The old Eolh might have given up. He might have turned tail and gone home...

...but the new Eolh was angry.

His wings beat furiously at the air and all he could think was Gods, take me for a fool.

Below him, the streets became a distorted grid, wrapping around the hills and dales and wrinkled valleys of Cyre. He could feel the eyes of thousands below him, but against the changing of the scar, he was nothing more than a black-winged oddity.

Why should anyone care about one avian, when the sky itself was splitting open?

High above, the spidering cracks of the scar were flashing with light, like a thunderstorm seen in the vast distance.

It was the cyran tribune’s fault that he was up here, flying beneath the end of the world, or whatever this was.

Eolh had made the oldest mistake. Don’t take a full pot to the well. A Listener - a good Listener - must quiet his heart, for the beating of one’s emotions deafens all else. Isn’t that so?

Whether he knew it or not, the cyran tribune was right. Eolh was holding himself back. He was tarred in his own beliefs. Coming to Cyre, he saw only what he wanted to see. Heard, only what he expected to hear.

No more. I will not be my own enemy. There are enough of those already.

If the Queen wanted to find peace, Eolh would be damned if he was to go home without an answer.

And without the fledgling.

So the corvani pulled himself higher and higher, thrusting his wings back and his body forward, until the wind grew weak and the air, thin.

The goggles made it easy to see everything. It was almost like they were alive - they seemed to know exactly what he wanted.

When he focused his attention on the streets below, the goggles brought the whole world closer to him in a dizzying movement. For a moment he thought he was falling. Somehow this old tech could see clearer and further than any captain’s telescope.

It took him only a few minutes of searching through that maze of marble and clay tile roofs to find the cart, skirting through the streets. They had gone over the bridge, and into the vineyards beyond.

Now, they turned down a road with a gate. There were tents there. And soldiers.

Eolh angled his body like an arrow, and dived towards the camp. Flapping, when gravity was too slow. Should any of the cyrans see him, they would see only a black, winged avian speeding out of the city’s airspace.

And if the soldiers shot at him?

So be it. He’d been shot at before, for much less than this.

What was clear to him now - what should’ve been clear to him from the start - was that a chance had been handed to him, and he was about to let it slip through his feathers.

Kirine.

Gods damn him, Eolh thought. If he had been any other kind of xeno, Eolh would’ve found it easy to trust him. Gods damn him for being a cyran.

Eolh had been so blinded by his feelings, his unabiding hatred for the xenos who conquered his world and burned his city, that he had forgotten to listen. Back in Lowtown, that was a great way to get yourself killed. And here, well, who knew what it might cost him? What it might cost all aviankind...

Eolh was only above the bridge, when he saw the cart stop, somewhere in the middle of all those tents. There was a great stone platform, like the base levels of a pyramid. A circle of metal sat in the middle of the platform.

Then, he could see the arms of the circle, beginning to move.

There was no time to think. No time for anything, but flight. His arms burned. His legs were tucked behind him, his talons closed tight.

But he was no falcyr, which may rip through the air. He was no needletail, with wings like razors for slicing the sky. He was corvani. A lowborn, lowcaste scavenger thief.

He was too slow.

By the time he heard the whining of the gate, Eolh was only above the first tent.

The light of the gate glowed. A single beam pierced the sky.

Eolh flew on. Just in case.

But the gate was empty. Poire was gone. And the tribune with him.

Exhausted, his chest tight with the pain of breathing so hard, Eolh slumped and slowed his flight. Gliding over the tents, circling the camp.

This is where the the old Eolh would give up. Would hang his head, and find some dusky tavern to sulk in. And he could not deny the sweet, awful allure of that feeling. How easy it would be to hate the world, to curse it and to nurse himself in darkness.

But Eolh had a new truth.

He knew that nobody gave a splatter of gullshit about him. The world didn’t care if he came or went or if he was here at all. On cyre, he was no one.

And for a professional Listener, being ‘no one’ was a very, very good thing.

