'Though we must be blinded, they will be deafened.

Though we must be weakened, they will be deceived.

Though we must be delayed, they will be departed.'

One of the oldest mysteries of our age, this poem was found written in gold letters impressed deeply into the wall of a cave beneath Cormont. This is a translation from the ancient script of its actual writing, which is reproduced below.

The strangest part is that the cave didn't even exist when the writing was placed. A perfect mirror of the text was impressed into the far wall, and continued more deeply in than could be fully extracted by even our most powerful archeologists. Later excavations discovered that the writing, though only a little taller than a handwidth, extended through the heart of the mountain further than could be safely ascertained - perhaps clear from one side to the other!

Who buried it here, and for what purpose? Are there other hidden messages beneath our other cities?

-The Cormont Script

“Astesh. There you are.”

Retti’s voice was strangely calm. Too calm. Dangerous calm.

She’d just discovered her son dead, made loud smashing sounds for a while, and then … calm?

This was so wrong.

“Hmmm?” Retti tilted her head to the side, looking down at me. “What am I to do with you?”

“Whatever you want, I suspect.”

I was so tired.

I never wanted to fight in the first place. I was worn out in every possible way, emotionally drained, physically exhausted, mentally fighting the aftereffects of the still only half stable power that had only barely decided not to knock me out.

I had nothing left. No hidden reserves, no second wind, nothing. My power flowed smoothly, bright and strong, but I couldn’t summon the energy to shape it to my will.

I wanted to give up. But I knew that would end with me either chained to one of her slabs, or dead on the ground with my stone shoved into some other helpless prisoner. I would be useless either way.

If I could keep her talking, maybe she wouldn’t hurt me. It was a stupid hope, but I couldn’t think of anything better.

“Do you know, a year ago, I was a commoner? Now I have more power than anyone but a reirn. Is that irony, or idiocy?”

“A commoner? Truly?” Retti flew closer, a note of curiosity in her voice. “How did you come to be here, then?”

I couldn’t think of a lie. Too much effort. “Fylen’s childstone. I found it in the snow. It was warm, so I kept it. Woke up the next morning and it’d seeped into my chest. Went undercover. Pretended to be a noble. Ended up dragged into Pel’s whole crusade. And here I am.”

“And you experienced no rejection of the foreign power?” Retti asked, visibly intrigued.

“Took a while to learn to use it. Desten was a good enough teacher. Not as good as Pel, but much nicer. Grumpy. Didn’t throw me into rivers.” I sighed. “I always knew this stupid plan was going to get me killed someday.”

I knew I was rambling, didn’t have the energy to care.

“Commoners,” Retti mused. “That's right. I've entirely forgotten to pursue that angle…”

Oh. That may have been a bad idea.

I waited for some surge of protective fury, for the thought of my mother back in the downcity, all the innocents whose lives were already discounted by the nobility.

Nothing came. My weariness had finally outweighed my compassion. Or perhaps I’d only ever imagined myself to be caring. Perhaps all along I’d been pretending. Lying to myself because for so long nothing I did would matter. Making excuses for inaction for long enough that when it finally might make a difference, I didn’t even notice.

I could give up. Just close my eyes, open them again as a prisoner, but it would be easier than trying to fight. Than trying to force a conflict with the most powerful person still living in the entire world.

No, the conversant are stronger.

Possible, but they were also useless. I went to all the trouble of sending them secret messages, and they completely ignored them. Some all-powerful guardians stronger even than reirns. Fah.

I glanced at Retti, wondering if she was still listening to my thoughts, but she didn't react. Perhaps my exhaustion was enough to dim them, or perhaps she'd decided it was pointless to continue.

She seemed to be ignoring me entirely, in fact. She moved forward, toward the crate containing the last survivors of our team, and I knew the time for rest and contemplation was over.

I was the only thing that could possibly stand between her and them. No matter how tired I was, I knew I would never be able to live with myself if I stood by and watched more friends die without at least trying to save them.

“Don’t,” I said, my voice dry. “Don’t.”

I held out a hand and power flowed easily, spreading out into a solid wall between her and my friends, filling the entire hallway.

She shook her head pityingly. “Astesh, you know this won’t stop me.”

“What about honor? Do you still have any of that left?”

She shrugged. “A little, perhaps. But I owe you nothing.”

“You do.”

