Orenda walked into the hall to face the dwarven elders, followed closely by Gareth who was, once again, wearing his mask. Getting back into the city had been an ordeal that required checkpoints, and the contingent of guards that led them to this place may have been the same people who led them the first time.

Krothith stood from where she sat at the table and made her way slowly down the steps as Orenda stood, holding the staff in both hands. It took her longer to get to Orenda than it did for Bella, Falsie, and Anilla to come in from outside and shove their way through the soldiers showing none of the fear they had once possessed.

“My god,” Falsie said, “It’s sterilite.” It took a second for the information to hit him, for the properties of the metal to outweigh the rarity in his mind, and he amended, more incredulously, “My god, it’s sterilite! Why? Why would you make a mage staff from sterilite?”

“I shot a demon in the face,” Gareth said, “If that interests anyone. That’s a thing I did. That’s where I’m at in my life right now.”

Krothy reached out to touch Orenda’s hand, and stared up at her as if she was having difficulty seeing her; and given her age, it was quite likely she was, but Orenda knew it was something else. The old woman was not looking at her physical form, she was studying the way magic flowed from her, studying the pattern of her soul.

“Orenda Firefist,” She said, and meant to go on, but Orenda corrected her.

“I’ve always been called Nochdifache,” Orenda said.

“But it isn’t your name,” Gareth said, “I thought… I thought it would help us hide. They were looking for Firefists.”

“What happened to your hand?” Bella asked as she took Gary’s hand in her own and stared down at the burn, “How did you even do that? You don’t burn.”

“Don’t touch that staff, darling,” Gareth said, “It’s hot.” He paused a beat and continued, “And I say, once again, that I shot a demon in the face! Someone acknowledge that!”

“Orenda Nochdifache-Firefist,” Krothy continued, ignoring Gareth’s plea, “You have been chosen by the great god Thesis. You are the avatar of a god among mortals.”

“Am I?” Orenda asked, annoyed by the title, “Because I’ll tell you, Ms. Krothith, it doesn’t feel like anything. The staff doesn’t work. I can’t channel through it, at all. No magic flows from this staff.”

Master, I am incomplete. The staff argued. The man in green stole the artifact from the temple in the heart of the fire that fuels Xren. It is rightfully yours. You must reclaim it.

“Oh,” Orenda said, “And it speaks to me. I’m announcing that now because it can be mistaken for madness. If ever you find me talking to myself, I assure you I am not. I’m speaking to the staff.”

“It speaks to you?” Krothy asked, “You hear the voice of a god?”

“No,” Gareth waved both his hands out from his body in indignation, “It’s not the voice of a god or a spirit or anything like that. I hear voices too and no one gives me any titles for it- so did Ronnie. It’s a hereditary bought of madness gifted to her by her fool of a father.”

“Do not speak ill of the dead, Gary,” Krothy warned.

“I. Shot. A. Demon. In. The. Face!” Gareth announced.

“Gareth,” Orenda jerked to look at him, “I don’t want to steal your attention, but I daresay you’re leaving something out of that story!”

“What are you talking about, Gary?” Anilla asked helpfully, the only one who seemed to be willing to engage him.

Gareth spread his arms and widened his stance before he began to speak.

“There we were in the temple, in the room of sacred flame. Orenda had just retrieved the staff when the wall on the far side of the room split open, and out stepped the most powerful demon known to Xren- Morgani Magnus!”

“What?” Falsie interrupted.

“It’s true,” Orenda said, “Or at least, that’s who he says he was.”

“Why did you shoot him?” Bella asked, “Morgani Magnus is the guardian of the shifters, Gary.”

“I… genuinely forgot about that,” Gareth proclaimed in the same announcer’s voice, “It completely slipped my mind! In my defense, he was coming for Orenda. There was evil in his eyes, and I would not let him take her! So I shot him in the face. Darling, don’t look at me like that, he got better.”