There would be other chances to slip through the gate. Whatever it took, Eolh was determined to find a way. No matter how long he had to wait, he would help this Kirine, in his mad, suicidal quest. And he would hold the tribune to his word.

Anything in his power to create a chance for peace.

Fortunately, Eolh did not have to wait very long...

***

The Emperor’s statue, the highest and most sacred temple of Cyre, was infested with those spineless xenos who called themselves Historians.

And the Emperor was forced to sit on his throne, and listen to them argue back and forth about whose fault it was that the scar was tearing itself open.

They twisted their tentacles accusingly at him, nodding and bobbling their helmeted heads. Glass and rubber, filled with noxious, near-frozen fumes. Long, tattered robes hid the tentacles they used as feet, but the Emperor could not hear anything but that disgusting squelching, slapping sound as they shifted and moved around his temple. And their voices.

Oh, those voices. Not at all like the cyrans, so sonorous and musical.

To him, the Historians sounded like jars of bees, being shaken about. Especially when they were arguing. Their speech medallions, all projecting the same buzzing voice.

He wished he could silence them.

But right now, he needed them. Because they could go where he dared not. The Black Library was not just a light dam, it was also a place of records. Somehow, the Historians had figured out a way to access arcane stores of humanity’s data, much of which related to the scar and the light beyond.

Not that they were particularly forthcoming with that data.

So, he had summoned them. And they had come down from their library - more interested in berating the Emperor, than providing him with answers.

“You should have turned him away,” they said. “You should not have let him linger here.”

The Emperor asked, “This is how you treat the god you call savior?”

“Do not dare!” One of the Historians stabbed at the air with an ancient, gnarled tentacle, as dry as a fish left in the sun. “Do not presume to know what the Unfinished Book proclaims!”

The Emperor inhaled as slowly as he could. Not trusting himself to speak.

After how many centuries, he had finally discovered another human. Still young and untouched by the world, who might be molded into a true ally, to accompany him through the ages. One who would far outlive any being the Emperor had to deal with. Another living god.

And all these fragile wretches could do was spit their curses, as if anyone could have foreseen this.

The scar, it seemed, had felt Poire’s presence. Immediately. And reacted, just as swift.

“How could you let this happen?” the Historians said, as if it was his fault the scar was rippling, carving itself open. “How could you let a human get so close?”

The truth? The Emperor would not tell them the truth. They didn’t need to know.

I didn’t want to rush him, he thought. He had been here before, on another world. With another human. And last time, it took more than a full year before the scar began to tear.

But this was different… Why?

He had so many questions, and these Historians would give him no answers. They were frightened. They were helpless in the will of the light. Just like all the rest.

Just like me.

“You have erred!” They said, as if by calling him guilty, they might absolve themselves of the doom that was soon to befall them and all of Cyre. The decay of change.

The Emperor snapped. He could not help it. It’s what he would’ve done, in his old self, before he became the Emperor. And so, it was what he did now.

“If your Book can see so much, why didn’t it see this? Where is your far-sight now, you First Born? Or does your Book abandon you, when you need it most?”

They hissed in horror, in absolute disgust. A clicking, rasping sound that came at him from every corner of his own temple. Their tentacles curled and uncurled, and their voices buzzed with ineffectual threats of vengeance. Their Library protected them. But only in the Library.

“The Unfinished Book,” they said, “Can never be understood by a mind such as yours, you who call yourself Human! No matter how high you try to elevate yourself!”

“Bah,” the Emperor said, waving his huge hand aside. And it was not the wind from his gesture that knocked them low - but the gravity that he held at his fingertips. It sent them hissing and writhing and buzzing anew, though the Emperor did not send out such a force he might damage them.

Bruise them, maybe, for the First Children of Humanity were frail things.

But no, he would not hurt them. If the Light Dam held, if the human left this world before the scar truly began to split, then he did not want to start a war.

And if it didn’t?