She frowned and moved toward the wall of pink-tinted purple light without answering.

“You do owe me,” I said, more loudly. I pushed myself to my feet unsteadily, but held out a hand pointed at her. “You challenged me. And yet here we are, both still bearing light.”

She slowly turned, shaking her head. “What happened to you? I know this isn’t what you want. You’re far too soft-hearted to want to kill me for my power. Did the conversant do this? Set you on a crusade far beyond your capacity, in some desperate misguided attempt to stop me?”

“I don’t need the conversant to tell me that what you’re doing is wrong. You have to be stopped. Can you really not see that you’ve gone too far?”

“There were ten of us, once,” Retti said instead, her voice distant. “Ten families sworn to the pursuit of truth, in secret. For hundreds of years we have gathered crumbs of knowledge, while at every turn the conversant steal our spirit and kill the fire of our dream whenever they can find us. Now I’m all that remains. My heir is dead, my husband is destabilized, and you and your friends have made enough of a splash that sooner or later the conversant will come for me as well. The time for secrecy is over. We must be ready to face them power to power, and time is desperately short.”

“That’s what this is about? You want to be strong enough to fight the conversant? That’s insane. You’ll never—”

“You are no longer an unbiased observer, Astesh. I’ve seen the way your mind dances around the truth, skittering away from its edges because to you it no longer exists. I can use that.” She held out her hands. “I release you from our duel. I no longer require your light, you may keep it.”

“But I do not release you. Your light is forfeit, stolen by blood, unworthily. Fylen may have accepted the duel that led to his end, but these people? How many of them are under legitimate agreement? I know for a fact that you have no claim to the power of any of my friends.”

“You barely survived facing me when I had only my own power to use, and only then by the interference of that Sarosa fool. You want to fight me now?”

I shook my head. “No. I have no desire to fight. But you must be stopped. And I don’t see anyone else around willing to try.”

“Or, you could join me. It would be so beautifully ironic if you were to be our first success. Can you imagine, a commoner becoming the first true prismatic in centuries?”

“There’s no such thing as a prismatic,” I said instinctively.

“And that belief has so much potential, because you have such beautifully convenient blind spots. You can discern the shape of things from the empty spaces left behind in its absence. Stand down. Help me. Neither of us wants more death today.”

I hesitated, bereft of any righteous fury.

So tired.

“Will you leave my friends alone?”

“They’re both incompatible anyway, I doubt they’ll ever stabilize. Do with them what you please.”

My heart constricted and I nearly fell, suddenly unsteady; I put out a hand to steady myself against the wall. I’d known this was possible, but it still hurt to know. Never stabilize. They would be like Desten 4, trapped in the chaos and madness of unintegrated power forever, never to wake.

I swallowed and pressed on. “And … and you have to stop.”

“I can’t. I’m so close. You have no idea how much work has gone into the formulae that have led us here. One more round, two, and I’ll have the key.”

She stepped closer, arms still open welcomingly, inviting.

I felt a faint resonance. A pull toward her, ever so slight. Almost unnoticeable.

I let my eyes drift across her robes, looking for the source of the tug. She had subtle pockets all down the side, many lumpy with the stolen powerstones she carried with her at all times, but one in particular seemed noticeably larger.

Desten’s. The resonance was the same, I knew it had to be. I frowned. She wouldn't have. Surely.

She followed my gaze, with a look of faint surprise, and took out the stone. It was significantly larger than the normal ones, with layers of different colours faintly visible like a semi-translucent geode.

“You butchered your own son as though he were nothing but one more failed experiment?" I asked, incredulous. "I thought the whole point of this was to protect your family. Is nothing sacred to you any longer? Does no one matter? Life, decency, humanity?”

“Some things are more important,” she said quietly. “When it is done, when the world is saved from the meddling of those who think they deserve to control our destiny, then I will mourn for what I have done and those who had to be sacrificed to bring it about. But until then there is no time for hesitation.”

She held the smooth oval in both hands, looking down at it with a distant sadness, then inhaled slowly and turned back to me. “You feel its resonance? Already?”

I nodded.

“Interesting. You must be highly compatible.”

For a long moment we stood, hesitating, neither quite sure what to say. A desperate plan began to tease at the edges of my thoughts.

“Can I have it?” I asked, then looked away. It felt so wrong, asking for the power of the boy I’d helped kill. Who I’d wanted so desperately to save, right up until it actually mattered.

