knew of the weeks to come, and which might enable to bring a new reality into being.

When he finished at last in the early morning hours, the Grand Prefect leaned back in his seat. “Now… let’s get to work.”