“Until I killed him,” Orenda said.

“Yes, until Orenda killed him,” Gareth agreed.

“You killed Morgani Magnus?” Bella asked as if she did not believe her.

“I burned him to a charred corpse using the sacred flame,” Orenda said.

“Oh he’s not just dead,” Gareth said, “Do you know the saying, ‘his goose is cooked’? Well, that goose isn’t worth eating. It’s not cooked, it’s too overdone. It’s burned.”

“You rid Xren of its most powerful demon,” Krothy said, patting Orenda on the back, “Your first act as a holy being. You have been chosen for great things.”

“The staff doesn’t work,” Orenda said, “It says that it needs another artifact to activate it.”

“Absolutely not,” Gareth argued, “No more wild goose chases!” He paused and in a more quiet voice added, “I’m full of goose analogies… I may be hungry.”

“You’re right,” Krothy agreed, “We must have a feast, to celebrate your triumphant return, and your first victory!”

“I’m sorry,” Orenda said, trying to clear her thoughts, “I’m… I suppose I’m still reeling. Bella, I’m sorry I killed your guardian, I… I was defending myself! He was going to kill me! He said that we had no right to be there.”

“And I still don’t know what he did to Ronnie,” Gareth defended, “We don’t know that he was ever guarding you or caring for you at all. The only source we have are the sacred texts and the Kabbal, and I would think you, more than anyone, would know that that whole organization is nothing but a pack of lies. Magnus probably isn’t really a demon, because a demon necessitates a god. He was a mortal man- I mean he died. Immortals don’t do that, and I saw him die. I watched it happen.”

“There have been legends about Morgani since before recorded history,” Bella argued, “He is immortal. And he did enter into a covenant with the shifters. I don’t think you killed him.”

“He couldn’t be more dead!” Gareth argued, “There’s ‘oh, if only we had gotten here sooner we could have saved him!’ dead, and then there’s ‘Oh I think that may have been a person once but now it can’t be identified as anything that ever was once alive’ dead. Magnus was the latter.”

Bella looked heartbroken, and Orenda felt an overpowering urge to defend herself.

“I don’t know what that demon did to my parents,” Orenda said, “When I was still at school he appeared to me and nearly killed me then! The headmaster had to step in and banish him! He has always hated me, and I have no doubt that had I not killed him he would have killed me! Aunty Bella, I… I’m not… I’m not a bad person. I don’t end lives without just cause. I swear this to you.”

“I don’t believe he’s dead,” Bella said. “And I won’t participate in any ‘celebration’ that pretends it.”

She turned on her heel and left the temple.

“Bell!” Gareth called in frustration. He huffed and ran to follow her while Orenda thought of the staff, and of the legends.

Long ago, millions of years in the past, when the world was young, there were no elemental elves. All elves lived in harmony with themselves and all of nature in a paradise called “The Crystal City” created by Thesis. The wonderland was housed in a beautiful forest filled with all the plants and animals that existed on the world at that time that were good for elvenkind. There was no death, disease, suffering, poison, or heartache.

In those days Thesis walked among his creation and gifted them with many things. Elves he had made in his image, and he instructed them to guide Xren, and to care for it. He gave them technologies that had since been lost, and the magical ability to bend the planet to their whims. Everyone lived there, peacefully and happily.

Morgani Magnus had actually been the first elf Thesis created- some scholars said it was to test the idea. In those days all elves were immortal, having been made in the image of a god. Death and pain were unknown to them. He lived for some time as contented as the other elves- until he didn’t.

As far as Orenda knew, it had never been recorded what the catalyst was, what made Morgani turn against the god who created him. But he did. He brought to the world the concepts of violence, aggression, hate, and combat. He tried to fight something he could not hope to defeat, and he predictably failed, but the damage had been done.

Many of the other elves followed Magnus down his path of madness and spread out from the Crystal City to cover the face of Xren. They were not, as Thesis had instructed, cultivating and caring for the land, because they had been tainted by Magnus’s arrogance, and were destroying it. Thesis was forced to wipe the slate clean, to protect his creation.