The Emperor stood up from his throne, towering over the tentacles and tattered rags and those gas-filled helmets of the Historians. They shied away from his footsteps, as he walked to the balcony.

Like every other sould in Cyre, he wanted to watch the sky.

Only, where they prayed to the gods - and to him - begging for mercy, the Emperor prayed to nothing. He only watched.

Waiting for a sign, so that he could make up his mind.

If the scar did not settle, he would have to leave.

How tiresome, to begin another Empire anew.

Perhaps he would take a few of these cyrans with him, if he went. But none of these damnable Historians. No, that’s for certain.

A flash from the planet’s surface caught his eye. Over to the west, where the bulk of his military kept their camps. The gate that he had hauled all the way from dire Ulanfall opened itself and a beam of light pierced the sky. Headed towards the stars.

Then, the beam disappeared, leaving behind a kind of mist.

Good.

Now, he could only watch.

It took time. But it did slow its change, that great scar in the sky. And before the world turned and the scar disappeared over the horizon, he was satisfied to see that it had frozen in place once more.

The dam would hold.

And his empire would stand, for at least a while longer.

“There,” he said, mostly to himself. “See that there was nothing to worry over.”

Yet still, a feeling lingered in the pit of his human body. Pushing hard against the place where his mind met the flesh.

Friction. That was the word for it. He felt a kind of friction.

Perhaps the time for caution was over.

His newest kindred had questioned him, and had made him question himself. For a thousand years, it made sense to build an empire that could grow itself. To keep his hands off.

But now…

Perhaps, he thought, the time for sleep is over.

The Historians had only just climbed back to their feet - or tentacles, or whatever they call them - and their buzzing subsided into droning displeasure, when he told them to “get out of my Temple.”

He did not bother with decorum or tradition. Let them be furious. What could they do to him?

And when they left, the Emperor summoned a servant, and sent them off on a mission.

They returned, not an hour later, with a guest in tow.

An old soldier, with legs as thick as tree trunks, and arms to match. His scales were silver and black, except where they were graying with age. Yet Lord Deioch, Consul of the Veneratian, still moved with the leopardine grace of a warrior.

When he bowed, he bowed all the way. And held himself there, until the Emperor nodded at him.

“Lord Deioch,” the Emperor said.

“My Everlord,” he said, his voice muffled by that silver mask he always wore. An old-tech gift that gleamed in the light of the braziers. Even below that mask, Deioch’s face was rigid and emotionless.

“How soon can you have your legions ready? Reserves and all.”

“Two weeks, if my lord requests it. No sooner.”

“Vorpei is about to make a mistake.”

At that, Deioch seemed to stand a little straighter. It was the most emotion this cyran would show, the Emperor was sure of it.

“You know where she is?”

“Thrass et Yunum. In a war camp, attached to Sseran Thay City. Hers is the only house in a sea of tents.”

Oh, good, the Emperor thought. He’s been waiting for this.

“I have sent a Tribune,” the Emperor continued, “A fanatical xenophile who believes that Vorpei is guilty of some crime or other. Kirine is his name.”

“Kirine?” Deioch said, a shock in his even voice. “Isn’t he-”

“Yes,” the Emperor said. “He is. But he will play his part, do not fear. And then, he will die. When she takes action against him, Vorpei will be in violation of the Veneratian’s law. I want you to be ready to strike.”

“I have heard rumors,” Deioch said carefully, “Of a god. That you sent him to Thrass, my lord.”

“You have heard well, Deioch.”

“I do not… I do not wish to harm a human.”

The Emperor almost smiled at that.

“The only thing that can harm a god is another god. And there are none of those on Thrass, except the one I sent.”

“And the tribune?”

“His path will end in death. But if, by chance, it does not… better to get rid of him. To keep this clean. A living martyr is a difficult thing to control.”

Deioch nodded. His voice, muffled by his mask, came back to the Emperor. “By your will, all this shall be done.”