“You have no reason to care about these people,” Retti said, in lieu of answering. “You know they’re selfish, arrogant, worthless creatures, too petty to even see reality. You could be a worthy heir.”

I looked up. She still cradled the stone protectively between her hands, head tilted to one side, thoughtfully.

I took a step forward, hesitant.

Retti looked up, met my eyes, and nodded. “If you promise your aid, that you will stop attempting to disrupt my plans, then yes. You may take my son’s power for yourself and stand at my side.”

What was one more lie atop all the others I’d accrued? I wasn’t so naive as she thought, nor so innocent.

And if there was one thing I was good at, it was making up stories.

“I promise," I said, slipping into the pompous tones of a confident aristocrat. "But I must insist we refrain from causing any more harm than is absolutely necessary. And when we rule the world, there are several worthy commoners who we will elevate to join us.”

Retti laughed, delightedly.

For a moment I stood frozen, terrified that I'd said the wrong thing.

“Rule?" she said, still laughing. "My, you are an ambitious one. I see I’ve chosen well. But, no. You may rule, if you wish. That is a step far beyond my desire. So long as you aid me in reaching my own more humble ends, I will not stand in your way when you seek to surpass me.”

She held out Desten’s stone, and I stepped forward to take it.

A tiny blade of power began to form in my off hand, barely extending beyond my fingertips curled away to hide it from view. Very carefully, so as not to brush against the flashmail. My heartbeat sounded so loud and fast, I was sure it would give me away, as I forced myself to move slowly as though calm.

I reached out, and she hesitated only a moment before placing Desten’s glowing-ember powerstone in my hand. It was warm, heavy, and echoed with vibrating power through my whole body. I felt it harmonizing with the power already flowing in my blood and shivered.

I looked up and met Retti’s eyes. We stood so close, I could see the hints of tears gathered at their edges, and knew she was not quite as blase about this as she pretended.

“Thank you. I understand the weight of this gift, and I will not let it be wasted.”

She gave the slightest hint of a nod and looked away.

I moved, power flooding my body so her reactions slowed to a crawl. I only had a moment before she would realize something was wrong and retaliate.

A moment was all I needed.

With my other hand I reached up and slashed open the front of her robe, then slammed Desten’s stone into hers with as much strength as I could muster. There was a thunderous SNAP as the stones shattered into fragments, shards embedded in her chest around her own then drawn slowly inward by whatever metaphysical magnetism drew power to coalesce.

Her eyes widened in slow motion. Red power began to coalesce around her hands, then drifted aimlessly as she twitched and her eyes rolled up into her head. Her aura flared and splashed against my flashmail, vanishing on contact, but raging around us in jagged dissonance as her power and Desten’s warred for supremacy. She went limp, falling slowly to the floor at my feet.

Then I stood frozen amid the chaos, the eye of a hurricane of power, every possible hue clashing and sparking off each other around us.

I…

I had to kill her.

There was no other way; she couldn’t be contained, couldn’t be reasoned with. I stared down at her, my mind completely blank. I didn’t know how long it would take her to regain control of the powers warring within her, but I couldn’t count on it taking long.

But … how? I didn’t have a knife or anything, and I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to … what, cut her throat? Even chaotic, her power would probably heal that in seconds anyway.

Pelys would have known what to do.

The thought reminded me of how he and Lan had drowned Desten in the molten stone upstairs. No matter how powerful, you still had to breathe to live.

I shuddered, but if there were a better way I couldn’t think of it.

I knelt beside Retti’s unconscious form, her power parting when it touched my armor, and put my hand over her face.

It felt so wrong, but I pushed my power out in a formless blob, then willed it to freeze solid. For a moment, I could still feel her steady breath against my hand, the power too porous to fully seal. I focused all my will, all my power, all the desperate panic of knowing she could wake up at any moment, and my fingers froze still in the block of purple-glowing ice covering Retti’s face.

I felt tears running down my face, the burning cold against my fingers, and ignored both. The storm of chaotic power around us began to still, shrinking down and slowing. Retti’s body convulsed, trying to gasp in air that wouldn’t come.

My own breath came short and unsteady as I tried not to think about what I was doing.

Necessary.

Endure.

Then the power faded entirely, and Retti fell still.

Another minute, and even the faint glow of her skin faded away.

It was over.