So one of the moons fell.

There had, at one time, been three moons orbiting Xren, but now there were only two.

The impact knocked the planet off its perfect alignment and caused it to tilt, creating seasons where there had once been a temperate climate. It also threw up so much dust and debris into the air that the entire planet was shrouded in darkness. It became a cold, desolate wasteland, and nearly everything that had once existed now did not. Scientists recorded in Orenda’s biology classes told her that only about 1% of what had once lived on Xren lived still.

Yet still, Magnus did not repent. Still, he did not return to Thesis and ask for forgiveness. Still, he carried on with this arrogant idea that he could, somehow, defeat and slay a god. He would see the entire planet broken and destroyed before he would humble himself before god. Which was a shame, because the scholars who studied the sacred texts, the holy people, had vast records of Thesis’s forgiving nature. None of the pain or destruction ever needed to happen, if only Magnus had not tricked his followers into believing that they could slay a god.

Magnus’s influence was not limited to the elves- he also built a following among animals. Most notable of these was the humans. When Magnus realized he could not win, he went into hiding, as if one could hide from an all-knowing god. He was taken in by a tribe of humans, an animal that had, at that time, not been domesticated, that still ran free, hunting and gathering in the wild world that had not yet been tamed. They took him in, and tried to hide him, but they were found out as easily as one would expect.

Still, these humans lied, to the face of a god. They told him that they were not hiding Magnus.

Humans had the intelligence to know what a lie was, to know not to do that, and they chose to defy Thesis anyway. So they were cursed. The group of humans who tried to hide Magnus became shifters- if they would pretend not to have intelligence, then that intelligence would be stripped from them, not all the time, only often enough to remind them of their sin. Scholars believed that if a shifter were to dedicate their life to the church, they would be able to overcome the curse.

Yet Bella somehow saw Magnus as a savior to the shifters. Orenda didn’t understand this and thought that she should ask her when she had calmed down a little. It was interesting, and a little confusing, but it raised a good question.

Could Orenda really kill someone who had eluded a god?

Master the staff said, breaking her out of her thoughts. I have located the artifact. I know where it lies.

“Where?” Orenda asked.

The man in green with a soul that is not his own took it far from its resting place. It lies leagues across the sea in a land as lush and green as the man who took it, in a mighty building made of stone and covered in vines.

“That isn’t particularly helpful,” Orenda said to the staff while the crowd stared at her, “Give me an actual location. Tell me something I can use.”

It lies at the heart of this building guarded by a powerful magic barrier. The staff continued, Cast by a powerful mage. She is…

The staff trailed off, and Orenda wondered how it knew this.

The place is full of life, master, but the mage who cast these wards should not have done it. Her soul is corrupted. Her spells are corrupted. She believes herself to be chosen by Thesis, but she is wrong. She thinks she has captured the power of a god, but it longs to escape. She cannot contain it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Orenda snapped, “I don’t need cryptic bullshit! If you want me to get it, tell me where it is!”

I cannot tell what I do not know, master.

“What does it say?” Krothy asked, and to the council, she added, “Someone write this down!”

“It says that the other artifact, the one I need to make the staff work, was taken from its resting place in the fire that fuels the planet by a man in green with a soul that was not his own, and taken to a place as green as he is, across the sea, where it is now guarded by a corrupt mage.” Orenda told them.

“The Emerald Knight,” Krothy said, “The Emerald Knight is the man in green. I knew he took something from the Sacred Mountains. When he took the artifact, it must have caused the eruption. He’s likely taken it back to his master, the empress, in Uril. Xandra is the most powerful mage on Xren, and I would certainly call her corrupt.”

Orenda took in this information slowly, and when she spoke again it was with more conviction than she felt.

“If that is true,” She said simply, “Then that is where I must go.”